Early Alert System - Starfish

Students who receive an alert through Starfish indicating a specific area needs improvement should immediately consult with the instructor and, in conference with the instructor, devise a course of action aimed at correcting the areas needing improvement.

What is Starfish?

Starfish Early Alert is a web-based advising tool that improves the way we support student success at Mayville State University. Students, faculty, and staff can manually raise alerts or flags. Faculty can support and nurture students through kudos for performance improvements and to recognize outstanding contributions. Success is a moving target and students need different kinds of encouragement at different times. Starfish Early Alert will engage students by keeping them informed and prompting them to act when necessary.

Starfish is based on the premise that a campus community engaged with a student will lead to that student's success and that effective campus engagement happens through collaborative efforts between faculty, advisors, and support offices. In addition, individual outreach to students and face-to-face conversations are critical so students know that there are people at the college who care about their success.

Starfish is intended to promote these important interactions by providing a quick and simple way for faculty to notify advisors and support offices when they have a concern about a student, enabling these support providers to reach out to students in a timely and effective way. More effective support is expected to lead to increased student success, which in turn is ultimately expected to lead to improved retention and graduation rates.

For more information on Starfish, click here.