Starfish

What is Starfish?

Starfish is a retention solution program that helps to create an online student success environment, facilitating programs such as counseling and advising, tutoring, mentoring, and others–with the aim of improving student success and retention.

Starfish is a one-stop shop that allows students to schedule meetings with their instructors, advisors, or other services on campus; allows instructors, advisors, or employees to "flag" students when there is a concern or give students a "crown" when they do something positive. Using flags and crowns allows �鶹��Ƶ to see areas of concern for students so we can help them stay on path to graduating from �鶹��Ƶ.

Starfish Benefits

• Improve feedback and communications between faculty & Staff and Students.
• Access to more data, course activity, courses, grades, demographic data and more.
• Easily monitor student activity through tracking items.
• Raise a flag or crown at anytime during the semester
• Attendance Tracking (optional)
• Campus Wide Coordination of Student Support
• Online Appointment Scheduling (optional)
• Offer Special Recognition for Improvement or Good Work
• Alerts to Actionable Triggers for Warnings, Referrals, or "See Me"
• Simplifies the advising taking the process digital.
• All in one, extremely easy to use interface.

Get Started

Every user automatically has access to Starfish by navigating to starfish.gustavus.edu and logging in with your GAC Credentials.

Set up your Profile

• Click your name to open your Starfish Profile. (Top right corner)
• INSTITUTIONAL PROFILE: This is the information that students or advisors/instructors see, so please fill out as much as possible: Contact information, General Overview and Your Biography.
• APPOINTMENT PREFERENCES (Faculty and Staff only): Default Settings for appointment /office hours. You can set minimum appointment length, create your locations and set scheduling deadlines, configuring how far in advance students have to make their appointments.
• EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS: Notification and Summary settings. Set Appointment reminders and alerts, configure your summary email settings and check when you would like to be notified of tracking items changes.

Sync your Google Calendar to Starfish

1. Click your name to open the Starfish Profile. (Top right corner)
2. Click the Email Notification Tab
3. Check the option 'Read busy times from my external Google calendar'.
4. In a separate window, navigate to calendar.google.com and login with your GAC credentials.
5. Click the drop-down arrow to the right of you calendar name.
6. Click Calendar Settings
7. Click the iCal button next to 'Private Address'
8. Select and Copy (Control+C) the calendar URL.
9. Return to Starfish and paste (Control+V)in the box below 'Read busy times from my external Google calendar'.
10. Click Submit in the upper right.
11. Refresh the browser window to the calendar to update.

Set up Office Hours

Students can only schedule an appointment at times you indicate are available by adding office hours or group sessions. There are three ways you can add office hours: use the Office Hours Setup Wizard for quick initial setup, use the Add Office Hours button to add additional blocks at any time, or use the Scheduling Wizard to setup multiple office hour blocks that don’t follow a consistent recurrence.

Create an office hour block with the Office Hours Setup Wizard

The first time you log in to Starfish the Office Hours Setup Wizard will display if you have a role that can be a calendar owner. Use the wizard to quickly create appointment availability.

Complete the fields presented to specify:

• What day(s) do you have office hours? - check the boxes for each day.
• What time are your office hours? Enter a start and end time.
• Where are they? Select the Type of setting and enter the Details in the field provided (e.g. the building and room number of your office).
• If relevant, provide Instructions for students who make appointments with you.
• Click the Set up Office Hours button to save your office hours.

Add Office Hours

The Add Office Hours option is meant for setting up a recurring block of time on a regular pattern such as weekly or daily at a certain time. If you want to set up a group of Office Hours that are less structured, use the Scheduling Wizard.

1. Click the Add Office Hours button on your Starfish Home page orAppointments page. This opens the Add Office Hour form.
2. Enter a Title (name) for this block of time. Students will see this name when they view your calendar. The title will also help your or others managing your calendar identify different types of office hours.
3. Select What day(s)? and indicate any recurrence (e.g. Repeats every 1 week).
4. Use the What time? fields to enter the start and end time for the office hours.
5. Select Where? meetings will be held using the checkbox(es) next to your location(s). If you choose more than one location, the student will be able to choose his/her preferred location for the meeting. To add additional locations options, go to the Appointments Preference page ofyour profile.
6. Important Note:Once this office hour block is saved, you will not be able to edit the days on which the office hours occur or the type of frequency (e.g. weekly) but you will be able to edit how often the block recurs(e.g. 1 week vs. 2 weeks) and the specific times available.
7. Select the Office Hour Type for meetings you will take during this block.
   1. Select Scheduled And Walk-ins if you will be using the kiosk/waiting room features, and you plan to take walk-ins between appointments.
   2. Select Scheduled Appointments Only if you will not take any walk-ins.
   3. Select Walk-ins Only to show the time as available to students, but disallow anyone from making advance appointments
8. Select How long? meetings can be by selecting a minimum and maximum duration. If the minimum and maximum are identical, the student will not be given a choice of duration. Note that institution settings for specific appointment reasons, may override your settings.
9. If your role has permissions to add more than one Appointment Type, you will see checkboxes that allow you to select which types apply to this block of time. Appointment Types dictate:
   1. which students can schedule during this time (based on the role that connects you),
   2. the appointment reasons shown to students,
   3. which SpeedNotes will display, and
   4. which roles can view the appointment and its notes.
10. Use the Instructions box to enter instructions to students scheduling with you during this block of time. Instructions are required for blocks that allow Walk-ins.
11. Optionally, click the Start/End Date tab to set a time frame for a repeating office hour block. For the End Date, you may choose: Never, End of Term, on a specified date, or after a specified number of occurrences.
12. Click the Submit button at the top or bottom of the Add Office Hours form to save your Office Hour block

Raise a Flag

Faculty/Advisors and Employers have the ability to raise flags on students at any point in the semester.

1. Click Students on the top banner
2. There are many ways to search for your student (Course, Semester, Type in their name). Find the student or students you want to flag.
3. Check the box to the left of the student or students you want to flag.
4. Click Flag.
5. Select the flag type from the drop-down menu.
6. Select the Course that this flag is associated with (optional).
7. Type in your comments.
8. Click Save.

Clear a Flag

Faculty/Advisors and Employers have the ability to clear flags on students that they set.

1. Click Students on the top banner
2. Click Tracking on the top banner
3. Hover your mouse over the flag you wish to clear. A window will appear.
4. Click Clear.
5. Select reason for clearing the flag and add a comment.
6. Click Submit.

Raise a Crown

Faculty/Advisors and Employers have the ability to raise a crown on students at any point in the semester.

1. Click Students on the top banner
2. There are many ways to search for your student (Course, Semester, Type in their name). Find the student or students you want to crown.
3. Check the box to the left of the student or students you want to crown.
4. Click Crowns.
5. Select the crown type from the drop-down menu.
6. Select the Course that this crown is associated with (optional).
7. Type in your comments.
8. Click Save.