by George C. Terry III, Assistant VP of Admissions Operations and Technology, High Point University
As student success and guidance continue to be the one of the most important drivers in positive outcomes across today’s university landscape; the use of technology to provide efficiency and clarity across one’s academic journey is becoming even more critical. The MyPlan@Iowa project is a perfect example of how an institution can collaborate between all levels and departments to achieve this goal. Demonstrating the necessity of top-down have buy-in, the student self-initiated academic planning and advising tool created by the University of Iowa is truly a success of teamwork.
Leveraging the use of their homegrown student information system MAUI/MyUI, the U of I project team was able to create a system that has had a remarkable impact across their student body.
The plan consist of three levels:
Schedule Builder
This online system allows students to add courses to the “cart” either from their own individual academic plan or via search, while allowing the opportunity for students to simultaneously create time filters and course type filters to help guide their schedule development.
The system is able to collect the desired courses combined with the set filters and generate potential conflict free schedules to meet each student’s needs. The system is even capable of suggesting General Education courses that may satisfy degree audit conditions towards a student’s graduation.
Sample Plans
The sample plan system serves as a centralized repository for the recommended course work and sequence required to complete a program of study. The system is configure to provide multiple plans for individual programs of study while allowing for students to achieve co-curricular and other types of academic milestones, such as completing a minor.
Student Academic Plan
Provides students with the opportunity to monitor their own degree audit progress. The plans are customized to the student and take into account prior earned credits or prerequisites. An alert system is also incorporated to inform students when they are off track and allows for planned courses to be incorporated to insure accurate degree progression.
The system’s ability to allow student to create “what-if” scenarios in case they would like to explore or ultimately change majors. Given the likelihood that a student is going change majors multiple times throughout their college career; this feature is particularly beneficial for the student body.
Identifying a need and an opportunity is something we all strive to do across our institutions and the University of Iowa’s MyPlan@Iowa system is a perfect example of achieving that goal. With already over 24,000 students interacting with the software and over 95% of the enrolled students using the system; the potential of increased student satisfaction and positive outcomes is definitely on the rise at U of I.