Starfish Early Alert

 

 

Clovis Community College (CCC) is committed to increasing student persistence, retention, and completion. After careful consideration, the college’s retention committee selected Starfish by Hobsons. Starfish Retention Solutions was founded in 2007 by David Yaskin, a former Blackboard executive who believed that higher education technology companies were not doing enough to help students complete their academic goals. Hobsons acquired Starfish in 2015, and the company has been devoted to the research and practice of engaging students in their progress, removing obstacles to their success, and helping students succeed.

Communication

As a small institution, Clovis Community College employees have always strived to assist students by addressing their needs in the best way possible.  However, overlap could occur as individual departments were often unaware of all the services the student was receiving. Starfish enables the college's student support services and faculty to coordinate efforts through a streamlined electronic process, by using tracking items like Flags, Kudos and Referrals. Starfish helps the campus come together through a single system to better serve our students.

Early Alert

Starfish utilizes Flags that are raised by instructors when they feel concerned about their student’s academic performance. Flags are then managed by the Student Retention Coordinator, who contacts the student regarding the instructors concern. Based on the conversation with the flagged student, the Student Retention Coordinator makes the appropriate referrals to assist the student as needed. Starfish integrates with Canvas, our learning management system, and helps track attendance as well as appointments with student services. For more information on how Starfish works at CCC click here: Starfish

Title V, Information Technology, and Data Collection

Title V funding supports the college's retention initiatives with the purchase of our new retention system, Starfish. The Information Technology department's role is to assist the college in integrating Starfish with the existing systems on campus (i.e. Banner, Canvas, e-mail services). The combined efforts between Information Technology and Title V staff to create training and deliverable resources is allowing faculty and staff to see a greater return on their efforts in student retention. Additionally, Starfish allows us to collect and analyze data to identify the best way to assist our students with persistence, learning, and success.

Implementation date: Fall 2017.