[ARCHIVED] Dropout Detective

[christisond]

Our campus is looking to implement Dropout Detective and Instructor Insight from AspirEDU, which links into Canvas.

Has anyone used these tools? How was the implementation experience and how is their customer support specifically,

Thanks

Dominic Christison, Director of Academic Excellence/Distance Learning at OSU- Institute of Technology

[eprevost]

We added Dropout Detective at the same time that our campus moved to Canvas and the two together are so powerful in supporting our work with students.  Integration is seamless.  We serve a lot of first generation college students and students under-prepared with college-level learning and self-management skills.  We often found ourselves finding students were in trouble when it was too late to provide support.  With Dropout Detective we have everything we need at our fingertips to identify and guide students toward more successful academic patterns.  Our student success staff use it to track progress, our faculty use it to post alerts to academic coaches and advisors, our early intervention specialist uses the reporting features to identify students who are consistently missing classes. 

Every year the team at Aspiredu add new features to meet our needs.  They are so responsive when we have questions.  I don't know how we'd do our work without it.

[smoore2]

@christisondThese are both fantastic tools! We implemented them both a few years ago and they have proved their worth over and over again.  We use Instructor Insight on a regular basis and incorporate it into our faculty expectations and peer reviews.  I would be happy to connect with you if you have any further questions or need to actually "see" how this works live.  I just love this product to much.

Also, I have never been so amazed at a company's personal service and support.  This is by far the BEST company I've had the pleasure to work with.

[christisond]

Thanks so much, I'll certainly get in touch if I have any further questions,

Best,

Dominic Christison

[dholik]

We have Instructor Insight and Dropout Detective, we've been using II for a while and are quite happy with it. DD for us is new and we're going through a pilot right now but so far we're getting good results. The implementation was quick and easy without issue. The support is also great because they're quick to respond and knowledgeable about their system and how best to use it.

[Allison_Ogrady]

Hello @christisond ! At the University of Denver, we have been using Dropout Detective and Instructor Insight for about 5 years or so. These tools have been critical to student success as our Advisors monitor the Dropout Detective Dashboard daily to see who needs outreach and resources, while the Learning Experience Design Team monitors faculty engagement to ensure that faculty are meeting our expectations. We have been very satisfied with the tools and there is no other way for us to easily monitor the volume of classes that we offer. Happy to speak more about this, but I have been pleased with AspirEDU's responsiveness and customer service. 

[RachelSalmon]

Hi @Allison_Ogrady I know this thread is old but I wanted to see if it would be possible to ask you a couple questions about your use of Dropout Detective at University of Denver.  Were advisors monitoring their students across all of their courses? We have implemented DD in a way where advisors are able to see their students across all of their classes which required giving the advisors account level admin access (we created roles with basically no permissions).  Did you have to do this with your implementation or were advisors not able to see across all classes?  If it's easier/better to reach out by email, my email is rsalmon@widener.edu Thank you for your time and knowledge!

[fabianm]

@christisond We have been using Dropout Detective and Instructor Insight for several years. The implementation was very smooth. The apps are easy to set up, and the AspirEDU team walks you through each step. Once the apps are installed, it can take some time for the data to populate. We implemented just before the start of the fall semester, so we had to wait until we had some courses start to see the apps in action. 

Dropout Detective has been great for our retention specialist, our center for student success, our coaches, and our academic advisors. It has helped us communicate and coordinate outreach to struggling students. 

The team at AspirEDU is fantastic to work with! They build a personal relationship with their clients, and they are very responsive to questions, suggestions, and requests. They also offer regular training so that your team can get the most out of their products. The support is excellent!

[DeletedUser]

We are a secondary school of ~3,000 students and we use Dropout Detective.  One thing I love is the ability to go to the print menu and select "with assignments" to see a students missing work.

One quirk with Dropout Detective (at least a quirk I haven't found a way around) is that it is instructor-facing and you'll need to go in to a course to get in to the Dropout Detective menu.  Once you are in, you can access the rest of a student's courses, so if you are an advisor/counselor, it seems like there should be an easier way to navigate.

Also, because it is instructor-facing, all their streamlined data isn't available to students, which seems like a missed opportunity.  When we asked about it, they said they weren't in a position to field support requests from customers at the student level.

[Chris_Munzo]

Hi, there!  I'm sorry that I can't tell who you are by your screen name or which of our clients you are with, or I would message you privately.  Dropout Detective has two different views:  One at the course level for instructors, then one at the account level for advisors, administrators, sports coaches and others.  If you have an account level role in Canvas, you'll be able to get directly to a dashboard of your assigned students and be able to see all classes and grades on one screen.  You do not have to go through a course to do this.  Your Canvas admin should be able to help you.  Or feel free to reach out to me directly.

(FYI -- Dropout Detective is branded as "Grade Guardian" for our K-12 clients.  Same system, different name.)

[Jeff_F]

We have been able to create such dashboards (and so much more) using Canvas Data. If anyone needs ideas on how to do so using Canvas Data, please feel free to touch base.  

[canvas_admin]

@Jeff_F I don't know if you're still around but we have DD and II, and I'm interested in combining that with using Canvas Data.  If you don't want to respond here, you can e-mail me at canvas.admin@rts.edu

Thanks,

Mark James
Reformed Theological Seminary