Aviso

The official blog for Aviso, the social advising platform.

[avisoapp-blog]

Upgrading your advising system?  Looking for a way to make student planning easy, efficient and effective?  Wondering what all the buzz is about?  Join us for a preview of Aviso, a comprehensive social advising and student success program, and learn more about how Aviso can help your institution meet its mission of student success. The preview will provide an overview of the software's metrics around student success, notification system (off plan alerts, GPA alerts, non-payment alerts, etc.), as well as an embedded advising notes features.

[avisoapp-blog]

We belive in core values ... how we think Aviso links to NACADA's

The 2011 NACADA Conference is just a few days away.  Thousands of advising professions will converge upon Denver and spend the week sharing, learning and thinking about academic advising and best practices. (Sadly, I won't be there this year - it's one of my favorite fall activities... but this fall I have something more exciting going on.  I became a mom to son, Ernie Alexander, on September 21, 2011 so I think NACADA will take the back burner.  I will be at Region V in Akron in April though, so look for me!)

We spend a lot of our time in Aviso team meetings on thinking about how we can better communicate with advisors, and recently our conversation took us to NACADA's core values.  We incorporate these values into our work as well and wanted to share how we make the link...

http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/clearinghouse/advisingissues/Core-Values-Exposition.htm

Core Value 1:

Advisors are responsible to the individuals they serve.

We believe that academic advisors are dedicated to a holistic approach to serving students.  This includes being engaged and listening to their goals and beliefs while helping the student to be successful.  In doing so, advisors are responsible for assisting students create a plan for to achieve those goals, which is also aligned with the university mission and goals (graduation, etc.). 

  Aviso provides a platform for capturing and assessing this responsibility. 

With large caseloads and students who are neither required to nor opting to meet with advisors on a regular basis, communication can become an obstacle in and of itself.   The system allows students and advisors to work together (face-to-face or virtually) to plan and evaluate the student’s progress, while its reporting and notifications let advisors quickly identify barriers to that progress.  The reporting mechanism is focused on efficient use of advisor’s time, such that it allows advisors to prioritize outreach and interaction with students who have the most critical needs. 

Core Value 2:

Advisors are responsible for involving others, when appropriate, in the advising process.

Each advisor sees his/her own advising caseload, while having access (on a need-to-know basis) to all students in the system.   Similarly, student success staff, administrators, etc. can access student records, which include the plan, transcript and advising notes, allowing them to have the most complete picture of the student’s situation when assisting in the advising process.

  Aviso allows the institution to decide who has access to the system.

Core Value 3:

Advisors are responsible to their institutions.

Advisors have many responsibilities beyond the actual advising – administrative reporting, teaching, supporting the institutional mission, etc.  That said, one of the greatest challenges facing advisors is a large caseload - the recommended caseload is 300:1 with an "ideal" population - at medium and large institutions caseloads are often upwards of 500 students are common.  Aviso makes a caseload much more manageable as it quickly identifies students facing challenges/experiencing success, presents all student information in one convenient location and has superior reporting capabilities, creating efficiency and maximizing administrative productivity for the advisor.

  Furthermore, there are times when faculty members are serving as advisors, in addition to managing their teaching load. (Many times, especially at large institutions, students will have a professional advisor and also a faculty advisor.)  For these faculty members the time saving/efficiency aspect of Aviso is critical.

Core Value 4:

Advisors are responsible to higher education in general.

  The beauty of pursuing a higher education is that it is not compulsory.  Students are exploring their interests and setting their own goals.  Advisors get to share in this experience by way of educating students about academic programs, assisting in goal setting and monitoring the student’s plan for success.  Aviso makes supporting students’ goals easy because the system captures the student’s intent and alerts the advisor and student when the plan is off track.

