Getting on-time course material adoptions can be a challenge. Your store probably shares the reasons why course material adoption deadlines matter (lower costs, better buyback prices, fewer out of stock books, etc.), but still sometimes the adoptions just aren’t submitted. When you have reached out to faculty multiple times, what is your next course of action? Use your store’s data to illustrate the importance of on-time adoptions.
Who should receive the adoption data?
Last-minute changes and late adoptions can cause a variety of costly problems. The result is that students end up having to pay more for their course materials than was otherwise necessary. Adoption data is a great way to paint a broad picture of how on-time adoptions affect student costs on your campus.
As student affordability is often a campus priority, it may be most helpful share your adoption data with department heads, deans, the provost or other campus leaders with a vested interest in lowering student costs.
Set up a time to meet with campus stakeholders so you can explain the current adoption procedure (learn how to streamline faculty adoptions with MBS inSite), why it is in place, how you currently communicate with faculty (check out our guide to communicating with faculty about textbook adoptions), the current adoption rate and how your campus data supports the need for earlier adoptions.
What adoption data should you share?
The answer to this simply depends on your store’s data. To begin with familiarize yourself with the various reports available to you. For example, MBS system partners can easily run these reports to begin reviewing adoption data:
- Adoption completion rate with comparison to previous terms – The Adoption Analysis KPI in Dashboard displays the current adoption rate as compared to the previous year.
- Year-over-year average textbook prices – Located in Dashboard’s Textbook KPI, the Year-over-year (YOY) average textbook price displays the average price for each year on a graph chart
- Textbook Sales by Term Comparison – Also located in Dashboard’s Textbook KPI, Textbook Sales by Term Comparison, itemizes classes showing sales and units for current and term last year as well as % of retail change
- Courses With No Books – This report is located in Arc Textbooks. It shows you courses without adoption information
- Adoption Progress Report – Located in Arc Textbooks, this report provides a department breakdown of current to prior term data for comparing book adoptions units, percents, and variance between terms for adoptions as of a set date
Using these textbook KPIs and built in faculty adoptions reports, your store can begin looking at the relationship between adoptions and textbooks sales. Learn more about textbook KPIs.
Partners can also utilize Arc Report Builder’s Textbook Adoption Information Model to deep dive into their adoption data, including store, term, course, enrollment, adoption date, estimated sales, etc. The tool lets stores build and filter data based on selected column and row definition, view charts and graphs based on their selected data points and easily extract information onto a spreadsheet.
When you are reviewing your store’s data as it relates to textbook adoptions, consider the story your data can tell. Can you demonstrate that early adoptions lower the average textbook cost for students? Is there a relationship between more low-cost course material options and an increase in market share, which could indicate more students are prepared for class?
What adoption metrics does your store rely on most?
