RightNow: Modifying software to systematise and collate data from First Year Advisor-student interactions.

Transcription

1 RightNow: Modifying software to systematise and collate data from First Year Advisor-student interactions. Natalie Callan, Helen Kemp and Janine M. Wojcieszek. Student Life and Learning, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. Abstract Representatives from Murdoch University s First Year Advisor (FYA) network and information technology (IT) staff have customised the software RightNow to suit the purpose of data capture of interactions between FYAs and first year students, creating a new horizon in technology use for student support. With some expected outcomes yet to be examined, the interim impacts include streamlined distribution and storage of FYA activity data, standardisation and portability of data, effective job sharing and workload distribution, creation of a knowledge bank for successive FYAs, and effortless interconnectivity with administrative services. We present the process of development and modification that continues to help achieve these goals and initiate a discussion on further improving the system to address the challenges that first year students may face. Audience members are encouraged to bring their smart devices to interact with this session. Introduction Customer Relationship Management software, in particular RightNow (RightNow Technologies Inc., ), is used across the world in many customer service centres for first point of contact customer service and sales information management. For example, New Zealand Post and Virgin Mobile use the RightNow system to build Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) knowledge banks; channel customers to online help or webchat with a customer services officer; and to evaluate key performance indictors (KPI) and analyse customer access to service and customer satisfaction (Fox 2011; Street 2011). Indeed, this software type has generally been developed to minimise time spent with a customer, standardise and depersonalise customer service contact and, of course, systematise data collection and dissemination. Similarly, at Murdoch, central student queries are managed using RightNow in many of the same ways in the Student Centre 1. With the implementation of a school-based network of professional FYAs in 2011 (the FYA program is outlined in Box, Callan, Geddes, Kemp & Wojcieszek, 2012), it was quickly identified that a bespoke database was necessary to manage data being collected by the network of 18 FYAs across three campuses. Importantly, contrary to the aims of Customer Relationship Management software in the past, FYAs did not wish to use the software to minimise time spent with a student or to depersonalise their interactions. Nonetheless, a portal for disseminating students data to the correct FYA and a standardised form with reportable key features was considered necessary. It was recognised that two varieties of 1 Student Centre a central student and staff administration and cashiers service centre at Murdoch. 1

2 activity needed to be captured by the software: (1) FYA network-initiated outreach campaigns, and (2) student-initiated support. Design The RightNow software is offered as a basic model and many features can be customised to align to the needs of the users. At Murdoch, RightNow is based on two main input forms: the Contact Record and the Incident Record. The Contact Record contains contact, course and enrolment details, as well as notes pertaining to a single student. At Murdoch these data are automated to update directly from Callista (Callista Software Services Pty Ltd., ), the student management system, with the exception of notes which are added by the FYA. Data input for an Incident Record can come from one of three sources and is dependant on the campaign. Network initiated outreach campaigns are outlined in Table 1. The at-risk student contact campaign relies on reporting by academic staff in first year units (subjects). Reports of students demonstrating at-risk behaviours are submitted via a webform developed on the existing interface used by academics for class management. Data from at-risk reports are then uploaded to RightNow as an Incident Record and the appropriate FYAs are notified of reports for their students. All other campaign Incident Records are gleaned directly from Callista based on student record queries. Campaign Warning Letter Accepted Not Enrolled At-risk Student Contact Not Interacting on LMS External Withdrawn Description Received a warning letter after failing 50% or more of their units in the preceding semester Accepted a place at Murdoch, but subsequently had not enrolled in units by Orientation Week Were reported as at-risk by academic staff members Failed to interact with the online learning management system for their Foundation Unit 2 Studying Externally Withdrew from all units before the Census Date Table 1 Description of network initiated outreach campaigns undertaken by FYAs at Murdoch in chronological order. Where students contact FYAs for assistance, these data are input directly by the FYA at the time, or soon after, the student support takes place. FYAs can then access and log subsequent interactions with the student, about that incident in the one place, at anytime. New incidents are quick and simple to create and finely tuned definitions are in place for when it is appropriate to create a new incident for an individual student. Key, reportable features of the student interaction are recorded in fields on every Incident Record. These fields have been developed in direct consultation with the FYA network at Murdoch via an FYA design team (comprising three FYAs competent in IT). An outline of these fields can be found in Table 2. It should be noted that all fields, except Subject, are dropdown menus, thus limiting the data to a standardised set of responses. Incident Records 2 Foundation Unit a unit (subject) emphasising foundation skills for learning that all students must complete in their first year of studies at Murdoch. 2

3 can be assigned and reassigned to each member within the FYA network. The RightNow system also allows for a Task Record to be created. These are akin to reminders in most calendar applications and alert the user, at a specified time and date, that a task is due. Tasks are created directly by the user and can be assigned and reassigned, as per an Incident Record, to another FYA if appropriate. Field Student name Topic Subject Mode of contact (initial) Mode of contacts (subsequent) Status Outcome Limits and examples Linked to a Contact Record. Limited to: study advice, tutoring, unit advice, course advice, course transfer advice, enrolment advice, international student advice, career advice, class timetable, dates and deadlines, equity, exams, welfare, personal, withdrawal and discontinuation; plus each campaign name. Free text; detailed description of subject within a topic. Limited to: phone, , drop-in, staff referral and campaign. Limited to: phone, , meeting by appointment and drop-in without appointment. Suggest limit to: unresolved, solved, pending, follow up, updated by student and escalated (there are, however, many others available). Limited to: FYAs services, referred to Academic Chair, referred to Unit Coordinator/tutor, learning services, support services, administrative services, withdrawing, enrolling and other. For the outcome field, each category heading listed here has multiple subheadings for detailed data collection. Table 2 Summary of key fields in an Incident Record. Standard Text of frequently given advice or instructions has also been stored in RightNow. FYAs need only to click on the Standard Text they desire and add greetings. In seconds, information such as how to enrol or the contact details for an academic support service is sent to a student s address. RightNow Training of FYAs was undertaken in two stages. First, the FYA design team were trained by RightNow consultants and then the remainder of the FYA network was trained by the FYA design team. There was a consultation period for the FYAs to suggest changes they would like made to the system and then there was a fixed period where changes were not longer made. At Murdoch, some further redesign has been necessary to accommodate recording the second variety of FYA activity: student-initiated support. Initially, the FYA network was planning to use RightNow to capture campaign data only. It became evident, however, that this method excluded more than 50% of interactions that were taking place between FYAs and students. The outcome and mode fields were therefore changed significantly to accommodate the new data input type over the summer period between 2011 and 2012 and all incidents created before this redesign were updated to the current arrangement of input fields. Impact The use of RightNow for logging student interactions, including the most recent redesign, has been very successful. Since the process of adding new fields to the Incident Record is so simple, the most time consuming processes were deciding which new fields were required, defining these for all stakeholders and providing additional FYA training. Student-initiated 3

