APLUS: Leveraging the University of Minnesota

Technology Investments to Improve Student Support

What is User-Centered Design?

• Business-Problem Driven

• User Focused

• Iterative

• Open Ended

What is APLUS?

• A tool created at the U of M• Developed by collegiate programmers with

direct input from academic advisers• To provide timely information to academic

advisers• In support of student success• And advancing our retention and graduation

goals • The data you see in this presentation is not

real student data

APLUS • Supports better advising service for all undergraduate students

• Gives advisers one location to view current, detailed information about a student.

• Enables more timely communication with students, and faster resolution of issues.

• Ensures that pertinent information about a student, including advising notes, follows the student and is available to advisers across the campus.

• Helps advisers focus on students most in need of advising• Supplies information about advisees’ registration activity, mid-term alert

status, GPA, advising appointments, and notes history.• Each morning advisers receive a list of their advisees with new or

outstanding advising alerts or warnings, allowing advisers to prioritize student contacts.

• Identifies students who exhibit specific behaviors that affect retention and graduation (e.g., dropping classes, missing advising appointments).

• Reports can be customized for particular concerns and student groups.

How advisers benefit from APLUS• Reframes the advising process to be intentionally and

appropriately intrusive.• Provides a means to quickly and concisely view a wide range of

advisee information, pre-categorized based on student action (or inaction), aiding in advisee outreach triage

• Helps free up valuable time previously spent manually gathering data from disparate reporting systems to conduct personalized outreach to student with risk indicators

• Can aid in reducing academic issues which have “snowballed” into large problems

• provides a means of tracking student data not captured in PeopleSoft

How students benefit from APLUS

• Makes a large university feel smaller by cultivating a sense that someone knows and cares about their academic progress, even if they haven’t met with their adviser recently

• Early (and more frequent) adviser intervention can assist students in staying on-track and graduating in a timely manner

Key success factors

• End-users (advisers) drove the design• Continuously iterative development process• Roll out to additional colleges in phases and

started with them in “sandbox mode” to determine their adoption requirements

• Adoption requirements in a matrix• Functionality working group

Summary

• Many different ways to identify and work with students at-risk of attrition

• Personal intervention is important• Students appreciate that someone cares and

intervenes quickly• Real-time or near real-time data is essential• We all have a part to play in this process

Questions

Chris Kearns, kearn012@umn.edu

Colin DeLong, delo0041@umn.edu

Tina Falkner, rovic001@umn.edu