Summary
As part of an effort to increase the quality of the student-athlete experience, athletic directors utilize Zarca Interactive’s solution to collect insightful feedback from students, and analyze the data to assist in making sure the student-athletes are having a valuable, positive experience.

Union College Athletics
Union College Athletics boasts a multitude of strong athletic programs supported by experienced and knowledgeable departmental leaders and first-rate training and competition facilities.

Union College is an NCAA multi-classified institution that sponsors 25 intercollegiate sports. Ice Hockey competes in Division I ECAC Hockey and 23 sports compete in the Division III Liberty League.

Streamlining the Surveying Process
As part of phase one of their longitudinal analysis, Joanne Little, Senior Associate Athletic Director, has deployed a number of athlete surveys to probe satisfaction levels of academic experiences, sport program experiences, facilities, administrative services, coaching, equipment and other aspects relating to their overall experience.

“Zarca is a great vehicle in a high tech environment to create and gather information, which allows us to measure the student-athlete experience. It gives our student-athletes the opportunity to express their positive experiences and relay any areas that may need some attention. This tool allows us to receive verbatim comments that can be aggregated and filtered for trends,” explains Joanne.

Union College moved from paper surveys to Zarca’s online survey solution back in March 2006. Since then, a significant amount of time and effort has been saved as a result.

“Not having to manually enter data from hard copies into a software program to organize results makes the Zarca system a great time saver”, says Joanne.

Similarly, the Invitation Reminders feature allows Joanne’s team to send reminder emails to members of their panel who have yet to respond to the initial invites. “I think the follow-up reminder is a great tool as well. I always get a spike in responses after sending those out”, Joanne describes.

Dedicated Client Support
Zarca’s outstanding Client Services Team offers unlimited training and support to Joanne and the rest of Union’s designated account administrators so they can become power users of the system.

“I found the interactive seminars to be very helpful when I was learning how to create survey questions. The few times I’ve called for assistance the customer support team was terrific”, recalls Joanne, speaking on the webinars offered each week by Client Services.

In addition to the first-class phone and web support Zarca provides clients with a comprehensive user guide that provides in depth, step-by-step instructions for executing every feature and capability.

“I also refer to the user guide quite often when creating surveys. I am always able to find the information I’m looking for to complete an action in the system”, says Joanne.

Looking Forward
As Union College Athletics moves into the second phase of their student-athlete feedback initiative, they will work on one of the main goals, to continually improve the overall undergraduate experience, backed by insight derived from Zarca-based surveys.