Early Alerts

To combat lower graduation rates, KSU will focus on four initiatives aimed at supporting new students.

1. The President’s Focused Learner Program

The President’s Focused Learner Program (PFL) is a KSU initiative seeking to assist incoming students at risk of “Murky Middle” GPAs with their ability to navigate the academic and personal well-being factors often necessary for a student’s academic success. The PFL Program spans all majors at KSU.

Always Alert is Gordon State College's early alert academic intervention program. The program is intended to help students at-risk of not succeeding in one or more classes. The program relies on volunteer faculty academic coaches to conduct one-on-one meetings. The program uses Navigate to facilitate outreach, appointment-making, and record-keeping.

This initiative will expand the utilization of an academic chatbot in core courses.  The chatbot provides basic academic information, utilizes intelligent agents in the LMS to monitor student engagement and prompts as necessary, evaluates readiness for quizzes and reminds students about assignments and deadlines. GSU received a $7 million Post Secondary Student Success grant from the Department of Education to launch this technology in introductory English and Math courses in Fall 2024.  Chatbot technology is already used in American Government, Macroeconomics and Chemistry.

The provost is charging all academic departments with a core or gateway class that has a DFW rate above 20% to bring together a faculty committee at both the bachelor’s and associate’s level to develop strategies to improve student engagement, pedagogy and learning outcomes.

A series of retention and completion initiatives are conducted annually to identify high-priority students and disseminate outreach campaigns aimed at referring, reengaging, and reenrolling these students. During the spring 2024, summer 2024, and fall 2024 semester, we piloted specialized outreach campaigns and retention interventions to high-priority populations to encourage the students to engage in specialized advising with our Student Success Specialist or attend a workshop focused on achieving academic success following an unsatisfactory midterm progress report.

The early alert initiative is a collaborative effort between Advising Programs and the Academic Schools that aims to identify and support students who might be experiencing challenges that could impact their academic success. This effort includes proactive monitoring, timely interventions, and personalized support early in the semester to enhance student success and retention. Currently, GGC utilizes the Progress Report Campaign feature in Navigate 360 for early alert.

The Learning Communities (LCs) in which two or more courses are linked thematically with collaborative instruction and co-curricular activities. These courses, and their faculty, focus on core areas as well as areas of academic performance, retention, student mindset, and degree progression. LCs at ASU will provide an easier platform of transition to ASU students while providing a supportive network of peers, mentors, professors, success services, and more.

Gateway courses have the lowest pass rates. This is particularly difficult for new freshman because it stifles their momentum and motivation to successfully past their first two semester classes and avoid academic warning and/or probation, which also impacts their ability to meet financial aid academic requirements.

An extension of Mid-Term Conversations, ASU-Turn Academy focuses on students who are academic probation or who have been re-admitted.  Students are asked to engage for the semester in weekly meetings to learn specific success strategies and reflect on challenges from the previous semester. 

Mid-Term Conversations provide students with mid-term DFUs with face-to-face opportunities in one-on-one or small groups to discuss challenges from the first half of the semester and expose them to campus resources to get them back on track.

The facilitator asks students direct questions to get them engaged, introduces alternative assumptions, asks for examples, and asks for personal reflections and insights as to why they are having academic challenges in the first year.