Core Value 5:

Advisors are responsible to their educational community

Education is the first component of good academic advising.  Often times advisors are educating students not only about academic programs and curriculum, but about campus services, programming and extracurricular activities.  Aviso’s messaging feature presents the perfect mechanism for engaging students in conversations regarding these “other” educational opportunities.  And, that the conversation is captured in a threaded discussion between advisor and student makes following up with the student a breeze!  Likewise, the advising notes feature allows advisors to share this additional information with other advisors/student success professionals who might also be assisting the student.

  Core Value 6:

Advisors are responsible for their professional practices and for themselves personally

While not a component of the Aviso software, the Aviso team is dedicated to promoting professional development opportunities available to the advising community.  Our quarterly newsletter highlights upcoming state, regional and national conferences as well as webinars and online learning opportunities.  We believe professional development helps us to stay “fresh and energized” about our professional pursuits, which ultimately benefits the students we serve and our institution.

----------------------

Kristin is an implementation consultant at Infinum Education, LLC and a higher education professional with 8 years experience in advising and student success.

[avisoapp-blog]

[avisoapp-blog]

Is there an echo in here? Inspired by Charlie Nutt (and all of the advisors) at OHAAA.

One message you will continuously hear from our team is that we truly care about student success and how institutions measure it. When we introduce the Aviso software, sure we talk about what it can do, but more so we discuss the ways it can best support you and your student population.  What good is a product, specifically in academic advising, if it doesn't assist in your mission of connecting with and engaging students?  Simply put Aviso was designed to help you and students plan, collaborate and succeed.

On June 17, 2011 two of our team members, Alex and myself, Kristin, attended the Ohio Academic Advising Association (OHAAA) conference in Columbus to share Aviso with the advising community in attendance.  We met many wonderful people and were excited to get to showcase Aviso, however, the most exciting part of our day (in my opinion, that is) was getting to hear the Executive Director of NACADA, Charlie Nutt's keynote address.

As I mentioned earlier, student success and engagement is what drives us - it's our mission.  So you can imagine how excited Alex and I were when Charlie Nutt, just minutes into his address began talking about engagement and success and technology as the cornerstones to advising today!  His address (see it here) went on to talk about connecting to our students, knowing them, reaching out to them, helping them to plan.  I've said this before, and I'll say it again, as an advisor I've always known we were doing things right with Aviso because we were doing them for the right reasons... hearing Charlie reinforce our efforts, albeit without knowing so, made me beam with pride.  We strive to make sure that the institutions we work with know that Aviso is meant to be a tool to improve and enhance their current advising practices.  It creates and provides a space to advise virtually while linking students back to the face-to-face, in-your-office advising that is so important.  The interactivity of the planning allows advisors to see our students' intent... even when they don't want to tell us or, more likely, aren't sure how to articulate it.  And these approaches were all advocated by Charlie, using whatever methods and employing whatever technology you have.  Needless to say, we left the keynote feeling inspired.

We had a wonderful day sharing Aviso with all the great folks who stopped by our table.  And,one of our client/customers Marion Technical College also presented at the conference - Social Advising: A planning system to improve student success.  The room was packed with individuals interested in learning how to integrate all of social tools our students are so accustomed to using into their advising practices.  Marion Technical College presented their problem - not being able to reach students and/or keep track of plans effectively and efficiently - and offered their solution - Aviso.  As we've posted before Aviso provides a space that is familiar so students already using social media (and even students and advisors who don't) can use it with ease.  See MTC's presentation.

One of the best moments of the day came after MTC's presentation when realized just how real the parallels were we'd drawn earlier.  Check out these two slides side by side - the first is from Charlie's presentation; the second from MTC's.

And we think that sums it up... students just want to feel like someone's looking out for them; advisors do just that (and so much more!).

We look forward to future conferences where we can meet advisors and advising administrators to hear your feedback and provide you a demonstration of Aviso.  Please feel free to contact us if you would like to learn more today!

-------------------------------------------------

Kristin is an implementation consultant at Infinum Education, LLC and a higher education professional with 8 years experience in advising and student success.

