Engaging Faculty in Student Success and Retention

Andrina Musser, MSSW Academic Technologies Specialist and Online Adjunct Faculty

Ultimate Medical Academy

Why Are We Here?

• Increased faculty interaction with students is directly associated with

increases in student satisfaction with their institution

• Blended learning and online learning needs the structure of an online

system and best practices to provide optimal communication between

faculty and students

Engagement Interaction Academic

Performance Retention & Graduation

What to Expect to LEARN from this Session

• Identify challenges for building interventions and personalization

in the online learning environment

• Provide examples for best practices for faculty engagement with

students at risk for dismissal due to academic progress at the institution

and share specific ways to leverage the Starfish tools to

expand faculty engagement with students

• Provide techniques for increasing the adoption of Starfish

functionality among students, staff, and faculty

• Blended Classrooms

• Flipped Classrooms

• Fully Online

• Limited face to face interaction

• Break down barriers to student

support structures and

communication with other

departments

• Prioritization of student risk to help

staff provide “Just In Time”

intervention to students who need it

most

• Furthering faculty and staff adoption

for using technology tools

• Provide insight to adjunct/remote

faculty to encourage Holistic

Advising with information from the

SIS

Challenges to Meaningful Interactions Online

• Holistic Advising and

implications for Faculty

• Modern Learners who are

they and what do they want

• Computer Mediated

Communication what is it

and how can I leverage it with

modern learners

A Few Higher Education Buzzwords

A fully-online and LMS-centric

institution

With centralized course

development processes

With robust data/reporting

processes supporting both

regulatory and compliance

requirements

5- and 7-week and overlapping

course schedule tracks

A rapidly-changing and highly-

integrated environment

Allied Health School providing

associate degrees and

diplomas

Accreditation through

Commission for

Independent Education

(CIE) and Accrediting

Bureau of Health

Education Schools

(ABHES)

10, 000 students

300 Faculty & 250 Staff

High-level Enterprise Systems at UMA

Key Players for Student Support in the Starfish System

Education Leadership Team

Academic Coaches

Faculty

Student Affairs

Disability Services

Online Librarian

Advisors

Classroom Support

Mock Interview Team

Compliance Team

• 100% adoption

• 100% adoption

• >95% adoption

Information Sharing and Maintaining Student Privacy

• Starfish manages relationships so that only staff/faculty who should have

access to student information is able to view the information

• Previous to SIS implementation of the Starfish system, UMA faculty did not

have insight into our SIS and did not know what other departments working

with the student were doing

• With Starfish all staff with relationships to the student can speak with “One

Voice”

Information Sharing and Maintaining Student Privacy

• Two way integration from our SIS to Starfish and from

Starfish back to our SIS

• Empowers all users to know relevant information in the

student’s life

Information Sharing and Computer Mediated Communication

• Add Note vs. Send Message

• Read-receipts on the Notes tab on the student folder

let faculty know if students received their messages

Student Network

o Awareness of student relationships

o Eased navigation for connecting with other staff supporting the student

o See who has raised a flag on the student

AD Risk Flags and Cohort Builder

Definition: Academic Dismissal Risk

Plan of Action: Student messaging

and layered outreach approach to

student support

Path to Automated Flagging for AD

Risk

1. Manual Flags

2. Development of “AD Risk Attributes”

3. Cohort Builder

4. AD Risk Automation with

Experimental flags

5. Use of the Starfish Exporter to

leverage reporting

AD Risk Flags and Cohort Builder

Process Workflow: 1. Send the student a “Welcome” email, which has been pre-configured as

note.

2. During the 5 week course, use Starfish note, “AD Risk Checkpoint” to

document outreach and planning with the student.

Student Created Academic Success Plan

Institution Need: provide a

solution to share a student

created document to assist with

Holistic Advising across the

student life cycle

• Benefits for the solution

• Challenges to the

solution

• Why Starfish is the

answer to sharing the

document with key staff

Academic Improvement Plans for students on Academic Appeals

• Identified opportunities with the

previous process for supporting

students on Academic Appeals

• Pilot created to support appeal

students 04/06/15 through

09/01/2015 to evaluate a case

management approach to

supporting students

Key Players

Faculty

Academic Coaches (tutors)

Advisors

Office of Institutional

Effectiveness

Academic Improvement Plans for students on Academic Appeals

Plan Views for Academic Improvement Plan

Assisting Learning Outcomes – Actionable Flags

Pareto Principle (80/20)

• Academic Coaching flags

• Advisor Requests

• Faculty Requests

• Missed Work To-Do’s

• General To-Do from Faculty member

TIP: Having the support of the program leadership

ensures that faculty are addressing the Starfish flags

between 48-72 hrs.

TIP: In building out flags, we consider, “do we have the

reporting to manage this and make sure the issue is

being addressed?”

Assisting Learning Outcomes – Actionable Flags

• Using Starfish, we were able to define a

process for requesting students to receive help

for Academic Coaching

• Through data analysis of student success in

retaken courses, we learned that students who

attend coaching for previously failed courses

are statistically significantly more likely to

pass the retake course

Student Engagement in the System

• Modern Learners: learning on-demand and ability to request help

on-demand; access to his or her educational path, mobile

interaction with Learning systems

• View “One on One” relationships and contact information with UMA faculty and

staff

• Schedule appointments with faculty through advertised Office Hours

• Push notifications to mobile devices (email) for student facing tracking items,

appointments, and messages sent out of the system as an email

• View plans created for the student in Starfish

• View key departmental contact information

• Request Help via self-flagging

• COMING SOON: Historical course and final grades

Student Engagement in the System

• “No portal, no problem…”

• Access to view grades earned in final week of class after access

to the grade book has ended

Student Engagement in the System

TIPS for developing student

facing flags:

• Keep the language simple

• Appeal to the student’s need

and not the department or user

managing the flag

Ways to Increase Adoption – Release Planning

• “It’s starts at day 1,” have an implementation plan that brings all

the players to the table

• Institutionally define Student Success

• Institutionally define the best departments or teams to

manage specific student support problems

• AGILE approach to deployment of functionality

• Faculty Roundtables (Stakeholder in product decisions)

• Don’t turn everything on at once

• Pilots for functionality and survey groups on perceived

success or improvement on workflows

Ways to Increase Adoption – training & support

Faculty Specific

• Faculty Onboarding and Continuing

training for functionality

• EDU101 and Starfish Onboarding

for new faculty members

Student Specific

• Advisor and Classroom support

training on all student releases

• Email Campaigns

• Video training for students

• Social Media campaign

• Links to support documents within

LMS classrooms

Ways to Increase Adoption – training & support

Summary of Session

• Challenges of

implementing student

success tools and

engaging faculty

• Starfish product aligns to

supporting the modern

learners and empowering

institutions to develop

workflows for student

success

Institutional Examples of Starfish Implementations

designed to engage students

and faculty

Lessons Learned and

tips for Adoption &

Training • Implementation Planning

• Best Practices for helping

users feel comfortable using

the system

Questions?