The Student Government Association met last Wednesday in the St. Andre Multipurpose Room to hear from guest speakers Elena Foster and Brian Smith about the university’s new Navigate 360 platform.
Smith, the vice provost for academic policies and student success, discussed the university’s new customer relationship management system. He described the platform as “designed to help units on campus improve student success in class.”
The platform will be primarily used for scheduling appointments with success coaches. In the past, the university relied on several t platforms including Calendly, TutorTrac and Handshake to manage student scheduling and services.
“It makes it so much easier; you don’t have to go through different platforms,” Smith said.
Smith said low faculty adoption of the previous programs prompted the shift to a system that would help students and faculty communicate in an easier and efficient way. One of the features cited by Smith was how easily accessible Navigate 360 is due to students being able to download an app for it on their devices.
Foster, the business and data analyst for academic support programs, went over one of the new features of Navigate 360 that’ll help students in terms of communicating with their success coach. The hand raise feature allows students to promptly alert their success coach in need of urgent help, a feature that stood out to senator Derik Haynes.
After the presentation, Smith and Foster opened the floor for suggestions and input from the panel. One of the main concerns was if people had any issues with the new program.
SGA president Angelica Scheer described an incident when a faculty member mistakenly submitted a report regarding the professor being concerned about her performance in the class despite her having a good grade, raising a concern about the usage of Navigate 360 alerts.
“We’ve also had some faculty submit alerts for everybody even if they didn’t need them, that may have been the case,” Smith said.
Due to the recent change, students and faculty alike are trying to adjust to the new addition of Navigate 360.
“It is new to everyone; this fall semester is the first time faculty is also using it,” Foster said.
