Navigate Update
On May 12th, 2020, about 40 members of the UMaine community participated in a virtual “onsite” with EAB, discussing outcomes from the first year of Navigate implementation, as well as plans to use the platform more strategically moving forward. One of those sessions, Running Strategic Campaigns on Navigate, has been uploaded to our Navigate training videos.
Over the summer, we will focus on four main projects in Navigate: Re-enrollment of current students, engagement with incoming students, development of training materials and policies for Progress Reports and Early Alerts, and inclusion of additional units in the Staff platform.
In late April and early May, each college sent campaigns through Navigate to students who were eligible to enroll in fall 2020 courses, but had not yet registered. As of May 18th, we had already seen an increase in enrollment, shown in the chart below. Over the summer, the Navigate Specialists from each college will develop a strategy to continue to communicate with those students still not registered.
Another current focus is promoting the Navigate app to incoming first-year and transfer students. We will engage students during their virtual orientation experience and follow up with targeted email campaigns to both students and families. The purpose of these communications will be to promote the value of the app and encourage downloads to achieve a goal of at least 80% adoption by incoming students (through either the app or the desktop platform). We will then continue to push important information to students in the app throughout the summer to keep them engaged leading up to the fall semester.
In addition to these two very important summer projects, we are also working on two projects for the fall semester. After two successful pilots of the Progress Report feature, we are now ready to expand our use of Progress Reports and introduce the utilization of ad-hoc alerts. Ad-hoc alerts are submitted on individual students of concern. Additional materials on this topic will be coming throughout the summer, and there will be workshop opportunities in late August and September.
The final major project moving into fall is bringing additional units into the Navigate Staff platform. Over the summer, we will work with Student Life, Tutor Programs, and the Career Center to build their units in the Staff platform and train new users. This will help improve communication between key stakeholders working on student success, as well as provide opportunities for more holistic advising.