Helix Launches Retention System
A
new technology should be able to identify red flags that indicate
students may
be having academic problems and come up with action plans almost
immediately.
Helix
Education will introduce Helix
Retain at the Educause Annual Conference September
29 in Orlando, FL. The technology is designed to identify certain
markers
that would indicate students are having problems, sometimes even before
their
teachers can recognize patterns, and suggest ways of dealing with
specific
students and their challenges.
Helix
Retain
will take into account available data about students such as
demographics, gender and past performance. It will also identify risk
factors
for individual students such as test scores, absenteeism and situations
in his
or her life outside of school that may be affecting performance.
Finally, it
will consider the best way to communicate with the student and his or
her
family, be it via e-mail, phone calls or face-to-face intervention.
Once
risk
factors for students have been recognized, action plans will be
recommended as well by Helix Retain.
The
technology
can also prioritize situations and identify risk models
that can be used to not only help individual students but make
pedagogical
adjustments for entire classes or grade levels.
"Today's
students
are inundated with both internal and external factors that prevent
them from accomplishing their academic goals," said Helix Education
Chief
Product Officer and Senior Vice President Steve Pappageorge. "Our
objective is
to help them effectively navigate those challenges and keep them moving
toward
graduation."
With
Helix
Retain, built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, data can be
collected for individual students as well as entire schools, and viewed
in both
a quick at-a-glance and more comprehensive formats.
"Sometimes
outreach
is as simple as a reminder, and other times it requires direct
interventions such as consistent communications and coaching,"
Pappageorge
added. "Finding the right way to support students goes a long way in
improving
institutional effectiveness."
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.