Academic Advising Incorporated with Technology While Facing an Unpredictable Future

There is no denying that academic advising is an omnipresent function in the landscape of higher education. It is the backbone behind the success of students at any academic institution. Before the emergency and unexpected transition to online learning due to the Coronavirus crisis, more and more student life administration had integrated with modern technology. That entails advising technology systems that are lately becoming both more sophisticated and prevalent.

From predictive analytics engines to audit systems of foundational degrees, the available technologies to support academic advising have flourished considerably. Most of these technologies have shown great promise to help academic institutions support their underserved students in a better manner. Plus, technology is facilitating a large part of the student experience.

As we face an unpredictable future led by the COVID pandemic, incorporating technology with academic advising at academic institutions has become even more important. Making use of data is a great way in which you can utilize technology to enhance academic advising.

Accessing student data has been quite a problem for higher education personnel and academic advisors for several years now. By figuring out a secure and safe way to access student data in real-time, these academic advisors can pinpoint potential concerns. Plus, they can get in touch with the student for support before it gets very late!

Now, the question arises about what kind of signs to seek in this student data. The ideal strategy is to study your previous historical data and try to identify trends and patterns among students who dropped out of school or fell behind their peers (postponed graduation).

Suppose your academic institution currently does not have the ability to gain access to the data. In that case, what you can do is use the best practices and research from other academic establishments that have leveraged their previous data to establish trends like:

Once management has established these trends, academic advisors can get in touch, whether it is for an online video chat or an in person meeting. What is important to know is that using technology with this part of academic advising makes it considerably easy to track a bigger number of students and ensure initiation of outreach campaigns.

You can also create automatic campaigns as part of your effort to infuse technology with academic advising to get in touch with students. For instance, if you have managed to identify a certain batch of students who have not yet registered and signed up for the next term, you can create an automatic email campaign via marketing automation tools. You can use logic and reason such as “send again if not opened” to make sure the crucial information comes in front of the student, and he or she reads it.

Apart from email, you can also use texting campaigns (which has become quite popular lately!) to contact students. By making use of communication technology software, academic advisors can strengthen their messaging tactics and get in touch to set up meetings (one on one), if required.

There are opportunities galore for academic advisors to include components of Artificial Intelligence into their practice. This enables them to free up their precious time to build personal and close relationships with their students. As a case to point, artificial intelligence can pinpoint various opportunities for academic advisors to establish personal links with a number of students. For instance, they can observe behaviors that can point towards attrition of students, such as frequently occurring lower grades or missing assignments.

In addition, artificial intelligence might also assist academic advisors in creating student personas, including risk factors (potential). It will enable them to work in a proactive manner with students before the scenario becomes undefeatable!

What’s more? You can also incorporate Artificial Intelligence into scheduling systems and program tracking providing students the chance to self-serve themselves, if suitable.

Our Prepler platform is the quintessential example of incorporating AI and technology with academic advising to drive the success of students in the current COVID 19 times.

Our Artificial Intelligence-based online guidance platform, Prepler, provides college students all around the world automated tools and recommendations (step-by-step) to assist them in graduating more conveniently.

We provide the clarity to comprehend course sequencing and degree requirements. This helps students in avoiding redundant classes and keep them 100 percent committed to their academic objectives. Prepler is proud to be a completely automated course mapping and degree planning academic advising platform, powered by Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Hence, students can rest assured that our innovative and unique will help them in graduating on-time (if not more quickly!).

With Prepler, academic advisors can utilize their time in a better manner, and students can build an intentional graduation path. Plus, university leaders can arrive at tactical decisions that drive student success during COVID 19 and beyond!

However, it is important to keep in mind that our Prepler team does not include any mentors. It is basically a tool for students and their academic advisors at the college.

Be sure to check out our official site if you would like to learn more about our platform and what it offers in terms of academic advising for students and academic advisors.