Using Starfish to Help your Students Succeed

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL

Starfish is one of Valpo’s primary retention tools. Used properly, it lets both students and advisors know early on when a student is struggling in your class. Yet many faculty don’t use Starfish at all or don’t take full advantage of its features. In this article, student advisors Laura Sanders and Janneal Gifford talk about how to make the best use of Starfish to help students succeed in your class.

Academic advisor Laura Sanders emphasizes how important it is for you to “raise a flag” in Starfish right away when a student is missing class, not handing in assignments, or failing exams. When she gets these notices in real time, she can immediately intervene with your student and help them address these issues before they fail your class.

Both Laura and academic advisor Janneal Gifford agree that more is better when it comes to raising flags. Go ahead and raise as many flags as apply. If your student misses a class one week, then fails to turn in two assignments the next, go ahead and raise two separate flags. When more than two flags are raised, your student’s advisor automatically gets a “multiple flag alert.” These alerts often prompt good conversations between students and advisors about resources they can draw on for support.

Many advisors will respond directly to you about the status of the flags you raise. They will let you know whether and when they have met with a student or referred them to help services. If you yourself are an academic advisor, when you connect with an advisee about a flag raised by another faculty member, it’s helpful to close the loop by letting the faculty member who raised the flag know that your connection with the student occurred.

Starfish is designed to be a communication hub among students, their professors, their advisors, and various help centers on campus. Unfortunately, very few faculty use all its features. A few are listed below:

MAKE REFERRALS: You can–and should–use Starfish to refer your students to help services. Just click on the individual student to get to their profile page. Use the referral button at the top to refer a student with writing issues to the Writing Center, or one who needs tutoring to either the Academic Success Center or Hesse Learning Resource Center. Your referral then immediately triggers, for example, Laura from the Hesse Center to set up a meeting with your student.

OFFICE HOURS: Input your office hours in Starfish so students can make appointments. Why? Because then their advisor can see if they have met with you to help resolve the issue. Both you and your student can note what the meeting is for and also add notes later about what was actually discussed. There is a “speed notes” option, so you can click a box if, for example, your student does not show up for the appointment. The student should then get a notice letting them know they missed the meeting.

CLOSING THE LOOP BY RESOLVING FLAGS: In a perfect world this is how the system should work. You raise a flag about a student not attending class. The advisor responds and adds a comment or note to both you and your student. Your student then responds with what they plan to do to resolve the issue. Finally, once your student begins to come to class again regularly, you should mark the flag as “resolved” and thus close the loop.

USE KUDOS TOO: Be sure to use the “kudos” feature to send an encouraging message to those who are doing well. Kudos help boost students’ confidence, which has been shown to further increase their academic success. Plus, isn’t it nice to celebrate a student rather than always reporting negative things? Finally, kudos help students and advisors see where to concentrate their efforts if they are struggling in some classes but not in others.

GRADES: Starfish pulls your students’ current grade from your Blackboard Grade Center. By default, the Total Column is set as your External Grade in Blackboard. If you want Starfish to display instead your calculated grade column (e.g. weighted grades), there is an easy way to do that outlined in this article on the VU website: “Setting External Grade in Blackboard.”

MIDTERMS/EXAMS: If a student fails an important exam or a midterm, you should raise a flag. You might think that, since you posted the grades, the student already knows that they have a problem. But by raising a flag in Starfish, you are also alerting their advisor.

ENCOURAGE YOUR STUDENTS TO USE IT TOO: Try to get your students to use Starfish directly. For example, when you raise a flag and an advisor responds to it, an email comes to the student. Your student should not just respond to the email, but rather go in and look at the original flag that was raised and then respond in Starfish. That way, they see the bigger picture.

Overall, Starfish is an important part of our student support network. When used to the fullest extent, it gives a holistic view of what is happening to a student during the semester. So please consider using Starfish more often to help your students know how they are doing.