Northgate Online University · 31,200 students
Scaled to 26 start dates a year without a registration freeze
Continuous enrollment, non-standard-term aid and ten-day engagement alerts replaced a batch-oriented legacy SIS that failed under rolling starts.
Results
Measured outcomes
- start dates supported per year
- 26
- uptime through peak registration
- 99.98%
- year-over-year attrition
- −15%
- ad hoc data requests to IT
- −85%
Challenge
Where they started
- Rolling seven-week terms meant every week was add/drop week, and the legacy system required a nightly batch window it no longer had.
- Title IV payment periods had to be calculated manually for non-standard terms, producing recurring reporting errors.
- Students disengaged within two weeks, long before any midterm grade could flag them.
- Institutional research was a ticket queue, and deans waited three weeks for cohort data.
Approach
What they did
- 01
Mapped every term pattern
Seven-week, rolling and competency-based structures were configured up front as first-class calendars.
- 02
Load-tested peak registration
The sandbox tenant was rehearsed at 2.1× the highest historical concurrent registration volume.
- 03
Launched the student portal first
Self-service adoption cut the call volume that had previously masked go-live issues.
- 04
Turned on ten-day engagement alerts
LMS activity and first-assignment signals now trigger outreach inside the first two weeks.