Our Student Experience area focuses on student support and engagement from pre-admission to graduation. In order to create an exceptional online student experience, our services need to be tailored to fit and support the fully online student.
As we look to the future, we want to utilize standards-based integrated platforms for a consistent student experience, leverage technology and AI-enabled processes to identify at-risk students, and provide support throughout the entire student lifecycle to promote and ensure success.
So, how are we going to do this?
We’ve begun the launch of Student Success Hub, a tool in Salesforce that allows advisors to understand student behaviors, their progress, and potentials for stop outs or other risk factors. And for students it is a one stop mobile-friendly shop for all of their success needs.
The technology and integrations will allow us to quickly identify and proactively address student needs that we recognize or that their behavior predicts they will need. This includes early alerts, success scoring, ability to prioritize at-risk students as well as engage and encourage high achievers.
This is important. Often, we focus all of our attention on at-risk students and neglect those who are performing well. What if we can learn that a student can graduate earlier than expected with slight adjustments to their schedule? Recognizing these indicators and our ability to communicate with these students will continue to elevate the support that ODUGlobal provides.
Any other big news?
Yes! We’ve been working with our counterparts in SEES to take over the admissions process for the online student population. We have updated the application to more clearly delineate between face-to-face and fully online students, and, as we review standards of operations, we have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to look at pre-assessments to better understand the readiness of our applicants, as not all students are able to be successful in this space.
This will also allow us to rethink how we approach denials. Instead of just a “no, you won’t be successful” or “you don’t have what is needed to be admitted,” we want to reframe it as a "not yet."
We can use pre-assessment information to connect denied applicants with our enrollment coordinators who will then help those applicants develop a pathway to admission in the future. We will, of course, uphold the standards of admission, but also look for opportunities to streamline processes to ensure we stay competitive in the ever-growing online environment.
Anything else?
Yes! We have created a new unit within Student Experience to focus specifically on student retention and special populations in need of extra or unique support, such as non-degree seeking students, campus changers, and active-duty military students. Support initiatives will include academic continuance with early alerts and identification of stop outs for proactive engagement and support, as well as online student recognition activities such as a dean’s list.
We are also creating tailored orientations and onboarding processes for various special populations. These will ensure that the right information gets to the right student at the right time. For example, we can help our non-degree students see how their piecemeal courses can apply to a degree track, and help our military students effectively use their tuition assistance or transition to utilize their G.I. Bill benefits.