One of the first things you’ll find when you log into the Steppingblocks Graduate Insights platform is that there are two dashboards to use: Graduate Outcomes and Graduate Explorer. While both contain similar data and tools, there are differences between the dashboards, and they can be used to achieve different goals.
Note: Depending on your access level to the platform, you may have access to one or both of these platforms. If you have questions about your access level, contact your Graduate Insights administrator or [email protected].
Graduate Outcomes
Graduate Outcomes is where users can see high-level, bird’s-eye-view data on their graduates and top employers. Graduate Outcomes has fewer filters than Graduate Explorer, but allows you to get more in-depth information about Employer and Skills trends. This dashboard is great for:
Program Outcomes - whether you’re exploring outcomes by college or by major, Graduate Outcomes allows you to see broad employer and skills trends that can help you evaluate outcomes of specific programs. See how the University of South Carolina has used Steppingblocks data to showcase their alumni outcomes by college.
Employer Relations - the “Employer Trends” tab in Graduate Outcomes allows you to explore hiring trends over the last 10 years, including which employers are trending up and which are trending down. Hear how Georgia Highlands College has leveraged employer data for employer relations.
Accreditation & Reporting - whether you are reporting on graduate outcomes for accreditation purposes or something else, the Graduate Outcomes dashboard allows you to view outcomes by college, major, degree level, and/or graduation year. Read about how Marshall University is leveraging Steppingblocks for Accreditation and Reporting.
Institutional Research - Institutional Research analysts get questions from across campus about a variety of alumni and outcomes data. Graduate Outcomes can help answer these questions, especially those related to hiring trends and skills.
Marketing & Communications - data is great tool to tell the story of your institution, and highlight the accomplishments and outcomes of your alumni. With Graduate Outcomes, marketing staff can utilize and share data on top employers and skills, as well as program-specific outcomes.
Admissions & Enrollment - similar to marketing and communications, admissions and enrollment professionals can utilize the data in Graduate Outcomes to demonstrate the return on investment for their alumni. They can highlight top employers, skills, salary outcomes, and more.
Career Services - students often come to Career Services to learn more about what their employment and career options are after they graduate. With Graduate Outcomes, Career Services staff can show students the top employers for their program, and can highlight the top skills for their major.
Graduate Explorer
The Graduate Explorer dashboard expands on the filters available in Graduate Outcomes. This dashboard allows users to view alumni data down to the individual level, and allows users to explore demographic and firmographic information about their graduates. Users can even download a spreadsheet of their alumni profiles to further explore and manipulate their alumni data. This dashboard is great for:
Alumni Relations and Advancement - the individual-level data in Graduate Explorer is especially important for Alumni Relations and Advancement teams. With Graduate Explorer, you can see outcomes for specific individuals, including their job title, company, location, estimated salary, and more. Read how Husson is utlizing individual alumni data to effectively engage their graduates.
Career Services - Graduate Explorer is a great tool for engaging in alumni career services. Career Services teams can see how many of their alumni are employed in a role relevant to their field of study, and can reach out to alumni employed out-of-field to provide career services support. Hear how Florida International University is leveraging Graduate Explorer for Alumni Career Services.
Institutional Research - with the ability to download CSV files in Graduate Explorer, Institutional Researchers can explore their alumni in great detail, and can utilize Excel pivot tables, Tableau, and other tools to further manipulate and analyze the data.
Program Outcomes - with Graduate Explorer, you can assess program outcomes in even greater detail, particularly as the outcomes relate to demographic and firmographic data.
Note: Depending on your access level, you may not have access to names and contact information for your alumni. If you have questions about your access level, contact your Graduate Insights administrator or a member of the Partner Success team.
For more on how to leverage both Graduate Outcomes and Graduate Explorer, check out the Graduate Insights Use Cases section of our Help Center!