May 4, 2015
Advising notes now available in KSIS
Submitted by Steve Dandaneau and Diana Blake
New advising notes features are now available in the KSU Advisor Center in KSIS. This much-anticipated functionality provides academic advisors with another set of powerful, yet easy-to-use tools to create and manage an online record of advising notes. See the Product Road Map for a complete list of features in this release.
Designed for use by advisors across the enterprise, the advising notes tool will improve the quality of academic advising by ensuring advisors have accurate and complete information about advisees, even when students move between departments, schools and/or colleges.
Advisors who tested the new advising notes tool had this to say:
- I am excited to start using them!
- Thank you for all the time you devoted to making our jobs more efficient!
- Fantastic design!
- Thanks everyone — this is going to be awesome!
Designing a solution to meet the divergent needs of a broad constituency was very challenging for the team. More than 50 people participated in the design process including academic advisors, academic and business leaders, and legal and FERPA experts. The team even consulted with the executive director of the National Academic Advising Association.
To complement the new features being developed in KSIS, members of the Advisor Forum drafted Guidelines for KSIS Advising Notes to provide advisors with guidance and best practices on drafting and managing advising notes in KSIS. The guidelines were vetted by many advisors and the University Advising Committee and are now available on the K-State Academic Advising website.
We encourage advisors to attend hands-on, instructor-led training to get up to speed quickly on the new advising notes features in KSIS and to become familiar with the new guidelines and best practices. Training is free, however registration is required. See the "Advising in KSIS" course on the KSIS Training page for details.