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GuidedPath’s Innovative New Student Categories Take Advising to a New Level of Service

On: Mar 21Author: Cyndy McDonaldCategories: ,

Sound Familiar?

Abby

Meet my student Abby.  Like many high school students, Abby has a lot going on.  She plays 3 sports during the year.  She wants to play soccer in college. She is not sure what she wants to study in college, but she is leaning toward Computer Science or Engineering.  She is ultra-involved in activities at school, with Academic Decatholon, student government and band, to name a few.  She volunteers for a community organization on the weekends, and tries to take an online college counseling class in her downtime.  Abby visits my Woodlake office.  Sound familiar?

Patty

Meet my friend, Patty.  Like many IEC’s, Patty has a lot going on. She works with over 30 students per class. She has a family of her own, with children active in lots of areas.  She is networking in her community, building connections to grow her practice.  She has students from over twenty high schools, and has opened up two offices in neighboring communities. Patty has been a GuidedPath user for many years, and currently is enrolled in a GuidedPath Academy course. We have Patty assigned to students to work on essays. She is always looking for ways to manage information on her students.  Sound familiar?

Joe

Meet my friend, Joe.  As a school-based advisor, Joe has a lot going on.  He has too many students and too little time.  He is responsible for over 100 students, from nine-twelfth grade.  His students and parents expect a lot.  Information nights, college representative visits, and assistance exploring careers, majors and colleges is expected.  Athletic recruitment is big at his school, as are STEM classes and activities. Lawrence loves GuidedPath for its ease of use and ready reports.  Joe is always looking for easier ways to identify the interests of his students.  Sound familiar?

Introducing Student Categories

GuidedPath is introducing an innovative feature-Categories- into its platform.  Student Categories is a new way to organize students, advisors and your organization.  By adding categories to a student’s record, advisors have increased flexibility in viewing, finding and sorting students.  Best of all, there is no limit to the type of categories you can have, or the number of categories you assign to a student profile.
You can apply a “Category” in one of the four ways:
  1.  Student: Create categories using student personal characteristics.  These categories could encompass extra-curricular activities, college interests, majors or career interests, to name a few.
  2.  Advisor: Build categories using advisors, coaches, mentors, tutors and other personnel you want to work with a student as a professional or guide.
  3.  Location: Easily identify students in different schools, offices or locations, and separate out the ones you meet with online only.
  4.  Program: If you have students enrolled in different programs, use categories to easily organize and communicate with students/families.

Student Categories

We could manage Abby ‘s interests and process easily by assigning several categories to her as a student.  This makes it easy for me to create a report, send her an email or call her in to talk about upcoming events.  Abby would be in the following categories:
    • Activity: Student Government
    • Athlete: Soccer
  • Band Nerds
  • Computer Science- BS/BA
  • Computer Science- Engineering
  • Woodlake Office

Advisor Categories

Both Joe and Patty would use categories to manage student information and interests.  Joe can assign tutors, coaches or others to students.  Joe could easily create reports or view how each student is progressing under their assigned advisor or coach.  Joe and Patty can track when a student visits a particular office, or meets with a particular assigned advisor.  Using categories expands what an advisor is able to do.

 

Program Categories

Both advisors and students can have program categories.  This versatility gives you room to grow and expand your program and how it reaches your students.

 

Best Practices

Using categories effectively requires some pre-work.  Make a list of the types of categories you want to create.  Think of ways to organize the categories so they can be expanded easily, and in a consistent way.  For example, you can have a category “Athlete”.  Then add different descriptors for each type of Athlete:

  • Athlete-Football
  • Athlete- Soccer
  • Athlete- Water Polo

If you wanted, you could narrow the categories down even more:
  • Athlete- Soccer- Men
  • Athlete- Soccer- Women
Use categories to organize data on your students or organization.  It is easy and flexible.

 

Learn More

View knowledge base article on
  • Student Categories
  • Working with Student Categories (add, remove and view)
  • Student Categories for Sub Organization
Explore the possibilities!  Take your advising to a new level!
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