[avisoapp-blog]

Integrating Aviso into Your Best Practices

As an advisor when I'm looking for best practices or ways to benchmark mine or my office's approach/outcomes, I look to NACADA.  The website and clearinghouse provide a wealth of information as do the regional and national conferences.  Early in my career my focus was on retention, so I spent a lot of time researching the topic and communicating with peers and colleagues about best practices in retention.  Others in my office were focused on graduation planning and success rates.  Still others were working on projects around early warning and alert systems.  All of this, of course, strategically aligned with state measures of student success.  Despite the alignment, there was still a disconnect.  We were all working on our individual projects, coming together to share best practices; even working to redesign and implement them in ways conducive to our institution, I still found myself wishing for a solution that could combine all of these approaches into one.

This want grew even greater when we began "homegrowing" solutions for alerts, advising notes, etc. and began using social media to outreach to students.  Now using social media and social platforms to advise students is not terribly new in the advising world, in fact, we are social by definition.  We have been using electronic vehicles and systems to advise for years.  Still I was thrilled to see my peers and colleagues in NACADA highlighting new best practices this year at the NACADA Technology Seminars.  However, without a comprehensive system, I still didn't see a solution that "did it all", so to speak.

I found that solution when I joined the Aviso team, and have since been spreading the word to institutions in my state, and across the nation.  Our social advising platform provides the "space" for advising, degree planning, goal setting, alerts/notifications and student/advisor collaborations -- in one place.  My prior experiences found me going to one system to gather retention data, another to report graduation/degree completion and yet another for early alerts.  Aviso displays not only the student's intent (a critical measure in our opinion), but also details about degree progress, the student's academic plan, notifications and alerts for advisors and students, all within a system that has attributes familiar to today's tech savvy students and advisors.  And, for me, the best feature is that no matter what best practice you've adopted, Aviso works with it because our design and implementation team work with you to ensure that the system matches your needs, rather than being forced to work within a system.

Best practices, driven by research and data collection are what we use to drive our design, but what do we use to pull it all together?

Perhaps Aviso is right for you?

Marion Technical College will present on its use and success with the MyPlan system, powered by Aviso, at this month's Ohio Academic Advising Association Conference - if you're in Ohio, we hope you'll stop by and check out the presentation.

---------------------------

Kristin is an implementation consultant at Infinum Education, LLC and a higher education professional with 8 years experience in advising and student success.

[avisoapp-blog]

Changes Will Happen. Can Your Plans Keep Up?

According to the College Board, many college students change their major at least once, if not several times, before graduation.  And why shouldn't they?  With so many choices and options it is important for a student to discover his or her interests and career preferences over time.  Too, we know that there are as many reasons why a student comes to college in the first place as there are students!  And those reasons may change of evolve over time.

Why is planning so important anyway?  As advising professionals, however, we are well aware of the importance of planning and tracking to keep up with our measures of retention, persistence and graduation rates.  More than that, however, planning is about helping a student achieve his or goals within a reasonable time frame.  When plans change, advisors are often responsible for reporting on the reasons for those changes in order to make sure the aforementioned measures are not negatively impacted, and if they are, we usually need to provide detail as to why.  As mentioned in a previous post it can be cumbersome difficult quite a task, with current planning methods, to update all of the interested parties, in a timely manner, when a student’s plan changes.  But it doesn’t have to be.

Aviso’s real-time degree audit feature allows students to see the impact of their academic change immediately.  The system calculates and recalculates remaining requirements as the user adds/drops coursework to their semester plan.  This allows for independent and autonomous exploration and discovery of degree options within the confines of an advising platform.  That means that, for an advisor, any changes made are submitted and highlighted for ease of viewing prior to approval.  As advising is an interactive and social process, changes can flow in either direction; not just student to advisor as mentioned here.

