ACCUDEMIA USER SPOTLIGHT
Lenoir-Rhyne University is one of the newest Accudemia adopters, but they have already established themselves as a high-usage account, hitting the ground running with many key features of Accudemia, proving that if you need a tracking system working QUICKLY, it’s possible with Accudemia! Jake Graffagnino, the university’s Coordinator of Peer-Learning Assistance, stopped by this month’s Accudemia Session as our User Spotlight Speaker to talk about LR’s implementation and rollout of Accudemia in the Learning Commons. We’re highlighting Jake’s main points here, but be sure to watch the full presentation!
The Learning Commons houses the Office of Student Success and many services such as advising, subject tutoring, writing support, and academic coaching. Accudemia is the first support tracking system that the Learning Commons has used; before this, they utilized a simple paper-and-pencil system entered into Excel spreadsheets and other electronic forms, which was prone to errors and required a lot of hours to maintain. Each appointment could take up to an hour total to schedule, but now in Accudemia the process is entirely student-driven and takes only minutes. They implemented Accudemia as the center wanted a better way to track total usage time and to determine when to offer certain services.
They started a soft rollout in October of 2022, just after the university’s midterms, with a full usage rollout in spring 2023. In addition to being open for all students to use, student-athletes and other groups are required to get a certain number of hours in the center’s study hall, so that was one of the first things they set up in Accudemia. With Accudemia’s tracking abilities and through the use of the User Groups feature, it became much easier to see which students had fulfilled their requirements and report those hours to stakeholders.
Accudemia features a survey module, primarily used to collect student feedback, but LR uses them a little differently. The first time a student signs in for an appointment, they are given a survey that is a confidentiality agreement that is filled out by both the student and the tutor. They are also sent a survey after each appointment to get general feedback about their session. With reports, they can easily see which appointments are missed, enabling them to reach out to students and help them access their services.
Accudemia helped LR’s Office of Student Success overcome several challenges. To best utilize their space and resources, they use the traffic analysis reports to see which times and services are busiest. By seeing which courses have the most tutored hours, they can also pinpoint which subjects are most needed and hire tutors accordingly.
While the rollout of Accudemia at LR was sudden and thorough, Jake reported that they still have plans for future expansion! With a new wealth of data in their hands, they will be better able to make decisions regarding hiring and scheduling. They also plan to continue to push out information about their center and Accudemia to students, faculty, and other stakeholders so this application and the processes become common knowledge. Tracking the occasional virtual meeting is in their plans as well, especially for graduate students who would prefer saving time and effort in meeting online.
Thank you to Jake for joining us! Whether you are a current Accudemia user or considering the system for your institution, we hope this post gives you some idea of the versatility of this student center management system and ideas for your center’s usage of the software. This blog post listed just some of the ways Jake’s center has found Accudemia useful, so be sure to watch his full presentation to learn more.
Join us next time!
Engineerica Systems is pleased to present our Accudemia User Spotlight segment recap for 3/14/2023. Held Tuesdays at 1 pm EST (weekly during the academic year, and monthly during the summer), Accudemia clients can join a session to learn about a quick, useful topic from one of our Support Specialists. We hope that these examples help you to ponder how you might utilize Accudemia and other innovations in your own center. Check the page about our Monthly Accudemia Session to find out more about our next session and for more ideas about helping our students achieve success!
