Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

The annual Ellucian Impact Award recognizes higher education institutions that use technology to solve challenges, operate more efficiently, and create better student experiences. At Mexico's Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, or simply Tec de Monterrey for short, tech staff used Ellucian Banner to minimize implementation times, reduce external platforms and improve usability.

The Challenge: Supporting a Unique Education Model

In 2013, Tec de Monterrey president Salvador Alva appointed David Garza as Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education and told him to spend six months learning from other postsecondary institutions how to educate university leaders for the future. The following year, Garza returned with a treasure trove of research and a dream, and the school's modernization journey began.

Five years later, that dream would manifest itself as Tec21, Tec de Monterrey's overhauled, modernized educational model.

"Tec21 is revolutionary in the sense that we have included in our curricula a level of flexibility that has never been seen before," said Carles Abarca, Vice President of Digital Transformation at Tec de Monterrey. "A student who joins our institution can change their career path in the second semester or third semester. In order to do that, you need technology to handle all this complexity."

The four pillars of Tec21 are challenge-based learning, flexibility, providing a memorable university experience to students, and inspiring professors. Challenge-based learning includes collaboration among multiple professors and training partners such as both public and private organizations to provide real-world, competency-based tasks for students to complete, thus building relevant job skills and fostering innovation and change. Partnering with external organizations provides the students with an understanding of their local businesses and helps them build connections to enter the workforce.

Flexibility in the educational model means not only empowering students to strengthen their skills but also shape their educational journey to their own passions and needs. Tec21 offers various course concentrations, placements, and certificates for students to earn. That, coupled with the fact that the learning model offers students a memorable university experience through cultural opportunities, sports events, and workshops resulting in qualifications that will help build their futures.

Ultimately, the key to success for the program was professor buy-in. If it were going to work, it had to work at all 25 campuses—and its educators had to actively engage with one another, building relationships and maintaining frequent contact to bolster student success. Thankfully, Tec de Monterrey is rife with inspiring professors who can guide students on their paths.

Tec21 would impact every facet of the institution, including and especially its technology and student support network. However, in order to realize that dream, Alva and Garza needed a tech platform that could meet all their needs.

Their tech platform needed to facilitate seamless data sharing with pre-existing integrations in order to enable a swift implementation of their registration process. It needed to revolutionize their student management process. Due to Tec21's unique requirements, they needed a solution that could be tailored to support and monitor those requirements—because at the time, no solution existed that did so.

Above all else, they needed to get this platform implemented and deployed in an incredibly short timeframe.

The Solution: An Integrated, Streamlined Platform

Tec de Monterrey chose Ellucian Banner 9 as their software platform. The school said it made its decision based on Banner's capabilities and functionalities, which allowed them to tailor it to seamlessly interact with the Tec21 environment. Tec de Monterrey had used previous iterations of Banner on campus for several years, but Banner 9 was a boon for the school in preparing its new education model. Banner offers modularity, which is crucial for future-proofing an institution and keeping up with other evolving software with which it interacts.

Tec de Monterrey received help from Ellucian Professional Services in order to implement and deploy Banner 9 with Tec21.

With the model prepared, and the tech in place, all that remained was the educators' buy-in. Of course, with such a revolutionary educational model, Tec de Monterrey wasn't surprised that some of its professors were cautious. To waylay these concerns before fully deploying Tec21, they developed several transition initiatives including a week-long pilot program they called "i Week," with the "i" standing for "innovation." i Week ran 1,600 projects simultaneously, with students picking challenges and undertaking them. Skeptics became cheerleaders and the program was rolled out in full.

In August 2019, Tec de Monterrey implemented Tec21 for their freshman class. Over the next three years, they maintained its practice for that class while introducing it to the incoming freshman class, eventually utilizing Tec21 for the entire student body.

The implementation of Tec21 and Banner took place across 25 campus locations in order to ensure a widespread impact across the institution. This means that 1,300 classrooms were equipped with technology to promote interactive and innovative learning experiences.

The Results: Quantifiable Improvements Across the Board

According to Tec de Monterrey, not only could they optimize their existing automation with Banner 9, but it also allowed them to significantly improve data handling and interactions in their enrollment processes, ultimately boosting their student retention by 2.8%. Meanwhile, implementing various Banner functionalities along with Banner Self-Services and things like student profile reduced implementation times.

Banner 9's seamless integrations, streamlined processes, and personalized functionalities revolutionized Tec de Monterrey's student management processes. For the first semester that Banner and Tec21 were in use, the institution noted an 8% increase in enrollment.

Comparing graduation-on-time rates, there was a remarkable improvement from 29.2% for the previous model to 50.1% for the new model. This means that more students can complete their studies within the expected timeframe.

"I'm so proud of being one of the institutions that was awarded [the Ellucian Impact Award]," Abarca said. "We made a significant effort to adapt our institution to the challenges that our students are facing, and this is basically the main reason why we're here: We're here to help our students to be not only excellent professionals but also excellent human beings."

Over 700 organizations jumped at the chance to partner with Tec de Monterrey for the Tec21 learning model. These included companies, NGOs, research groups, and government organizations providing real-life challenges to educate and inspire students.

By implementing a new learning model, with a bit of help from Ellucian Banner, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey is thriving.

Presently, the solution has been extended to all academic levels (High School, Master's, Continuing Education, Doctorate), all consolidated into a single environment, enabling Tec de Monterrey to provide comprehensive service to over 90,000 students.