Reporting on these changes is as easy as reviewing the degree audits or checking the dashboard to see who, in your advising caseload, is on plan.  A quick check of the dashboard will highlight any students who have outstanding plans, notifications or other needs that require immediate attention, allowing you to quickly and efficiently report on the status of your caseload.

Kristin is an implementation consultant at Infinum Education, LLC and a higher education professional with 8 years experience in advising and student success.

[avisoapp-blog]

The User Experience... It's Something Familiar

When the software developers at Infinum Education began working on Aviso they made certain to keep the user experience at the forefront of their design.  They knew that Aviso could not just be a “pretty and shiny” new product, but rather that this leader in Social Advising software must have a design which complemented its function.  Of course our web/graphic designer Francisco Inchauste wouldn’t let us forget this goal, and reminded our developers– via his own blog – that design and function must be harmonious in order to ensure a great user experience.

The function of Aviso is such that it allows a workspace for students and faculty and/or professional advisors to interact and create academic plans that align with a student's goals and intent.  It provides a vehicle for student services, financial aid and bursar's staff to alert students and advisors about looming deadlines -registration, scholarships/grants, payments, etc.  Faculty can alert or warn students and advisors about class absences, poor grades, or grade point average.  All of these pieces work in tandem to form the backbone of Aviso's core - Plan, Collaborate, Succeed.

While, sure, other systems could (and can) accomplish these goals, we are confident that none can do it in a manner that promotes student-advisor interaction.  Aviso is designed functionally to allow these interactions to occur in either the face-to-face or virtual setting without disrupting the integrity of the advising relationship.

The design elements of Aviso is where Francisco comes back into the picture.  As I mentioned, our developers knew they wanted to focus on the user experience and felt like they had created the foundation for a great one in the application/product itself, but they needed to ensure that it had the proper environment in which to be showcased.  Fully aware of the multi-generational users, the team set out to create a design that was unique, yet familiar.  Francisco reminded us that the user experience has a lot do with desirability, so the team took care to create a well designed application that would also be desired.  How?  Familiarity.

Aviso takes many of its design cues from today's most widely known (and presumably most popular) social applications/technologies.  For example, the advisor caseload, which appears after loggin in, displays with images of advisees and a summary of updates/alerts (read: status updates) about each.  Messages between students and advisors are captured in threaded discussions similar to a smartphone text conversation.  Students and advisors collaborate to create advising plans using a drag and drop system like those used in favorite "apps". 

But this state of familiarity does not exist alone; it complements the function.  Aviso doesn't just look different, it is different.  And, it provides a different kind of advising experience whereby students and advisors collaborate and plan for measurable student success in and environment where design and function are harmonious.

Kristin is an implementation consultant at Infinum Education, LLC and a higher education professional with 8 years experience in advising and student success.

[avisoapp-blog]

How to plan to capture intent to measure success

At Infinum we are driven by our vision to see Aviso help institutions align with their missions around student success.  We believe that student success is a measure best captured by assessing a student's goals and intent.  The challenge lies somewhere between the institutional measurement of incoming/returning students (FTEs) and graduation rates.  Both very reliable measures, in and of themselves, but these measures miss part of the picture -- the student's intent.

As an academic advisor for many years, I have seen and advised many students "stopping in" for various reasons -- pursuing a certificate program, taking continuing education courses required for promotion, completing an unfinished minor... and the list goes on.  Similarly, I have seen plenty of students "stop out" for sundry reasons as well -- financial, to care for child/parent, college not a good fit at this time, etc.  In either case these students' goals, or reasons for making/adapting their plans, are not reflected in the aforementioned institutional measures.  In fact, some might say they hurt the data, as the graduation rate can be negatively impacted by students who stop in or out without completing a degree program in six years.

