NOTE: This message was sent on Monday, April 6, 2020, to all instructors teaching undergraduate courses for the Spring 2020 term.

We’re very thankful for your expedient adaptation to alternative and online means of instruction.  As you are transitioning to these new environments, it’s important to acknowledge that our students are doing so as well.  Due to the many challenges they may be experiencing in their lives, their capacity to engage in coursework and be successful academically may be compromised.

With interest in providing timely outreach to students who are not participating in coursework or whom have not shown engagement since before Spring Break, we are deploying a new Progress Report campaign using the Navigate platform.  A new report reason entitled “Limited or no course engagement since Spring Break” has been added to the platform for your use if you have students who have not logged into Canvas or are not showing signs of class participation.

This new progress report reason will be available the next two weeks, until April 16th. Once submitted, the newly established Persistence Action Team will receive a notification and will develop an outreach plan to the student as appropriate. As your contact and communication to students in these instances is critical, the Persistence Action Team will use comments and details you provide in their efforts to triage needs of these students of concern.

In order to make use of this report option, you will once again receive an email from Navigate with a link to complete reports for students in your course. You will need to choose Yes in the “At Risk to Fail Your Class” area to display the new report reason. Please note that you can also submit other report reasons and details at this time if necessary.

Your efforts to reach out to students at this time is invaluable, and we’re hopeful that this short term campaign will allow us provide just-in-time outreach to students who may be particularly vulnerable to the new circumstances we’re experiencing.