Overview
Guided Pathways ushered academic advising from transactional support to holistic transformational engagement with students. Throughout that process, ACC instituted several iterations of “case management” that did not demonstrate the expected outcomes. In fall 2022, Student Affairs initiated a new caseload management model that identified specific groups of students who have low persistence and completion rates: first-time-in-college (FTIC); Black and Latino; continuing students with 0.0 – 2.3 GPA; Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) full-time FTIC students; and students who receive an Academic Alert initiated by faculty.
The next step in development was to define caseload management, its intent, and its action. For our purposes, caseload management is defined on the same premise as health care professionals. It is a collaborative process of assessment, planning, facilitation, coordination, evaluation, and advocacy for options and services to meet an individual’s needs through communication, engagement, and collaboration of resources. Academic Guidance Team (AGT) members must be well-equipped to meet students’ needs through specialized knowledge and training, diverse service delivery, multiple outreach methods, and sufficient time allotted for meetings and appointments to provide appropriate guidance and support to students.
The fundamental philosophy for caseload management is that optimal functioning for academic guidance can be achieved efficiently and effectively using a comprehensive delivery of services and functional advising-mediated technology. With these aspects in place, caseload management has enhanced persistence, completion, and transfer.
Accomplishments
100% of AGT members (103) have been trained to perform caseload management. Each has complete knowledge of the caseload management model, advising and coaching techniques, and the use of available technology to monitor student progress: Inspire, Self-Service, Ellucian, and the newly adopted tool DOMO.
DOMO is a low-code data app platform that uses business intelligence to help create reports, dashboards, and other Information. Although this is currently a manual process, DOMO will be capable of directly connecting with data hubs and data warehouses to automatically update dashboards and reports. This will ease the process of establishing the caseload target groups and tracking the performance of students collegewide, down to the individual AGT member level.
Additionally, 95 instructional faculty and staff have undergone academic guidance and technology training. Every ACC student has an assigned academic guidance specialist based on their enrollment status.
- ACC has set a goal to achieve our THECB graduation rate of 25% by 2025; our current graduation rate is at 22%. However, the institution has made significant progress in retaining students, as evidenced by increasing the overall fall-to-spring persistence rate from 70.7% in FY21 to 73.1% in FY22.
- While the persistence rate for Hispanic/Latino students remained relatively stable between FY21 and FY22 at 69.3% and 69.2%, respectively, the institution aims to increase this rate by one percentage point. Similarly, the persistence rate for Black students decreased from 68.7% in FY21 to 65.2% in FY22, but the goal is to increase this rate by one percentage point.
- The fall-to-spring persistence rate for FTIC students increased from 71.6% in FY21 to 74.2% in FY22, and the institution aims to achieve a 54% fall-to-fall persistence rate for this group.
ACC‘s progress in retaining students is an indication of its commitment to ensuring that students have the necessary support to achieve their academic goals. By continuing to prioritize student retention and completion, the institution is working toward meeting the state‘s graduation rate goal while also positively impacting the lives of its students.
Impact
Proactive engagement and customized support strategies implemented by the Academic Guidance and Technology team has proven highly effective in promoting student success and addressing barriers to achievement. The following key achievements highlight the significant impact of our initiatives:
- Deeper student engagement and progress monitoring.
- Through proactive engagement efforts, staff have fostered meaningful connections with students, gaining a comprehensive understanding of their individual needs, aspirations, and challenges.
- Regular progress monitoring allows us to identify potential areas of concern early on and respond promptly, ensuring students receive the necessary support to overcome obstacles.
2. Targeted support for low-performing and slow-persisting students.
- Leveraging advising-mediated technology, staff swiftly identify low-performing, low- and slow-persisting students, enabling us to provide personalized outreach via email, phone, or text.
- The dedicated management of targeted students allows for a significantly lower caseload ratio of 1:125 at the highest level, ensuring focused and individualized attention.
3. Improved persistence and academic planning.
- Early class and registration planning, coupled with a holistic support from various Student Affairs departments, have played a crucial role in enhancing overall persistence rates, particularly among the targeted groups.
- By offering tailored guidance and resources, we empower students to make informed decisions about their academic paths, contributing to increased retention and graduation rates.
4. Mitigation of instances of misadvising.
- Our comprehensive approach to student support has resulted in a reduction of alleged misadvising instances.
- Providing accurate and reliable information through personalized interactions, we foster trust and credibility, minimizing the occurrence of misadvising and ensuring students make informed choices regarding their academic journeys.
The impact of these initiatives is remarkable, as evidenced by the positive outcomes observed in student success metrics. The proactive engagement and customized support provided have been instrumental in driving student persistence, satisfaction, and overall academic achievement.
Next Steps
- With the input and recommendation of the Caseload Management strike team, we will assess and modify the caseload model as necessary.
- Focus on equitable distribution of students to all Area of Study AGT and Success Coaches.
- Continue to reduce the use of multiple technology platforms to support student planning, outreach, and documentation.
- Full implementation of DOMO to all AGT for persistence tracking
- Early intervention and proactive guidance for ASP (warning, probation, suspension) cases
- Discover methods to track stop-outs: transfer, withdrawals, work-related issues, personal situations, etc.
- Develop a comprehensive process with the faculty advising team to transition students with 30+ college-level credit hours to area study instructional departments for assistance
- Continued professional development for advising methods and student success