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Dominican University of California Successfully Implements Scantron's Class Climate® as a Blackboard Building Block™

Significant Increase In Course Evaluation Response Rates Supports University's Assessment of Teaching Effectiveness, Accreditation

EAGAN, MN (May 5, 2009) – Scantron Corporation, a leading provider of assessment and survey solutions to help education and commercial organizations measure and improve effectiveness, today announced that Dominican University realized a significant increase in course evaluation response rates through its implementation of Class Climate® course evaluation software as a Blackboard Building Block™.

Class Climate is a web-based software solution used to conduct course evaluation surveys at colleges and universities, as well as in professional education areas, such as corporate training. The software offers a survey management platform including a questionnaire designer for online and paper based surveys, broad flexibility and customization, and robust reporting capabilities to ensure the results are in clear, readable formats.

Dominican University, an independent university of Catholic heritage, offers more than 60 programs of study to more than 2,100 undergraduate and graduate students. The university is located 12 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, California. As an accreditation requirement, the university must regularly conduct course evaluations in order to assess teaching effectiveness.

Scantron Solution Supports Evaluation Process, Accreditation

For decades, Dominican conducted its evaluations using paper surveys. Most responses were compiled using standard survey forms. Comments and suggestions were submitted on the back of the survey form then hand-typed by university staff and submitted with the final evaluation reports.

According to university administration, this process was laborious and created numerous challenges, including a two-to-four month timeframe to complete the evaluations. By implementing Class Climate®, the university was able to overcome these challenges.

"The process is now a thousand times more efficient," said Jackson Ratcliffe, chief technology officer for Dominican University. "What took months to do now takes hours. The results are also much better organized, especially in the reporting of student comments." Dominican also found Scantron's course evaluation solution to be extremely cost effective, as it greatly reduced the amount of manual labor required.

As a Blackboard Building Block, Class Climate facilitates improved response rates by making it easier for students to complete their course, faculty or program evaluations.

"Class Climate's integration with the Blackboard Learn platform serves as another touch point for reaching students," said Ratcliffe. "In addition to receiving an e-mail, students can go into a webpage and link directly to the evaluation. This convenience resulted in an increase in student response rates."

"Class Climate was designed to save organizations both time and money by streamlining the survey process through automatic matching of surveys to courses, report generation and automated notifications," said Scantron Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product Management Mike Seeman. "We are extremely pleased it has supported the productivity of Dominican University's evaluation and accreditation process."

About Scantron

Scantron Corporation (www.scantron.com) helps education, commercial and government organizations worldwide measure and improve effectiveness with assessment and survey solutions. Scantron provides tools for the rapid, accurate and reliable capture of data with innovative software and survey solutions that leverage the company's expertise in software, world-class forms printing, scanner manufacturing, and customer service.  Scantron is a subsidiary of Harland Clarke Holdings Corp., which also owns Harland Clarke and Harland Financial Solutions.