Help Students Stay On Their Path
- Systems for students to easily track their progress
PRACTITIONER, PRESIDENT, AND PARTNER PERSPECTIVES
Dale Hayes, Director of Advising Services, Indian River State College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
We have our president to thank for this. He had a question a few years ago about, “How do students visualize where they are in terms of progress toward their program?” He said, “You know, if they had a pie chart or a graph or something that they could see.” Our enterprise systems folks developed a pie chart, and if a student logs into their My IRSC account, they have it right there. It shows the percentage of, that’s been accomplished up to that point for their degree or certificate program and the percentage they still need to complete. We did kind of laugh at first like, “Are students really gonna use this?” You would be amazed because students do come to us and say, “I just finished a course, and the percentage on my pie chart hasn’t changed. How long is that gonna take?” The students are really looking at that and monitoring and coming in to their advisors and even bragging, “Look, it’s all blue now. I’m almost done.” It actually is a very useful tool, and it’s very simple to read.
As far as keeping students on their plan, students can register in our system, in the student registration system, directly from their pathway. They can import their pathway, the courses that are there for a semester, and search for open classes directly from the pathway and then click on the ones they want to register for. If a student goes off plan and takes something that’s not part of the guided pathway, the advisors have a report that’s updated every morning. It’s updated every night, but they can access it every morning to identify any students who registered the previous day for something that isn’t part of that student’s guided pathway. The advisor can immediately go look and see, “Is this something that is totally not required for this degree? Let me reach out to the student and find out what they’re doing” cuz sometimes there are legitimate reasons. They might be taking a welding class to enhance job skills, but they’re still working on an AA in business. If there’s a legitimate reason, we can accommodate that, but if they’re taking welding because now they want to pursue welding, but they haven’t spoken with an advisor about modifying the pathway to reflect that, that’s the point where we do that.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress
Jeff Rafn, President, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
If you’re going to start to put students on a pathway, part of the reason you do that is, are they staying on the pathway? When I get off the pathway, how do you get back on the pathway? If they have to leave for a semester, where were they, and where do they need to go now? If they are going to change their degree, you know, what’s their new pathway? All of that really needs to be tracked and kept track of so that that student understands the impact and frankly the college understands that impact. I think one of the positive things that’s going to come out of this is that eventually we’re going to have these sets of academic plans that are going to be laid out for, you know, two or three years for that student. Well, that’s going to give us an ability to forecast enrollment in that second and third year to a much greater extent than we can do it right now.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress
Tina Hart, Vice President of Enrollment and Student Services, Indian River State College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
Another visual that’s been very powerful for our students is on their dashboard they can see their progress and in terms of completion of their program. So as they complete their courses that pie starts filling up, and the color starts getting darker, so that ultimately the whole pie will be one color. And the students, if they have completed a class and it hasn’t adjusted quick enough, we get phone calls from students saying, “I passed that class and, you know, that was last week. We finished last week, why isn’t my pie, you know, why doesn’t it reflect that?” But it takes a little while for grades to be processed and all of that. But that tells us that they are watching that and that that’s a big motivator to help them get to the finish line. So visuals are very important.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress
Beth Hale, Student Success Navigator, Jackson College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
The computer program that we utilize to track a student’s progress is the exact same platform that a student can log into themselves to view their own progress. They can see a “timeline view,” is what we call it. Semester by semester, based on discussions with my navigator, based on my pathway, these are the specific courses that I’ll be taking every semester. Of course, it is adjustable. If a student prefers to be a part-time student, prefers to isolate a course one by one or prefers to take more than what a pathway may recommend, it’s just specific to the student. The student is also able to alter that plan, so that we may then approve their adjustments. Or they’re able to communicate with us as navigators through that platform, but they’re able to track their own progress in more of a degree audit type of way, as well as that’s the area where they are comfortable registering through as well. They’re very familiar with the JetStream computer program, through a variety of different models.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress
STUDENT VOICES
(posted 10/1/2018)
We’re able to stay on track because we have, whenever you log in to the school website, you sign on as a student, and there’s actually a little pie chart in there. It literally shows your progress, what you have left, and then there’s also a degree audit you can get where it shows basically your whole transcript. And all the areas you have satisfied have a little green checkbox, and the things you still have to complete have a little red “X,” so it pops. Really easily, you can see exactly what you have left, what area needs to be satisfied, like humanities, math, science, whatever, and it makes it really visually appealing.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress
(posted 10/1/2018)
Staying on track for me is pretty easy with the website and the pie graph. I like the visual, that every time you log in to check your email or whatever, it’s there, and it shows you how far you’ve gotten, and then, also, just showing up for school and trying to get it done. I’m not here to take school to just hang out. I’m here to get my degree and move on, so for me, it’s pretty easy.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress
(posted 10/1/2018)
The guided pathway is huge in giving that precise calculation of where you’re going to graduate. It helps you keep focus on how many courses you’re taking so you don’t — you can either take as much as you can handle, or you can slow the pace and take — spread it out through different semesters and things like that. I’ll be able to graduate this fall with my AS, and I’m really excited cuz I want to go into my bachelor’s. Now that I have a feel of how it works with my guided pathway and scheduling classes, I’m probably gonna finish my BS in a lot sooner than I thought I would, so I’m really excited.
It’s the guided pathway. When I had to withdraw from my one class, I just went back the next semester during the summer and finished it, and I was still on track. When you see that pie chart and you’re like, yay, I’m still on track, it’s pretty cool.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress
(posted 10/1/2018)
They really go above and beyond to make sure that you can complete your goals. You’ve got the academic support center. You’ve got all the professors being involved in your life. You’ve got the clear pathways and making sure that you know where you are online. Just all of that compounded so you know where you are, you know where you’re going, and you know you’re gonna get there.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress
(posted 10/1/2018)
The way I track my progress is on the website that they have. You can go to your classes, my academics. You can see all your classes that you’ve gone through. You can get unofficial transcripts. You can see your grades from previous semesters. And the classes that you are taking, you can see where their progress is, and it gives you an idea what you gotta go to. Plus then you can see the path you gotta continue on to finish.
That we use something called Blackboard. That has pretty much everything. It has our old classes and our grades we got in ’em. It has our current classes. What’s due tomorrow. What did the teacher wanna talk about. What are big announcements the teacher has. You can email your professor straight from on there, or teacher, I should say. So I mean, it’s all centralized, one on one, fairly convenient, easy to use website.
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Systems for students to easily track their progress