MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

2. Northeast monitors attendance, cutouts, instructor concerns, financial concerns, and advisor concerns. Dropguard allows automated e-mail

notifications to be sent to each department to process and for record-keeping purposes. Dropguard also will send automated e-mails to students. Dropguard will allow you to customize what “at risk” means by looking at GPAs, number of cutouts, and other data that is pulled from the SIS. a. Northeast’s IT team has to send daily files to DropGuard for SIS (Banner) information such as GPA, financial aid information, etc. 3. Dropguard also has an automated calling system. Dropguard is working on an Instructor Report Card, which would look at instructor logins, etc. 4. Kim Harris logged in to Dropguard through a Canvas course and demonstrated from an admin prospective (a hired person to monitor at-risk students – this person stays on top of the ‘red bar’ areas in Dropguard). Notes from instructors are made within the Dropguard system and the Admin can see the instructor notes. Students can easily be searched by student ID number. 5. Kim Harris logged into Dropguard through a Canvas course and demonstrated from an instructor view . Instructors are to mark attendance and other notifications through a dropdown box to select “Absent, Contact Note, Instructor Concern, Cutout, etc.” Instructors are to make notes about students in the system. 6. Kim stated that retention has improved each semester at Northeast since implementing Dropguard. 7. All college offices must contribute to the retention and implementation of DropGuard – IT, Counseling Center, Financial Aid/Business Office, instructors, and other offices on campus must be involved. DropGuard has a money-back guarantee if the retention is not improved. DropGuard is very dependent on instructor’s and other offices putting in information – attendance, audit, notes, etc. ii. Jenny Jones presented an overview of AspireEDU. 1. Holmes is currently piloting the AspireEDU retention software. Holmes only wanted to pilot online courses and was able to filter based on terms or subaccounts set up in Canvas. 2. Jenny Jones began her presentation by stating that she believed that Dropguard and AspireEDU are two different tools that do two different things. A PowerPoint presentation was printed for more information on the presentation. As a summary: 3. AspireEDU is measuring a ‘risk index’, which is the students’ last login to Canvas, submissions, missing assignments, and grades. Plus, is looking at contact information and communication between teacher and student. AspireEDU does not share the algorithm, but instructors MUST enter 0’s in the gradebook and due dates for AspireEDU to work properly. The index risk factor will not be correct if instructors aren’t entering data into Canvas. Because of this, AspireEDU helps show course issues and instructor pitfalls. 4. There is nothing in Canvas to measure attendance, so AspireEDU does not look at attendance. It only looks at due dates for assignments and grades entered. The only information that instructors or counselors have to add directly into AspireEDU are call notes. Everything displays in a very user-friendly, visual dashboard.

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