[605] in magellan
Biweekly status report for Advising Discovery project
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joanne Straggas)
Wed Feb 28 14:15:25 2001
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Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 14:13:33 -0500
To: magellan@mit.edu
From: Joanne Straggas <joanne@MIT.EDU>
Cc: advising-discovery@mit.edu, advising-stakeholders@mit.edu, njj@mit.edu
Project Name: Advising at MIT
Project Leader: Joanne Straggas
Report Date: 28 February 2001
Submitted by: Joanne Straggas
url: http://web.mit.edu/is/discovery/advising/
Accomplishments of the past period:
* Completed interviews with administrators.
* Sent surveys to graduate administrators and attended their Round Table.
* Sent surveys to undergraduate administrators and attended their
Round Table.
* Compiled a wish list from undergraduate administrators.
* Mailed a survey to new faculty (at Institute less than three years).
See handout.
* Began interviewing faculty and compiling faculty wish list,
Conducted a focus group with UA members and other students. Began
compiling a student wish list.
* Began a survey of best practices.
* Held meeting with stakeholders to give a project update and engage
in a discussion of best practices.
Goals for the next period:
* Post results of surveys.
* Post minutes from Stakeholders meetings.
* Ask undergraduate administrators to prioritize their wish list.
* Complete faculty interviews and wish list. Ask faculty to prioritize
wish list.
* Complete student focus groups and wish list. Ask students to
prioritize wish list.
* Continue survey of best practices. Post findings in project notebook.
* Compile a list of all the decisions students are asked to make, then
evaluate how easy or difficult we make their decision-making process.
Key Learnings:
* There are models and practices in place at other institutions and
businesses that with some creativity can be applied to the advising
process.
* More and more institutions are requiring students to compile and
maintain online portfolios. These are then used when advisors meet with
students.
* Not all advisors use WEBSIS or know what information is available to
them. For some the reason is that they do not have certificates.
* There is a lot of duplication of central data in departmental
databases.
Issues:
We continue to be aware that whatever recommendations we might make for an
augmented online advising system should not decrease the time students
spend with faculty advisors. For this reason we need to work closely with
the CUP subcommittee to ensure that while some steps are being automated,
more opportunities and incentives are provided for faculty to spend time
mentoring students. We don't want to automate the advising process. We want
to enhance it.
=============================
Joanne Straggas
Senior Project Manager
MIT Information Systems
617-253-6322
