Today's Messages

Following the launch of the Early Alert Campaign, we’ve received feedback from faculty, who have expressed concerns that the existing process was bulky and confusing, and professional advisors, who ended up resolving a high volume of repetitive cases with the current method. To address these issues and to streamline this useful tool, in consultation with Academic Leadership and the Navigate Champions Committee, we’d like to propose adjustments to which alerts generate cases.

1. Convert certain case-generating alerts to standard alerts
The alerts of “3+ Attendance Absences”, “Attendance – Never Attended Class”, “Class Engagement Concern”, “In Danger of Failing”, will be modified so they no longer open cases. Instead, these will function as standard alerts where:

• The faculty member documents their concern, and
• The student receives an email notification that a concern has been raised.

Rationale:
a. This encourages the student to communicate directly with their faculty member who is best positioned to discuss course-specific issues.  Should this interaction occur, there is no case for the faculty member to close.
b. It will reduce the number of cases advisors need to close. Advisors can still review these alerts during student meetings and address them in a more holistic context.

2. “Referral: Tutoring Services” case alert converted to a standard alert

Each time a student visits the Tutoring Center a summary report is generated for them, which faculty can access through the “History” tab on that student’s Navigate profile.  The alert will encourage the student to seek academic assistance but will streamline the way the Director of Academic Service can acknowledge that the student receives help, whether once or multiple times.  This approach will significantly reduce workload and improve our ability to analyze the impact of these interventions. 

3. No change – “Missing/Late 2+ Assignments”
This alert already functions similarly to the other alerts above and will be used in a similar fashion. 

4. No change – “Kudos: Great Effort/Showing Improvement”

This positive feedback message will continue to go directly to the student, with no follow-up required.

5. No change – “Recommend Pass/Fail or Withdrawal”
Because this alert signals a potential academic impact, it will continue to create a case. An advisor (faculty or professional) must meet with the student to discuss academic and financial implications and will close the case following the meeting in Navigate

6. New Case Alert – “Meet with Your Academic Advisor”
To maintain opportunities for proactive outreach, we will introduce a new alert type that encourages students to connect with their advisor. For example, this case alert might be initiated if a staff member has general concerns, worries that they can't specifically identify (intuition) or that they feel they might not have the experience or resources to provide the kind of assistance the student might need.

• Staff submitting this alert are encouraged to include specific context in the Comments field to guide the advisor’s conversation. Students will see these comments as well.
• The academic advisor will be responsible for closing this case.

A chart that provides additional information about these processes, including these changes, can be found here on the 5th page of the “Alerts and Case Management Workflow” training guide.