Wasko says the survey tool started to take on a life beyond MnSCU when its Minnesota Online division won a WCET
Outstanding Work (WOW) Award in 2004 for helping to create the audit tool and successfully piloting it during the summer of 2003. The recognition brought inquiries from other institutions seeking to get access to the tool, which became the catalyst for converting it to its current Web-based CENTSS environment, which was built by Seward, Inc.

Providing Accessibility and Building a Knowledge Base
Seward’s Director of Digital Strategies Victoria Frank explains how she and her staff took the methodology and questions created by Shea, Burnett and MnSCU and constructed an online version of the tool, thus opening it up to more educators to easily access it through a paid-membership program. Seward, Inc., also constructed the CENTSS website to increase the ability to collect and mine the knowledge base of members, as well as non-member site visitors, for other resources that could serve the student services community at large. “We did not just stick the survey online,” says Frank. “We created a whole website with best-practice and resources reservoirs of information, and we created back-end tools so that WCET and other folks could add resources easily. And, of course, we also focused on the survey and how to package it and make it valuable to folks on a membership basis, so that they could buy parts or all of the survey and extend that to any or all of the people at their institutions.”

Some of the website features that surround the online audit tool include a best practice profiles section that has searchable descriptions of selected online student services. The profiles include information on the people involved with designing and developing the services, what technology supports the services, lessons learned, and more. Another website feature is the CENTSS Library containing searchable resources of articles, websites and presentations selected by experts in various student service areas. Both of these website features have a submission-form function that allows visitors or members to recommend a service or resource for possible publication on the CENTSS website.