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Early Warning System Identifies Struggling Students,
Connects to Support Resources ARLINGTON, Va. –
Mar. 16, 2010 – Starfish Retention Solutions, Inc.,
a leading provider of student success systems, announced
today that
Columbus Technical College has deployed Starfish® to
improve the institution’s retention rate by more closely
tracking student performance and providing timely
intervention to at-risk students.
Columbus Technical College is one of 28 institutions
that constitute the
Technical
College System of Georgia. Offering an accessible
higher education option to every citizen of the state of
Georgia, the system supports a broad range of career
opportunities through a variety of certificate, diploma
and associate degree programs as well as continuing
education and economic development programs.
The college serves about 4,000 students quarterly in
Columbus, Georgia, enrolled in business, health
sciences, professional services and technology programs.
The institution provides an avenue for students, whether
coming straight from high school or looking for
retraining later in life, to help themselves through
better career opportunities.
Given its diverse student population, the institution
recognizes that each student requires a unique set of
support services. This recognition is reflected by the
TCSG’s guarantee to students, which offers to retrain at
no instructional cost to the employee or the employer
any graduate found to be deficient in one or more
competencies as defined in the standards.
After initially developing a system internally, Columbus
Technical College collaborated with Starfish to
introduce a comprehensive early alert system that fully
integrates with the other technology systems in place,
including the college’s existing
ANGEL Learning Management System.
“Our recruitment team does a great job attracting
students to Columbus Technical College. Our job is to
keep them here. Unfortunately, for a lot of our
students, all they need to do is stumble once and they
are out the door,” said B.J. Landen, counselor, CARE
Center for Columbus Technical College. “The simplicity
of Starfish makes it easy for our faculty, including a
large percentage of adjunct professors, to communicate a
concern they have for a student. Starfish takes the
legwork out of simply getting a student in for help. In
addition, because our team members receive the pertinent
information about a student from Starfish, they are able
to spend more time helping our students.”
Specifically, Columbus Technical College is using
Starfish to track students taking developmental courses.
For example, any time a student’s course average drops
below 70 percent, Starfish alerts a CARE Center
counselor who reaches out to the student to get them
back on track. The system is also tracking students
based on attendance, classroom behavior, lost employment
and online activity. To date, on average, a counselor
addresses issues raised through Starfish within five
days.
“Within just the first few days of Starfish being in
place, we were already seeing upward of 30 percent of
our instructors using the system to raise flags on
students,” said Ray Mercer, director for virtual
learning for Columbus Technical College. “Starfish makes
it easy for our counselors to ‘close the loop’ with the
instructor who raises the flag. This simple step in the
process encourages instructors to continue to get
involved, because they know their concerns are being
addressed.”
Accessible with a single login to an institution’s
portal system or learning management system (e.g.,
Blackboard, WebCT or ANGEL), Starfish is a collection of
two software systems. Starfish
EARLY ALERT™ is an early warning and
student-tracking system that makes it possible for
instructors, advisors and academic staff to identify
at-risk students in real time.
Starfish CONNECT™, an education support networking
system, helps students access a personalized contact
list of instructors, advisors and counselors who are
dedicated to helping them succeed. Together the systems
generate valuable performance and resource utilization
data for the institution, which helps optimize future
service offerings.
“Starfish Retention Solutions is inspired by the
dedication of Columbus Technical College to support its
students – each and every one – to be their personal
best and reach their goals,” said David Yaskin, CEO and
founder of Starfish Retention Solutions. “Similarly,
Starfish is committed to helping Columbus Technical
College meets its goals of improving student retention,
one student at a time.”
About Starfish Retention Solutions
Starfish Retention Solutions is a leading provider of
student success systems. The company offers a collection
of software solutions that harness the power of the
campus community in order to engage, motivate and
graduate more students – securing valuable tuition
revenue through student retention. Specifically, the
solutions help institutions identify at-risk students in
real time, based on their daily coursework performance,
and then connect them to the resources designed to help
(e.g., advising or tutoring), all while assessing which
services and interventions are working. For more
information, please call 703.260.1186 or visit
www.starfishsolutions.com.
Contact:
John Plunkett
Vice President, Marketing & Operations
703.260.1185
jplunkett@starfishsolutions.com
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