With the beginning of the spring semester of the 2017-2018 school year, Elizabethtown College enters its second semester of using Starfish, the new software tool designed to aid in communication between students and staff.

During the first semester, 846 students activated their Starfish accounts. The general consensus is that while Starfish has not seen a spontaneous and soaring success, it is moving forward and will continue to do so.

A large part of the reason Associate Dean of Students and Director of Academic Advising Stephanie Rankin finds Starfish such a helpful program is that it is a live resource which allows for quick responses to the needs of students.

“We were pleased with our first semester turnout,” Rankin said. “Up to 50 percent of our student population joined for the first semester.”

Eighty-six percent of full-time faculty used Starfish. Professors have found the system helpful for communication with students.

According to a survey sent to professors to evaluate Starfish, advisors expressed appreciation for the timely information they receive about their advisees, especially if they don’t have the student in class that semester. A more consistent stream of information can improve advising meetings.

“I think it’s a really good way of letting people know if a problem has come up with a student outside the early warning period,” associate professor of English Dr. Kimberly VanEsveld Adams said. “If a student stops coming to class, for example, or if it’s getting to the end of the semester and a student hasn’t turned in a course paper, it’s my job to get in touch with that student, but if I’m having trouble doing that it’s really good to let other people know.”

Adams also shared that she personally found less use in the kudos feature, as she prefers to tell students in class if they’re doing well.

Other professors, such as professor of history and Anabaptsist and Pietist Studies Dr. Steven Nolt, were of similar opinion and prefer interacting with students in person. “Honestly, I don’t use it that frequently; my tendency is to talk to people in class,” Nolt said. “I think it’s probably a good and helpful tool, but we have a variety of tools with Canvas, Jayweb and Starfish.”

The general opinion held by students is that Starfish holds potential, but is presently not well utilized.

First-year and Etownian staff writer Samantha Seely has not used it beyond an introduction she sent to her first-year seminar instructor. She said she is “not entirely sure what the purpose of Starfish is.”

“I think Starfish could be useful but none of the professors are really using it,” she continued.

“I haven’t really used it much, to be honest,” sophomore and Etownian staff writer Samantha Romberger said. “I like the tab that gives you contact info for the different departments, but I haven’t tried out really anything else.”

“I don’t really know too much, but it seems like a really good tool for positive communication between students and professors, especially if finding a meeting time is difficult,” senior Kelly Zielinski said.

Starfish has a variety of features which allow students and professors to connect. The five main features of Starfish are “flags,” “raise your hand,” “kudos,” “connect” and “early alerts.”

Flags and kudos allow professors to give feedback to students. This can include expressing a concern with a flag or giving positive feedback with kudos to a student who is doing well.

Students can use “raise your hand” to ask a question to their professors or connect to the people in their “success network.” Lastly, early alert surveys can be conducted at any time in a course by a professor to gauge the progress of their students.

According to an anonymous survey sent out by the Office of Academic Advising, students who used Starfish more actively appreciated the system. The features most used during the first semester were the flags and kudos. With 124 flags and 263 kudos, there was an approximate 2:1 kudo-to-flag ratio. “I liked how the kudos system made my efforts feel more noticed. It made me more proud to achieve higher goals,” one student anonymously said.

Going forward, Rankin and Student Information Systems and Starfish Coordinator Michelle Henry intend to introduce new features to the software and continue to encourage students to explore the usefulness of Starfish. “The longer that we have it, it becomes a part of the campus identity,” Rankin said. “With each new class of students that comes into the Elizabethtown community, the distinctive uses for Canvas, Jayweb and Starfish will all become clearer.”

Moving into the spring semester, one new feature being introduced is the ability for students to schedule meetings through Starfish.

During the fall semester, several professors requested that such a feature be added, so a pilot system ran involving the advisees of two professors. At the end of the pilot, students liked the feature, and the professors agreed it made scheduling simpler.

The feature makes it easy for students to schedule a meeting and puts the appointment on a member of the staff’s calendar if his or her Outlook account is correctly linked to Starfish.

Professor of biology Dr. Debra Wohl specifically expressed appreciation for this feature. “I like that I can use it to schedule, and it talks to my Outlook account,” Wohl said.

For information on how to use Starfish, students can go to the Office of Academic Advising page on the Elizabethtown College website and click Starfish on the sidebar. There are explanations of the software as well as links to several short instructional videos.