EAB offers a success management program for four-year institutions comprised of the components pictured above. The relationship between each of the three elements allows for early alerts and effective communication (Courtesy of EAB NAVIGATE).
The office of academic planning and advising is piloting an early alert system called Navigate. This initiative is one mentioned in the Geneseo 2021 Strategic Plan, which outlines a specific focus to implement an early warning system to track student progress throughout the semester to broadly “pursue innovative and proactive retention and student success strategies.”
The program is designed to help students identify problems that they may be having academically or non-academically that may be preventing them from succeeding in their classes. According to the EAB website, Navigate is a student success collaborative program for four-year institutions, partnered with more than 550 colleges and universities. Their model aims to address intelligence via administrators, strategic care via faculty and staff and smart guidance via students.
Celia Easton, dean of academic planning and advising and professor of English, said that the program will be “softly rolled out” because it is expansive. Currently, the program is being tested using a group of about 300 students and their corresponding professors and advisors. Navigate is planned to be partially implemented in the fall of 2020 with some features to come later.
“We chose Navigate because of the data analytics that they have to offer,” Easton said. “It is all about connecting students to resources.”
According to the Geneseo 2021 Strategic Plan, the Navigate system has been purchased through the SUNY Investment and Performance Fund and assumes a four-year timeline. The SUNY Investment and Performance Fund was developed to help SUNY schools expand about 40,000 credentials to reach a goal of 150,000 by 2020, according to an article published by The Lamron in Jan. 2016.
“What an alert system enables us to do is keep track of students who may be slipping a bit,” Easton said. “Currently, our only indication of how a student is doing are their grades. With an early alternative system, we can track a student’s progress by allowing faculty and staff who work closely with them to communicate formally.”
According to Easton, Navigate will promote communication efficiency between students and their professors and advisors. The system will also allow for students to schedule appointments with their advisors and other campus resources such as the writing learning center.
“I do not think that it would necessarily hurt to have faster communication channels between students and faculty,” psychology major senior Emma Pipolo said. “Quite honestly, I have met with my advisor only a few times and do not know how seriously advisors would take the system. Most people I know do not use their advisors as a strong resource.”
Easton said that, for example, in an instance where a professor has concerns about a student’s attendance, they could communicate this through Navigate and prompt outreach from the student’s advisor. Similarly, if a professor believes that a student should schedule an appointment with the WLC, they can send a message through Navigate with a link allowing the student to create an appointment.
“We wanted a system that was going to have data analytics capabilities. Another example is that if you were a junior in an academic program that is 40 credit hours, and by your junior year you had only completed 13 of those hours, we would want to address
formally and communicatively the source of this,” Easton said.
Easton went on to explain that while there may be a number of valid reasons in which a student may be behind on their major credits in accordance to their standing, a program with data analytics capabilities like Navigate fosters communication between faculty and students who may not be “meeting the kind of targets” they should.
“Right now, there is nothing that searches for the students … as long as they are kind of keeping their head just above water, which is a 2.0—or minimum competency—nobody is paying attention. Nobody is going to initiate a conversation,” Easton said.
Easton said that a more efficient, formal communication channel between students and faculty will also be enhanced by Navigate’s progress report feature. The system allows an email link to be sent to each professor of a student and it takes only moments to fill out.
The progress report prompts the professor to name any outstanding concerns they may have about the student’s performance from a list of generalized comments. Another feature of the progress reports will ask professors to assign a letter-grade value for the student’s performance at any given point in the semester.
“If I log into the system, there is a list of students who require extra attention,” associate professor of communication Atsushi Tajima said. “I am not sure what this criteria is based on, but I know that I filed information for each student based on their participation and, mainly, attendance. At this point, I am not positive how or when the system communicates to students since we are in this pilot period.”
According to Easton, one of the system’s flaws is that she is hearing from faculty regarding the progress report function. Professors have raised concerns about the effectiveness of the options available to judge how a student is performing. Easton said that the feedback is being accounted for, and further student feedback will be assessed at the end of the semester.
“At the end of the semester, we will be able to do an assessment and assess follow up from both faculty, staff and students. On the one hand when you talk about an early alert system, it seems kind of impersonal because its software centered and connected. But it is a worthless system if we can’t make connections between human beings and students in that way.”
Two aspects that Easton mentioned will come to Navigate in the coming semesters involve emergency alerts and student involvement notes. Another aspect of Navigate that Easton mentioned is the availability of faculty and staff to issue an “AtHoc” alert.
“Say a student met with a WLC employee and expressed that a certain class was making them anxious. With that information, the employee can issue an alert to be addressed by perhaps the Dean of Students or a residence hall director…whoever is deemed appropriate. This part of the system is still being built out,” Easton said.
The student involvement notes aspect of Navigate provides a centralized place for advisors to aid students in keeping track of their interests, such as study abroad or different clubs and organizations. Along with this concept, a “to-do list” will be created based on an intake survey that first-year students will engage with at orientation.
“Just starting at Geneseo, first-year students may be interested in studying abroad or certain clubs and organizations that align with their interests or scholarship information. The student would then get a reminder, ‘hey there’s a student organization fair coming up’ as a box on their to-do list,” Easton explained.
Easton mentioned other possibilities centered around Navigate include a Navigate Student app and a text messaging system.
“We have a responsibility to ensure that our students are receiving our communication efforts,” Easton said.