DoIT Alerts

Behind every student is an educator wielding technology tools that can help make success happen! The Academic Success Center (ASC) and the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) have collaborated on a comprehensive initiative to streamline academic support services, making it easier for undergraduate students, faculty, and staff to connect, refer, and track student success. This effort, which involves new software integrations and custom-built systems, aims to enhance academic advocacy, academic support appointment scheduling, and early academic alert notifications.

How do we streamline student academic support at UMBC? We listen to the students and understand what they need to thrive in an academic environment like UMBC. From tutoring to tailored advice from a trusted Academic Advocate, the Academic Success Center has become the center of academic support for undergraduate students, staff, and faculty. With the ASC's centralized and highly visible hub on the 1st floor of the AOK Library, students know where to look for support, and staff and faculty staff are easily able to refer a student for assistance. Since its opening in 2019, the Academic Success Center staff and peer educators have played a role in over 16,000 individual students' experiences at UMBC. 

The Division of Information Technology worked with the ASC team behind the scenes to establish three support systems:  

1. TracCloud Integration for Easy Scheduling of Academic Support
2. Early Academic Alerts
3. Custom System Powers Academic Advocacy

1. TracCloud Integration for Easy Scheduling of Academic Support

Together, the ASC and DoIT have integrated an outside vendor's web application, TracCloud, to simplify appointment scheduling for academic support. All of the ASC's academic peer support options are scheduled through TracCloud, including course tutoring, SI PASS, Writing Center, and Academic Skills Meetings. Students can easily search for support and manage their appointments online. 

The new system is integrated directly with the university's PeopleSoft SA (Student Administration), a Student Information System, ensuring that students are easily connected to relevant academic support resources for the specific courses they are currently enrolled in. Furthermore, the use of single sign-on (SSO) through myUMBC provides a convenient and secure user experience. 

2. Early Academic Alerts

Early Academic Alerts are proactive notifications that instructors send directly to students through myUMBC. Academic Alerts are intended as an early intervention to notify students who are at risk of earning a D or F grade in a currently enrolled course, to provide them with the necessary support and resources to succeed.

By alerting students early in the semester, students have the ability to utilize the various supports available, make the necessary changes to improve their grade before the end of the term, and achieve their highest potential.

This alert system is integrated with PeopleSoft SA, the software suite managing student records and course information. This integration provides a platform for instructors to efficiently access class rosters and provide timely notifications to students and their advisors when concerns arise regarding student academic progress. Formerly the First-Year Intervention Program, UMBC rebranded the alerts system in 2020, from focusing solely on students in their first year to include all undergraduate students, with approximately 65% of faculty sections reporting over 4,000 alerts each semester.

3. Custom System Powers Academic Advocacy 

A third key component is the launch of a unique and custom-built system dedicated to Academic Advocacy. This platform provides Academic Advocates with critical information about student success metrics. Academic Advocates are dedicated to serving undergraduate degree-seeking students to assist them in resolving academic and institutional challenges that may adversely affect persistence, progression, and timely completion of degree.

Undergraduate students identified, or those referred, who may be experiencing barriers to graduation will receive direct outreach from an Academic Advocate to address issues in a timely manner. No matter how complex the concerns (i.e., personal, academic, or financial), Academic Advocates will work together with students to review their progress, present options toward graduation, map out a plan for success, and facilitate communication and connections with the appropriate resources.

Crucially, the system allows any member of the campus community—faculty, staff, or students—to easily refer a student to an Academic Advocate. Once a referral is made, the Academic Advocate will connect with the student to provide timely and necessary support, seamlessly coordinating resources across various campus departments to address the student's needs. Students can easily identify who their assigned Academic Advocate is starting on the first day of class, as the information is front and center on each student's myUMBC profile, another DoIT provided platform. 

"By streamlining these three student support systems, students, faculty, and staff can easily access resources. Additionally, UMBC can track and assess the usage and impact of these initiatives, allowing for data-informed decision-making." 
~ Delana Gregg, Assistant Vice Provost, UG Academic Affairs

Successes by the Numbers

In 2024-2025, the ASC recorded significant engagement from students. The total number of visits to the center was 26,303, with 12,002 of those being tutoring visits. There were also 12,441 Supplemental Instruction/Peer-Assisted Study Sessions (SI PASS) visits. In total, the center supported 4,150 individual students. The ASC also noted a positive trend, with 915 more visits to its services in Fall 2024 compared to Fall 2023. The center connected with 1,689 students through Academic Advocates and worked on 872 student petitions.

