The Future of Education

Higher education seeks to serve students with diverse backgrounds, level of preparation, and goals.  Students within the United States are increasingly focused on obtaining high paying jobs but have no understanding of pathways to graduation and obtaining skills and knowledge necessary for employment.  Institutions of higher education are faced with the need to provide personalize learning for each student in order to promote student success through retention and graduation.

Personalized learning requires a team approach with focus on meeting the individual needs of each student.  Recruitment by interest, flexibility in path to degree, broad academic and student support, individualized advising, and a culture of customer service are elements that facilitate goal attainment. However, cross division teaming is needed to coordinate the development of a successful and personalized pathway for each student and create a safety net to catch students in distress.  Key to this teaming is a technology platform that records student progress, engagements, and interventions and allows communication across education providers, usually faculty, and service providers. This makes possible holistic views of each student and an understanding of their needs.  In addition, academic and support personal experience a virtual team meeting each time they access the platform in order to work with an individual student.

The goal of this project was to improve student success as measured by first to second year retention and graduation rates.  Teaming with Starfish, a proprietary technology provider, to customize the technology platform on which virtual team meetings occur, we have focused on an “intrusive” advising model used by staff and faculty. Initial results have been promising and the implementation of the “team advising” approach has yielded better communication and consistency in advising as well as increased first to second year retention rates

This presentation will discuss the planning model used to implement change in advising from a courses-to-be-taken model to an expanded model which includes pathway to graduation and career. The technology used to implement this model will be described, student success data will be shared, and plans for future expansion will be outlined.