TECH TALK SESSION
In this week’s tech talk session, Senior Support Specialist Nick Armstrong went over a couple of features of Accudemia that many clients don’t think to use, but which could be useful for many of them! These features are Restrictions and Terminology.
Restrictions
There are two types of restrictions in Accudemia. The first is the student-to-tutor restriction. This sets restrictions on which tutors or support staff members display to particular students when they sign into a sign-in station or make an appointment. We see this feature used most often in Advising Centers and other similar offices where each staff member has a specific caseload of students they are assigned to help. We also see this with grant-funded programs such as TRIO Centers, which are restricted in which students can use their services.
To access this feature, Nick directed attendees to go to Administration, then Restrictions. From there, users will see two options, and they should select the Student ↔ Tutor Association. On this page, users can set up a restriction or caseload by searching for a tutor or support staff member, and then searching for the student or students who should be assigned to them. After clicking, “Save Changes,” the new restrictions/associations will appear on the page. However, the restrictions will not be active until the user clicks, “Enable Restrictions” at the top of the page.
Keep in mind that once restrictions are enabled, a student who is not associated with a tutor or support staff member will not be able to access that location’s services at all through the sign-in station or appointments. So this particular Restriction ability should only be used if all students who use this center will be assigned to work with at least one staff member.
The second type of restriction, service to course association, works a little bit differently. In this situation, the system will set restrictions on which courses display to students, based on the service selected, when signing in or making an appointment. In other words, if your center’s services should only be utilized if students are seeking help for particular courses at the same time, this is a feature you should set up.
As an example, in “one-stop centers,” the “service” typically determines what should be shown. An example would be if a center had services like “Academic Advising” and “Tutoring.” Academic Advising needs only the subject areas they created to show like “Career Placement,” “Degree Audit,” “Change of Major,” etc. Tutoring may not need any limits on the subject areas/courses that are shown so these are undefined and allowed to show all. By showing all, the center may want to use the “Appointment” or “Walk-in” settings in the Control Panel of Accudemia to limit the courses to use students’ enrollment data as well so the students see only their courses.
To do so, you’ll follow the same steps as in the first type of restriction, by going to Administration, then Restrictions. This time, select Service ↔ Course Association. The set-up process will be similar to the process for Tutor to Student restrictions.
One thing to keep in mind with this feature is that once it’s activated, the Services for your center will still be available for all students to sign in for or make appointments for (if appointments are enabled for your location), but a student will only be able to select the courses available for that service. If your settings are such that students will only be able to select courses they are enrolled in (which is our general recommendation), and the student is not enrolled in a course associated with that Service, they will not be able to sign in or make appointments for that service unless course selection is optional for your center.
For both types of restrictions, we recommend considering entering them via an import rather than manually, if you have more than a couple of students or courses to enter. If you have the right permissions, you can perform the import yourself with a simple spreadsheet, or you can prepare one for the admin who is responsible for imports. If you don’t have the permissions but want to perform the import yourself, ask your admin for assistance.
Terminology
Many first-time Accudemia users report that some of the terms used in Accudemia don’t reflect the terms they use in their centers or institutions. And we completely understand! Every college and university has a unique way of referring to things like job roles and centers. Some schools don’t even use what many consider to be “standard” terminology, like “semester.” That’s why Accudemia allows you to change the terminology used throughout the system so that it better reflects the language used by your center and institution and eliminates potential confusion from users.
Keep in mind that while there are some terms or wordings that can be changed at the center level, you will need college-level administrative permissions to access this feature. Again, if you don’t have these permissions but believe that you should contact your account’s administrator.
To access this feature, click “Administration,” then “Control Panel,” then “Terminology.” On the left, you’ll see all the terms that can be changed at the system or college level. Some of the options for words you can change include, “Class,” “Location,” and even, “Student.”
On the right, you’ll see the terms that can be changed at the Center level. After scoping the list to the correct center where the terminology can be changed, you’ll be able to change the terms for “Tutor,” “Tutors,” and “Tutoring.” This means that when students access your center through Accudemia, they’ll see your support staff referred to by the correct terminology, which should eliminate any confusion they might have had about the function of your center.
Restrictions and Terminology are just two of the many ways you can curate the student experience in Accudemia. We hope that this post has helped you in your understanding of Accudemia’s capabilities, and we encourage you to reach out to us with any questions. Please join us for our next Accudemia weekly session!
Join us next time!
Engineerica Systems is pleased to present our Tech Tip segment recap for the Accudemia session on 10/19/2021. 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!
