On Sept. 29, The Office of Academic Planning and Advising announced the second phase of their early alert system, Navigate Student, in an email and encouraged the entire student body was encouraged to download the app. The system aims to guide students to succeed in college.
The phone app and website were introduced to first-year students in July during orientation. Navigate Student allows students to view their class schedules, find study buddies, and access school and community resources, according to Celia Easton, dean of Academic Planning and Advising.
“Everybody said study buddies was this great, wonderful feature,” Easton said. “I think that peer to peer studying and accountability in tutoring each other is one of the best ways to study because if you can articulate what you think you understand in the material to someone else, you are learning it better.”
Navigate Student lists many resources for students, such as places to eat, academic support services and career planning. Additionally, the app informs students about holds on their accounts and how to resolve those holds, according to Easton.
The app also provides Geographic Information System mapping, which allows students to view the exact location of buildings on campus.
“The map is useful because if you were a new student and you did not know your way around campus but you knew where your residence hall was, you could go from here to your residence hall or from your residence hall to this building, and you can find things,” Easton said.
Currently, there are 758 people who have downloaded the app, with 61 percecnt who have logged in and 39 percent who have logged in more than once. Easton hopes that over time, two-thirds of the student population will use Navigate Student.
In the spring, Easton hopes to implement appointment making on the app for students to make appointments with professors and advisors during office hours. This update will be a part of the “soft roll-out” of the Navigate system.
“I am hoping that a student who wants to get in touch with a faculty member would find it easier to do on the app in the future, especially if people have appointment availability, or just list open office hours so that you can make appointments,” Easton said. “That is going to be a big breakthrough.”