Well, what if you could use a planning system, connected to curricula, certificates or other self-created plans, to track student success in a way that accurately reflected the students' goals and intention?  And, what if this data was measurable?  Believe me, I was a skeptic when I first heard of such a notion.  I mean, sure when I was advising we used degree planning software, online notes systems and other technologies to assist in our advising practices.  However these systems did not always capture those students who didn't fit into a degree granting program.  So... those students were/are all lumped together into that "other" category, marginalized in the data; often reported with some sort of negative mark around measures of completion and success.  It didn't seem to matter if I knew the whole story or was well aware that "Johnny" only ever planned to take the courses required for that one certificate program, or that "Sally", a full-time mom with a full-time job, needed to take two years off, but planned to finish her psychology program in 2014.  And, in my experience, if anyone did want to know about these anomalies it was up to advisors to dig for this information and record it, manually, for some review committee.  Not a bad practice, but not the most efficient either.

Aviso changed the way I think about these students from a reporting standpoint.  When creating the academic plan, a student's intent is captured.  Degree seeking, non-degree program, certificate, etc.  And then, the measurement, the "on track" calculation, if you will, is set against that intent.  It's dynamic, of course; it can change and be changed.  But what is so useful and valuable is that it truly reflects student success.  It becomes a measure of goal attainment rather than an arbitrary indicator of enrollment or completion - which, I'll admit, both do have their place as well.

This measurement of success (and knowing where, in their progress/process those who aren't "on plan" are), which can be easily accessed via a dashboard is hugely helpful to advisors, advising administrators, student success leaders and top-level institutional leaders all the same.  For it is our students we serve.  And to tell their story accurately, we have to track their progress in alignment with it.

What do you think?

Kristin is an implementation consultant at Infinum Education, LLC and a higher education professional with 8 years experience in advising and student success.

[avisoapp-blog]

What is social advising?

Well, let’s start with the social part -- social media, web2.0, text message, twitter, facebook, iPad, YouTube.  You’ve no doubt heard the lingo, and maybe even use one or two

of these applications or gadgets in your everyday life.  Students, like the ones we’re advising, are absorbed in this technology – in fact, it’s not really even “technology” to them, as this generation has grown up with it.

And now the advising part – although sometimes misunderstood by those outside of higher education, as we all know academic advising is much more than helping students registered for classes.  Academic advising is a process of teaching and learning, engaging students and helping them to think about their intentions and goals as related to their curriculum choices.  Advisors facilitate these processes through conversations, dynamic partnerships, goal setting sessions and planning.

Pairing the technology in a way that enhances our face-to-face interactions is what really defines Social Advising.  We used to think of advising as something that happened in the advisor’s office, from 8:00 a.m.– 5:00 p.m., usually one-on-one; sometimes in a small/large group.  Students often arrived in various states of preparation – some had their transcript or degree requirements printed, others just wanted the answer to the proverbial question, “what classes should I take?”, while still others made appointments only when things had gone awry and they were off track and potentially in a state of peril.  Reaching one’s entire advising caseload became an increasing challenge – time constraints coupled with the need to focus on the “at-risk” populations almost always meant leaving some group(s) of students to vie for what few open appointments might exist in an advisor’s schedule.

But today’s students are multifaceted when it comes to communication. They have entire networks of acquaintances with whom they interact in virtual spaces, catalogs of music and literature which they organize on mobile devices and countless conversations which take place in threaded text message discussions.  Their worlds are built around social technologies, and to be effective in connecting with them we need to interface (and exist) in that arena.

The more we can incorporate a social element into our work, the better we can engage and get to know our students.  Instead of using hodgepodge of social platforms to connect, however, why not use a metrics-driven social advising platform built with all the features familiar to students in their favorite social spaces.

Aviso is a platform that allows the advisor and student to collaborate in a virtual, yet social space to create degree plans, send messages and discuss student goals.  Further, the system tracks students’ progress and sends warnings or alerts when a student is off track, missing payments or has excessive absences.  To an advisor receiving this information in a convenient daily summary is critical to serving ever growing advising caseloads.  For the advisor-student relationship, that these interactions can begin in one place and continue in another (the office or online) is invaluable.