We're pleased to announce Populi's new Advising features. They include a new report, new advising workflows, and an academic warning system. Let's have a look...

Academic flags

The new academic warning system lets you set up thresholds for red, yellow, and green flags based on course attendance and grades. For example, if a student has three or more consecutive absences, he'll get a red flag. If his average assignment score from the past 30 days is in the mid-70's, he'll get a yellow flag. If in the next 30 days he pulls that average up to 90%, the yellow flag will flip to green. Advisors can ask Populi to send an email when one of their students gets a red or yellow flag.

The new Advising tab

Advisor activity, which used to be focused on the Profile > Advisor tab, now starts in the new Advising tab. Advising includes the Advised Students report and Settings, where you can set up the new academic warning system. Academic Admins, Registrars, and Advisors can all access the Advising tab. The Advised Students report gathers relevant academic information about your students:

• If the student has any academic flags, you'll see the most serious one next to his name.
• 30 day assignment grades lets you see at a glance how the student is faring on assignments graded in the past month.
• Last Attendance shows you the last time the student was present for a class meeting time.
• If the student is under academic discipline or has a registration lock, you'll see that here, too.
• The Actions menu lets you add/remove Advisors, apply/remove registration locks, and email or export the students shown on the report.
• Click the student's name to see the new student advising view.

Student advising view

The student advising view includes an enhanced transcript tool and a summary of the student's academic flags.

• In the transcript, you can click the attendance percentage or the grade to see a detailed graph of the student's class attendance and assignment grades.
• You can also click the course name to see the new Student Course Summary page.
• Review and resolve academic flags.
• The Actions menu lets you manage registration locks and export detailed attendance stats for the student.

Student course summary

The student course summary is accessed through the course roster. It lets faculty, advisors, and registrars drill down into the student's grades and attendance and manage the student's flags for that course.

• The Assignments tab graphs the student's assignment grades and compares them with the standard deviation derived from all of the course's students.
• The Attendance tab, likewise, graphs the student's attendance stats and lets you compare them with the rest of the class.
• You can take a closer look at any assignment or meeting time and change the grades or attendance status.
• The flagging tool lets you manually-add warning flags to the student, assign them to the advisor, and resolve them once the trouble has been sorted out.

Little changes

Together with the big-picture features, you'll notice a few more options for adding registration locks, adding and removing Advisors, and contacting students. We think these new tools will really help your Advisors guide your students through their time at your school, and we're happy to get them out to you. Learn more about the ins-and-outs of the new stuff in the Knowledge Base.