Starfish EARLY ALERT™

Students in college face many stresses. Course work is more demanding than it was in high school, social pressures make it hard to focus, and more and more students are working to pay for college on their own. Those who interact with students on a daily basis see these woes and could help if they could alert the right person to the student’s problem.

Starfish EARLY ALERT™ makes it possible for instructors, advisors and campus staff to help students at risk before they resort to withdrawing from the institution.  This web-based software integrates with your central IT services, such as course management and student information systems, and with other Starfish solutions.  It helps the campus do three things:

1. Raise a flag when a student is in trouble
2. Connect students to the people and services that might help them
3. Figure out what services are helping on your campus so you can do more of them.

Raise a Flag

• Starfish EARLY ALERT automatically raises flags, but allows educators and staff to manually do the same with the click of a button.  The sources of flags include:

  • Customizable and institution-defined flags that can be raised by a student’s human network, to identify academic or social distress
  • Course management system data mining - logins, grades, and activity
  • Student Information System (SIS) data mining – which recognizes student attributes that identify a student to be at-risk, customized per institution
  • Web-based tool for instructors to record attendance and feed flag raising

  It is just as important for the flags, once raised, to get to the right people. Starfish EARLY ALERT supports this through:

  • Role-based access control for flag raising and receipt allows the institution to comply with FERPA and customize the system to institutional policies
  • Customizable email alerts to students of automatically detected concerns
  • Email notifications to instructors, advisors, and student life staff about new students at-risk
  • Parental communication when authorized by the student
  • Future use of text message, instant message, and VOIP is planned

Plug Students Into the Network

Starfish EARLY ALERT will help your institution connect each student with what they need to succeed.   Features to support students in need include:

• A searchable online catalog for students and staff of your success services, from tutoring to mental health services.
• Easy referrals from the catalog that are then tracked in a database for later assessment.
• Online scheduling immediately through Starfish OFFICE HOURS or relevant contact information provided for “offline” referrals.
• Reminders through email and other means for students of scheduled appointments, and tracking if the student shows up

The Power of Analytics

How do you know if you have the right services to assist the diverse landscape of students enrolled in your institution? The best administrative decisions are made when your institution can analyze relevant information.  Starfish EARLY ALERT helps colleges through the following:

• Reporting and dashboards
• Tracking of:

• Students participating in offered services, by race, gender, GPA, and course grades
• Trends about whom is identified at-risk
• What kinds of referrals are made – and for which students
• Whether services are being used, and which student groups are not taking advantage of the services offered

• Assessment of the impact of services on grades immediately and over time, time-to-graduate, and graduation rate.
• Specialized support for athletes and coaches

Through Starfish EARLY ALERT, institutions can place the right information into the hands of people who can directly and effectively help the student.