FYI, this is an email I sent out to all faculty concerning options for contacting at-risk students through EARN. Please remember to check your students’ EARN flags when you meet with them, especially those students who have three or more flags raised. To access EARN:

1. Log into Blackboard.

2. Click on the EARN link under the Tools Menu.

3. Click on the My Students link under the Students tab. You will see an alphabetized list of students in your caseload who are registered for class this semester. You can scroll down this list and click on the link beside a student, then click on Tracking to see if the student has any active flags (click the radio button beside Active).

4. Next to the My Students tab is a tab called Tracking. Click on this tab, and make sure Assigned Advisor (not Academic Advisor) is selected under Connection, to see a list of your students who have flags. If students with flags that have already been resolved are showing, click on Edit Filters and select Status Active under Tracking Items.

At this time in the semester you should see only a handful of students with active flags, if you see any at all, but that number will increase dramatically by the end of the fourth week of the semester, when faculty fill out Progress Surveys, set up their Blackboard gradebooks to automatically raise flags on students, and the 45 and 90 hour holds are added in Banner. The most critical flags to address with students are Three Active Flags, In Danger of Failing, and Low Midterm Grade.

As you know, Amanda is out on maternity leave for the next three months, so I’ll do my best to answer questions about EARN, and I’ll talk with Dainon about the possibility of offering some kind of training on EARN if advisors voice a need for it. Please send EARN questions to EARN@utsa.edu.

Jimmy

James R. Adair, Ph.D.

Associate Director of Advising Technology

Lecturer II, Department of Philosophy & Classics

One UTSA Circle

San Antonio, TX 78255

210-458-6216

From: EARN
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2015 3:00 PM
To: All Faculty <allfaculty@utsa.edu>
Subject: EARN: Options for Contacting At-Risk Students for Fall 2015

For two years UTSA has been using EARN: the Early Alert Retention Network to contact students at risk of poor academic performance throughout the semester, and especially within the first few weeks, while they still have time to improve their focus and modify their learning strategies. This Fall we again encourage all faculty to use EARN to identify and contact students early in the semester with warnings (flags) about potential academic failure or encouragement (kudos) for success in the classroom. Based on faculty feedback from previous semesters, we have devised a new, automated way of raising flags on students who have low course averages at the end of the fourth week of the semester by simply creating a column in the Blackboard gradebook. Faculty now have three options for contacting students through EARN:

1. By entering Blackboard, clicking on the EARN link under the Tools menu, and selecting My Students under the Students menu, instructors can raise one of six flags for poor academic performance or one of five kudos for good academic performance. By using the “Zoom In” feature, student grades are accessible in EARN, and faculty do not have to go back and forth between EARN and their Blackboard gradebook. Flags raised in this way may be raised at any time. As of this morning 641 active flags have already been raised by faculty. For more detailed information on this option, look at these two links: http://www.utsa.edu/advise/EARN/EARN%20How%20To%20-Brochure_Student_Success.pdf (see page 2, under EARN) and http://www.utsa.edu/advise/EARN/ZoomInPDF.pdf.

2. At the end of the fourth week of class (Friday, Sep 11), all faculty will receive an email containing a link to an EARN Progress Survey for each of their classes. The Progress Survey will allow instructors to see a list of students in each of their classes, giving them the option of raising one or more flags (from a list of three possibilities) or of sending a “Keep Up the Good Work” kudo for each student. For more information on Progress Surveys, see http://www.utsa.edu/advise/EARN/EARN%20How%20To%20-Brochure_Student_Success.pdf (page 2, Completing the Progress Survey).

3. The newest EARN option available to faculty allows them to create a column in their Blackboard gradebook called EARNGRADE, which will contain students’ running average in the course on a hundred point scale. This column may be a calculated column, which contains a weighted average of other selected gradebook columns, or a column in which the instructor manually enters grades. Instructors who choose this option should set the column as their External Grade Column in Blackboard. EARN will automatically read the EARNGRADE column directly from an instructor’s Blackboard gradebook, obviating the need for the instructor to click on the EARN link in Blackboard at all. Detailed instructions for setting up the EARNGRADE column may be found here: http://www.utsa.edu/advise/EARN/SetUpBlackboardtoReportGradesToEARN.pdf. Faculty who choose this option must have their EARNGRADE column created, filled with grades, and set as the External Grade Column by Thursday, Sep 10. Students in these courses with a grade less than 70 in the EARNGRADE column will have a flag raised.

Using EARN is optional for faculty members, and if you have other effective ways of communicating with your students in a timely fashion, feel free to continue using them. Many faculty, however, have found EARN to be a helpful tool for promoting student success at UTSA, so we encourage you to use one or more of the options above to communicate with your students. Effective, early communication with students about their performance in class—both positive and negative—can improve their chances of success and in turn improve the graduation rate of the entire university. Thank you for your commitment to helping students succeed!

For more information on EARN, please visit our website at http://utsa.edu/EARN. Please send any questions to EARN@utsa.edu.