The first priority of Kent State University’s strategic roadmap is to ensure that students have the education, experiences and support they need to graduate and to live successful, satisfying lives in their work and in their commitment to become engaged citizens. The university’s Academic Success Center team is making that priority its priority with the creation of the Academic Success Plan (ASP), a new application that gives students easier and quicker access to resources that will help them succeed in class.
“The Academic Success Plan was developed to make sure students can efficiently and effectively find out what support is offered for each of their courses,” said Amanda Shah, interim director of the Academic Success Center. “We wanted it to be very personalized, and also to not require students to click in and out of many pages.”
The Academic Success Center provides so many resources that it was an almost overwhelming process for students to find and understand which services were available for them at any given time, Shah said. The center offers drop-in and scheduled tutoring, supplemental instruction and learning skills workshops to assist students with their classes. Too many choices was hindering the students’ ability to find what they needed, when they needed it. That’s why the ASP was created. And that clarity provided by this new application has helped more than students.
“We were seeing that students need this information and hearing from advisors – even advisors who are familiar with us – that they were confused about what was available and where the information was,” Shah said. “So in an effort to think about how we are personalizing service to students, this was one of the ideas that popped up and University College tech department really then took the reins in designing and building the ASP.”
Students can access the ASP on the homepage of the Academic Success Center’s website. It is a main navigation tool that takes students to a page where they enter their FlashLine credentials. Once logged in, the ASP provides students with a customized list of classes they are currently enrolled in and tells them which services support it.
The Writing Commons is a service that is not a part of the Academic Success Center but is working with the center on the application to better reach students and provide them with all possible resources to succeed in class. It brings all the information into one place.
“Math doesn’t click very well with me, so any help that was offered, I knew I needed to take it,” said Spencer McCrea, senior communication studies major. “And fortunately with the plan, it has made the process of getting help easier.”
The Academic Success Center hopes to roll out an ASP 2.0 where faculty and advisors can see which services are available for their students and help better serve their needs, Shah said.
The application is not the only new project in the works for the Academic Success Center. It changed its marketing strategy to be more relatable to students with the use of memes and has implemented informational pop-up stations throughout campus to go where the students are.
For more information about the Academic Success Center and the ASP, visit www.kent.edu/asc.