May 19, 2013

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The Degree Progress Report

December 13, 2012 by

Degree progress report is a very useful resource for students to view their progress toward degree completion.  Earlier, students had to either  maneuver through the Degree Audit application or  find their transcript,  use the catalog or go online to their school’s webpage and match up requirements for this information.

To access the degree progress report application:

  1. Sign-in to myOleMiss.
  2. Under the Student tab, select the “Degree Progress Report” tab.
  3. Select “Degree Progress Report” from the set of options on the left.

With this application, students are able to easily keep track of where they stand on the path to their chosen degree in three simple steps.  The first thing you can see once in the app is your picture, name, student number, program(s) of study, and any specializations.  Next, you have the option of choosing from 6 different tabs.

Degree Progress Application

Under the “Audit Results” tab is where students will find general education core and general university requirements, major requirements, and any specialization.  The requirements highlighted in green are complete; those that are not highlighted are incomplete.

The “Completed” tab lists all completed requirements whether they be general education requirements, major requirements, or specializations.

Students will find a list of requirements that are still outstanding under the “Remaining” tab, including the general education requirements, major requirements, and any specialization requirements remaining.  If there is a certain number of hours required, it lists the courses and their credits that have already been applied towards the fulfillment of each requirement.

The “Academic Work” tab shows the student’s performance based on overall and resident hours as well as GPA.  Next, it lists every course enrolled or completed along with the year, terms, course name, earned credits, grade, grading scale, and whether or not it was transferred to the University of Mississippi.

Under the “Advisors” tab, students can find a listing of assigned advisors and their contact information.

The last tab is for advisor notes.  Advisors have the option of posting any notes based on discussions with students so that students will have access to them.

Degree Progress is an advising tool to be used along with regular meetings with advisors.  Students can print a hard copy to carry with them to meet with their advisor.  The Degree Progress application will be especially useful during advisor meetings prior to registration.  Instead of spending hours trying to figure out which courses the student should enroll,  students are only seconds away from discovering which courses have yet to be completed once logged in to myOleMiss.  If you believe that your degree progress report is wrong or if you have questions about any of the requirements, then you should contact your advisor.

Filed Under: Advising, Degree Audit, myOleMiss

Assign/Update Graduate Academic Advisor Workflow

November 19, 2012 by

Assign/Update Graduate Academic Advisor workflow  is an online tool that allows the student/faculty/chair/GPC to initiate academic advisor assign/update requests for graduate students. Requests will be automatically processed once approved by chair/GPC and graduate school.You can view the application within myOleMiss by following the steps below:

  • Students: Student tab => My Requests => Graduate Students
  • Chair/GPC/Graduate School: Employee tab => Students => Graduate Program Coordinator Services => Graduate Student Requests

The application provides an interface for students, advisors, chair, GPC and graduate school to view the status of all the requests associated with them.

To initiate a request:

1.  Select the “Initiate a Request” option on the landing page.

Or, select “Pending Requests” from the dropdown option in the student detail section.

2.  The initiator will need to select the department, effective year and term in the request form. A list of current advisors
will be provided. Initiator can choose to:

  • Add a new advisor
  • Replace the existing advisor with a new advisor
  • Delete an existing advisor

The initiated request will be automatically sent to the chair/GPC interface for approval and then to the graduate school for their approval. Once the graduate school approves the request, the change is updated in the SAP system.

The student and the advisor will be notified about the advisor assignment/change automatically by email. The chair/GPC and graduate school will be notified about any pending requests via UM Today.

For questions or assistance, contact the IT Helpdesk at (662) 915-5222 or helpdesk@olemiss.edu.

Filed Under: Advising Tagged With: ,

New myOleMiss Features for Advisors

September 21, 2012 by

Over the past year, it has become clear that employees who supervise certain kinds of student programs need the same kind of access to student data that academic advisors have had for many years. Examples are employees who supervise developmental courses, student athlete advisors, and FASTrack counselors. Moreover, these staff members, as well as academic advisors, need a broad view that gives the full picture of what is going on with a particular student in order to provide the best possible support.

SAP Student Lifecycle Management (SLcM) provides the capability to configure multiple advisor types. Up until this summer, we have used one advisor type only – academic advisor. This summer, we added configuration for new advisor types such as FASTrack, Faculty Mentors, Athletics, Luckyday, and Contractual Re-admit. These new types have their own notes and, where appropriate, their own holds. All advisors can now see all note types from within the “Advising Snapshot.”

