TECH TALK SESSION
Wondering about how to set up and utilize the referral tools in Accudemia?
A key part of getting students to the center is a strong partnership with faculty and other staff who know how to send students your way and provide you the information you need to be of most help to the student.
Jorge Rodriguez, a Software Support Specialist, walked our Accudemia weekly session attendees through the setup of Accudemia referrals, how faculty or staff members would submit these, how you and your center staff might process them, as well as the reports and tracking available for these referrals. We will review this process here.
What is a Referral Template?
A referral template is a form that the staff or faculty member would complete to submit a referral and create a case. This form will contain the name of the referral, instructions or a description of the referral, and questions for the submitter to answer including the student’s name and any additional recipients that should be included in the notifications or follow-up. Setting up this form includes:
- Creating a name for the referral template that is recognizable to the submitter (staff and faculty outside of the center making the referrals)
- Entering the instructions/description of this referral template, again directed to the submitter
- Predetermining and selecting any staff members that should be assigned the referral case upon submission and any additional recipients that should be included (this might be you or other dedicated staff members in the center)
- Creating the multiple-choice or open-text questions to be completed by the submitter in order to gather the information you need to serve the student
When entering a name for the referral such as “Check-up at Mid-term” or “Excessive Absences and Tardies,” be mindful of the student in your namings and your training of staff/faculty as the submitter will be able to select whether or not to include the student on the notifications regarding this referral.
When creating the instructions, we recommend you include an explanation and any directions and let the submitter know what to expect will happen as a result of their submission. This helps reinforce the importance of their referral and helps the process stay top of mind for future situations where students might benefit from a referral to your center.
You can select a default staff member who will be the main contact and is responsible for any follow-up. This could be yourself or a key team member assigned to handle the student’s case. Additionally, you can add other default recipients to the referral template. These persons will be notified any time this referral is submitted and be able to view the details of the referral.
The next and arguably the most important part of the referral template is setting up the questionnaire. In the referral template creation screen, you will find sample questions that can be edited and customized. You can delete these or add more questions at the bottom. These are the questions the submitter will be asked to answer about the student or situation related to the referral. You have the option to utilize multiple-choice or open text. You can select whether an answer is required per question. You can determine if more than one option can be selected from the multiple-choice answers and you can also weigh these options according to importance.
How Do Faculty and Staff Complete Referrals?
Once you have your referral templates built, the next important task is to train faculty and staff on how to complete the referrals. They will first need to log into Accudemia and follow these steps:
Click on + New Referral.- Select the Referral Template as appropriate.
- Enter the instructor (if tied to a class or program).
- Enter the class (if tied to a class).
- Enter the student.
- You may direct the submitter to select a due date for follow-up on the referral if there is a standard in place. This date is used as a reminder of when this referral should be reviewed/updated. You may instead wish to have your assigned staff member handling the referral determine these dates and then in this case you would train your submitter to leave the follow-up date blank.
- Enter any comments. Be sure to include in the instructions ideas for what you would like the submitter to include in their comments such as clarifying the situation or reason for the referral.
- Determine if students should be notified and check/uncheck this box. You will want to train the submitter on which referrals they may wish to notify the student such that he/she receives the referral updates and can follow along with the process of the referral. In many cases, this might not be appropriate. Help your users to use discretion when necessary by including this in the instructions of the referral template.
- Type and select any additional users who should be notified of this referral and any updates to this referral. All recipients will be able to view all of the details of the referral.
- Answer all of the questions in the form as directed.
- Click on Save Changes at the top right to submit the form.
What Happens After the Referral is Submitted?
Once the referral is saved, the follower and recipients will be notified by email of the referral. They will then want to log into Accudemia and navigate to referrals where they will see any submitted referrals. A colored status label will show for each referral. To see the details of the referral and begin handling the case, users would click on the student’s name in the list of referrals. Changes allowed in this view are meant for those who contact the student and include things such as adding follow-up dates and entering/adding comments. A Referral History displays showing any notes or steps taken since the referral’s creation.
To edit the referral details as entered by the submitter such as instructor, course, or the recipients’ list, authorized staff would hover over the referral and click on the edit icon on the right-hand side. The referral system will send to the follower and recipients a confirmation email of submitted referrals, reminders when the follow-up is due, and an email any time the referral is updated.
Once the referral steps are completed, the follower or administrator can mark the referral case as closed by hovering over the referral in the list of referrals and selecting the close icon.
If you’ve been wondering about the referral system in Accudemia, we hope this article has been helpful! There are many applications of this referral system and it can be customized to fit your needs. If you have any questions, contact support@accudemia.com and we’ll be happy to assist you!
Join us next time!
Engineerica Systems is pleased to present our Tech Tip segment recap for the Accudemia session on 7/6/2021. 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. Each week, we’ll follow up Tech Tip Tuesday with a blog recapping that week’s topic. 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!
