Academic Alert project update and implementation plan

Academic Alerts, formerly known as mid-term alerts or in-progress notifications, will be changing this fall. In the past, instructors have been notified to submit midterm grades into PeopleSoft to alert advisors if a student is at risk of failing a course. Advisors would receive an alert to follow up with the student to discuss ways they can work through academic challenges.

The current system has a low adoption rate (only 15% of 1000-level rosters were reported at midterm in Spring 2018) despite the fact that it is a requirement per University policy. Additionally, other units have developed their own systems to meet different requirements. This means that instructors may have to use different systems within the same semester. Lastly, in the current system, instructors were unsure when mid-term alerts went out to advisors or when the student had been contacted. This ambiguous time frame caused the alerts to feel less meaningful.

This fall, the following changes will be implemented:

• We will change and standardize the language from “midterm alerts,” “in-progress notifications,” or any other term used to “academic alerts.”
• We will move the process from PeopleSoft to APLUS.
• Instructors will receive a narrow, easy-to-use role in APLUS allowing them to enter academic alert information into APLUS that will automatically trigger alerts sent to both the student and their advisors. We will provide resources to instructors on how to add, modify, and remove alerts.
• Instructors will be asked to enter grades into APLUS.
• Instructors may use the Academic Alert system any time during the semester to notify the academic advisor that a student is struggling, which is not limited to midterm.
• We will reduce the number of overlapping systems. Athletics will still maintain their own system to ensure their eligibility requirements are met. But, we hope to meet system requirements for Athletics in Phase II.

Timeline:

• Usability testing with Usability Services is from August 13 - 14.
• After Usability, we will be working creating resources for faculty.
• We will send out communication and resources after the start of the term (approximately after the second week of the term).
• We will send official reminders to instructors to add grades in APLUS and comments at midterm per usual, but it’s important to note again these can be sent any time during the semester.