4 phone discussions, s and drop-in visits are now recorded in RightNow alongside campaign data and can be analysed in the same ways. RightNow has systematised and streamlined the distribution and storage of FYA activity data compared with the previous methods of data collation. The limitation, and therefore standardisation, of terminology in Incident Record fields facilitates the portability of the data among network members and enables quantitative data analysis. The Contact Record stores a categorical list of all Incidents for that student, and both are easily found using quick search functions. Assigning and reassigning Incident and Task Records has streamlined job sharing and workload distribution at peak times, or when an FYA is on leave. The portability and access of data throughout the network has also increased the ease of communication between FYAs in different schools. This benefits first year students whose course involves study in more than one school. Additionally, with any staff turnover in the network the total knowledge bank is accessible to any new FYA once trained. Including the FYA design team in the development phases, and allowing for a consultation period with the FYA network, has encouraged user acceptance and ownership of the system among FYAs at Murdoch University. The design team provides local experts who understand both the parameters of the RightNow system and the role of FYAs. The design team fields questions, interprets issues and translates these to both stakeholders. Since RightNow was an existing system at Murdoch, financial outlay to extend its use to the FYA network was less than the costs involved in purchasing a completely new system. Murdoch also avoided some cost of staff training given that several IT staff members were already trained to modify and administer the RightNow system. Likewise, the interface used for FYAs was already available. Site licences were, however, purchased to accommodate the new users on site. Interconnectivity of the Student Centre and the FYA interfaces now benefits the FYAs immensely in that they can observe and track all interactions that a student has had with the University, including those with the Student Centre. For this reason, though, a confidentiality firewall was created that prevents the Student Centre staff from seeing the details of any FYA incidents. As such, the interconnectivity described is unidirectional. Automated outbound reports can be created using RightNow. FYA activities are summarised and reported to management and aligned academic teams, periodically. It is foreseen that the same system will enable the extraction of long term, quantitative data to evaluate FYA activities at Murdoch. Additionally, Murdoch expects to achieve enhanced identification of retention threats as a consequence of analysis of network activity. In fact, changes have already been initiated by the FYA network at Murdoch. For example, recent changes to the enrolment processes removed confusing terminology after a weakness in the process was identified by repeated student requests to the network for the identical issue. With increased collection and transparency of data, it is anticipated that this will continue. Principally, this is an innovation that has been found to be successful. It will continue to be modified and developed and, although we cannot establish from the current literature how other institutions are collating data related to student interactions, we believe that the model outlined here is certainly applicable to other institutions for use in first year support programs and beyond. 4

5 Session Outline Presenters (10 minutes): Overview of the development and use of RightNow at Murdoch. Audience small groups (10 minutes): Discuss and contribute to one or more of the following: What additional key features could be added to the Incident Record to improve data collection? Do you currently have anything like this system working at your institution? What are the similarities and differences compared with the FYA network use of RightNow at Murdoch? How could similar software be modified to assist in your role? Presenters and whole group (10 minutes): Draw together audience contributions and discuss questions presented. Participants are encouraged to bring smart devices and contribute on screen, in real time, via Google Docs (Google, 2008). URL: Sign in: MUFYAN, Password: 74nc7mPO. Conference themes addressed directly or indirectly by this session include: (1) New horizons, and (2) Institutional-level innovation for the FYHE. Acknowledgements Along with the authors, Natalie Callan and Helen Kemp, the FYA design team includes Michelle Alkins and James Boyd. Ongoing IT development and administration is provided by Jeneane Bilman from IT Projects and Ralph Sunley, Rehan Farid and Peter Roots from Business Application Systems at Murdoch. The entire team, along with the FYA network, is kindly acknowledged for their contribution and hard work on this innovative creation. James Boyd and Marian Kemp are also acknowledged for their direction and feedback on this submission. References Box, G., Callan, N., Geddes, T., Kemp, H., and Wojcieszek, J. M. (2011). University first year advisors: A network approach for first year student transition and retention. A practice report. The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 3(1), Callista Software Services Pty Ltd. ( ). Callista Student Management System SMS Retrieved from Fox, N. (2011). Customer showcase: NZ POST. RightNow Summit APAC 2011, Gold Coast, Queensland. Available from Google. ( ). Google Documents. Available from RightNow Technologies Inc. ( ). RightNow Version CE, August 2009 SP6. Retrieved from Street, C. (2011). Industry best practices: Real-world knowledge base case studies with Virgin Mobile, MLC and University of New England. RightNow Summit APAC 2011, Gold Coast, Queensland. Available from 5