For more detailed information, please check out the Academic Success Center's Annual Report.

The success of these initiatives is due in part to the collaborations between the Academic Success Center and the Division of Information Technology, but most importantly, the work of these two groups has facilitated all UMBC community members' contributions to student success! The Academic Success Center and DoIT's clear alignment with UMBC's strategic plan and campus collaborations helps each student achieve their academic goals!

Based on a national survey of undergraduates and IT, 18% of UMBC respondents stated a preference for courses that are mostly to fully online (compared to 33% nationally). That preference for online learning is up from approximately 6% pre-pandemic.  Additionally, 53% of UMBC students (compared with 41% nationally) indicated a preference for all or mostly face-to-face(F2F) instruction. By contrast, in 2018 and 2019 versions of the same survey, an average of 69% of UMBC respondents preferred all or mostly F2F instruction.

More than 800 students from a nationally representative sample responded to the 2022 “Undergraduates and IT” survey, which was  administered by the Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) in collaboration with Ipsos KnowledgePanel. UMBC has participated every year since 2006. ECAR data have been beneficial to inform decision making, particularly amidst the pandemic. Additionally, our involvement has provided critical insights for benchmarking trends such as the increasing ubiquity of smart devices, which has, in turn, allowed for advancements such as the adoption of phone-based responseware.

Interestingly, the ECAR  findings echo those of DoIT’s spring 2022 faculty survey, which indicated a shift in pre/post-pandemic teaching preference away from traditional face-to-face models. Additionally, based on their experiences with online and blended courses, 72% of students indicated they were just as or more likely to take a course with a similar modality again in the future.

Technology limitations, including network reliability and device access were principal themes highlighted by EDUCAUSE for their national responses, as was a general shift in instructional modality preference away from mostly face-to-face.

The ECAR results show two thirds of UMBC respondents with adequate internet connectivity either always or very often, while 23% only had adequate access sometimes. The majority of users (86%) struggled at least occasionally to find an internet connection, and half of respondents indicated that at some point their primary device lost connectivity to the internet during class, an exam, or another synchronous activity. Student connectivity can also impact other related domains, such as academic integrity, accommodations, and testing, as highlighted by a recent faculty survey.

Only 1% of survey respondents did not own a computer. The primary device for two thirds of users was a laptop, while another 19% use a desktop. Although half of those surveyed indicated using a smartphone as their secondary device, none use one as their primary solution. Only one in five respondents indicated encountering difficulties running required software on their device due to compatibility, memory, or other issues. Notably, nearly half of the students self-resolved the IT difficulties they encountered with their own knowledge and personal troubleshooting abilities, which is almost twice the rate of our institutional peer group. This outcome may be attributable to UMBC’s use of on-demand support FAQs along with show-and-tell screencasting.

As in years past, a 25% sample of the university’s undergraduate student population was conducted, and the survey was deployed toward the end of the Spring 2022 term using direct messaging through myUMBC. Response rates were lower this year than in past deployments, perhaps indicating a general survey fatigue associated with pandemic-related data gathering. Nonetheless, response rates were sufficient for reliable and valid conclusions, while our data aligned with and generally reflect those of our peer institutions.

• More Information about Students' Interest Shifts Toward Hybrid and Online Learning

In May, DoIT announced the discontinuation of TechSmith Relay at the end of this calendar year. Following an exhaustive product evaluation process, we are happy to announce that UMBC has licensed Panopto, and it is now available for all students, staff, and faculty.

As illustrated in this overview video, Panopto is a sophisticated platform that provides a much more robust set of deployment options than its predecessor:

• Users have multiple recording and editing options for the video and audio output
• Embed quizzes in screencasts – excellent for competency-based and flipped learning environments!
• Live Webcasting for interactive, synchronous presentations
• Cloud-based video storage integrated directly into Blackboard: Bulk upload your previous media recordings including all those TechSmith Relay MP4s currently posted in Blackboard and Box as well as other file formats
• Record from desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone
• Perhaps best of all, accounts are automatically provisioned and any user interested in trying the tool can do so without having to submit a ticket through RT. In other words, you get an account, and you get an account, and you get an account…!

DoIT will continue to support student accessibility by providing transcription and closed captioning service.

If you would like to find out more, please read more on the Panopto FAQ collection, or join us for a live demonstration during Distance Learning Week, November 7.

• More Information about Introducing Panopto!

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