With the new advisor types come several changes and new features in the advisor interfaces within myOleMiss. Highlights are as follows:

  1. There is now one consolidated “Advisor Menu.” Note that you can go straight to this launch point by selecting “Advisor Menu” from the Site Index on the left-hand navigation pane within myOleMiss. For faster access, you can add this to Portal Favorites by selecting the paper icon in the upper right. This consolidated menu replaces several options that formerly were listed on the left, e.g., My Advisees.
  2. In the previous version, all advisees were listed in sets of 100 with no opportunity to filter or go straight to a particular student. Now you can select advisees based on several filter options such as classification, academic standing, whether a hold exists, etc. Also, you can go straight to a student using name auto-completion.
  3. One of the filter options allows you to select advisees who are registered for a current term but not for a future term. We hope that this will help advisors and support staff spot students who have not yet registered. Be aware that this data is cached and is accurate as of the previous night.
  4. There is a new option in the drop-down menu called “Blackboard.” This lets advisors see grades that have been posted in Blackboard for current and recently completed courses. It also lets advisors see how a student ranks relative to other students in the class.
  5. Course materials (textbooks) and Favorites have been added to the Schedule listing.
  6. The “Send Immediate” and UM Today interfaces have been adjusted to let you send to advisees by advisor type. Likewise, “Advisee Overview” has been adjusted to filter by advisor type.

Other features that are planned include the ability to upload documents for a given student, a simple degree audit report, and a new “at risk” status. Please send any additional suggestions to it@olemiss.edu.

Filed Under: Advising, myOleMiss Tagged With: ,

Need Input from Advisors

May 18, 2012 by

During the next few weeks, the Office of Information Technology (IT) will be considering requests for new features in the advising interfaces within myOleMiss. We would like to hear ideas from current advisors on how to make the interfaces more useful. The last big round of changes came in Spring 2011, and almost all of the (really great) ideas implemented then came directly from advisors. Please send your suggestions and requests to it@olemiss.edu.

Filed Under: Advising Tagged With: ,

Advisor Tools within myOleMiss

November 1, 2011 by

Several new features have been added to Advisor Tools within myOleMiss over the last six months, which, hopefully, will help make the advising process easier.   This article highlights some of the new features as well as some older ones in a question / answer format.   All of the links discussed here are reachable from Advisor => Main => Advisor Tools within the myOleMiss portal.

1. How can I quickly find out about advisees who come and go, i.e., those who have just been assigned to me or have been re-assigned from me to someone else?

Select Advisee Changes from Detailed Navigation on the left to view any advisee assignments / de-assignments that have taken place within the last 60 days.  This feature was suggested in a January 2010 advising focus group.

2. How can I quickly find out if my advisees have registered for the Spring semester, have holds, etc.?

Advisee Overview gives a spreadsheet-type view of advisee data, including flags for advising and other kinds of holds, flags showing enrollment for the next major (fall or spring) term, semester attempted hours for the next major term, registration window, etc.  To get started, select Retrieve Advisees / Refresh List.

When you select a line, the student’s photo is displayed in the area below the rows along with a link to lift the hold if it exists.   You can click on a column heading to sort by that column.  Also, you can use User Settings to hide or show columns, change the number of rows that are shown, etc.  Scrolling within myOleMiss is possible but may be cumbersome due to the large number of columns.  Depending on the number of advisees you have, you may want to use the export feature to download the data to a spreadsheet such as Excel.

The idea for Advisee Overview was suggested by Dr. John Bruce and others in March 2008.

3.  Can I view photos of all of my advisees like I do with my class rolls? 

Until last spring, Advisee Photo Reports would have been the best way to do this, but now student photos are integrated into the My Advisees display.   Either way should work, but My Advisees is the best option for large numbers of advisees, because here the results are grouped in sets of 100.  The idea for Advisee Photo Reports was suggested by Dr. Charles Eagles several years ago.

4.  How can I tell if my advisee has more than one advisor?  

Select My Advisees from the left-hand navigation panel.  You should see a list of your advisees.   From the drop-down, choose Advising Snapshot.  All advisors will be listed under Advisor(s) along with their contact information. This feature was suggested in a January 2010 advising focus group.

 5.  Do advisors have access to Freshman Attendance Based Initiative (FABI) data?

Yes.  This feature was just added in August 2011.    Select My Advisees from the left-hand navigation panel.  You should see a list of your advisees.   From the drop-down, choose Freshman Attendance Reports.  This will show all FABI data for this student.  Another way to view this data is from Advising Snapshot under In Progress and Future Coursework.

 

6.  Can I send text messages to my advisees?

Yes, if they have opted in to receive non-emergency text messages.  The most straightforward method is as follows:  Choose Send Immediate ~ Advisor from Detailed Navigation on the left.   This will present a screen that lets you choose from several options including My Advisees, provided you are an advisor.

The lower part of the screen includes one box to enter an email message and another to enter a text message.  When you choose Send Message Now, your message will go to all of your advisees via email and those who have opted in to receive non-emergency text messages via a text message.  Be sure to include your name in the content of the message since with text messages, there isn’t a “from address” to identify the sender.  Currently 7442 of 18,097 enrolled students or 41% have opted in to receive non-emergency text messages.

7.  How does a student know when his or her registration window opens? 

Students can view the registration window from within myOleMiss in both the full and mobile versions.  Also, students receive automated notices in UM Today alerting them to the fact that the registration window is about to open or has opened but they have not registered yet.  Students who have opted in to receive non-emergency text messages also receive these notices as text messages.  The idea of registration auto-alerts was suggested by the Retention Task Force.

If you have ideas for new features, please send them to it@olemiss.edu.

Filed Under: Advising