Have you used Starfish with Canvas?

[khimmerick]

I'm interested in using Starfish/Hobson's early alert with Canvas. So I'm looking for any feedback from existing users? It has a good review in the Instructure EduApp, so I'm thinking someone had a good experience with it. Any feedback or suggestions would be great! Thank you! Kristen

[kona]

 @khimmerick ​, We haven't used Starfish, but we looked at it when deciding on which early alert system to go with. What we ended up going with was dropout detective​.  @Chris_Munzo ​ could tell you more about it if you're interested, but we love it and have seen a significant increase in retention and student success (getting an A,B, or C in the class). I also did a presentation on this at InstructureCon last year - https://vimeo.com/100597688

You'll probably get more responses to this question in the Canvas Admins​ group so I'm going to go ahead and move it over there if that's ok with you!

[khimmerick]

Than k you for your response! I hadn't heard of Dropout Detective but will get a demo of it as soon as I can. I'm trying to find time to watch the presentation.

Thank you again!!!

[kona]

No problem  @khimmerick ! Is it ok for me to move this question over to the Canvas Admins​ group?

[khimmerick]

of course!

[khimmerick]

PS, Barrett from Canvas suggested that I post this here.

[khimmerick]

Thank you, I did get a demo of Dropout Detective and it was great. I'm trying to solve one problem, which is to let the Home School Advisers of our students (who are from 40 different universities in mixed cohorts) follow their progress only.  It is a similar requirement to what you might have at your school, with advisers only seeing the status of their advisees. Anyway, it's a work in progress at this point to determine the best path.

Thanks for all of your feedback and ideas on DD and SF!

[gasellc]

Hello,

I'd like to bump this conversation up. Are there groups using Starfish with Canvas that are willing to share their experiences? We are starting an implementation for fall 2016. Thank you!

[sillsjo]

We are also looking into Starfish and would love to hear from others who are using it.

[eric_amtsberg]

I installed Starfish on a Blackboard system last year. We never made it out of the testing/evaulation phase. We ended up not using Starfish for two reasons, staff adoption and technical issues with Starfish.  Our staff were fully ingrained on a system of Excel reports and we didn't have the motivators to get them to change their existing process.  Where the basic functions of Starfish worked beautifully, getting custom alerts configured out of the system was extremely difficult.  Getting granular alerts out of the system was also difficult.

[eric_amtsberg]

I did really like the scheduling feature in Starfish. Faculty and tutors could set availability in Outlook and it would populate down to the Starfish registration options.

[khimmerick]

Thanks Eric! I know the feeling of people not wanting to give up their spreadsheets.

[awilliams]

 @khimmerick ​, we are using Starfish as of this semester. Being brand new the adoption rate is still quite low so I don't have much specifics I can add at the moment but if you have a particular question I can try to get you the answer. From what I can tell the integration has gone pretty smoothly from a technical point of view except the course navigation item shows up even on public courses. There have been some complaints by faculty that the system requires them to fill in information (like office hours) when they don't actually have specific office hours (online classes). Anyway, let me know what you'd like to know and I'll try to do some research for you.

[lames]

We have integrated Starfish at UMW and it works very well WITH THE EXCEPTION of cross-listed courses. We are not able to pull student data from any secondary section, only the original. In other words, if you have three sections cross-listed into one course, you will only be able to gain student data from the 01 section, not the 02, 03.... . This is the same for cross-listing courses with different names. I have reported this to the engineers and worked with them several times on this issue but it remains unresolved. They have confirmed Starfish does not currently have that capability but will consider it for future development. All other aspects of the program have gone well and we continue to use it despite the significant amount of missing data.

[eric_amtsberg]

Lisa

I'm just curious, for which user groups do you use Starfish?  Who gets notifications?  I'm most curious about the advisor piece of it.

Go Mary Wash!

[khimmerick]

I am surprised about the cross listing not working. We don't cross list, though, so it won't be an issue for it. Thank you for posting!

[dorgant]

Hi Lisa,

I was just wondering if you knew if cross-listed courses are now supported? We are looking into Starfish but have many cross-listed sections this could be an issue. 

thanks,

Tom 

[bneporadny]

Hi Tom,

We just started using starfish‌ about 5 months ago now and have some courses that are cross-listed. What questions do you have concerning cross-listing courses in starfish?  

Brian

[dorgant]

Hi Brain, 

Thanks for the reply, in Lisa's message she said that they couldn't pull student data from any secondary section, only the original. We have a lot of cross-listed courses and wanted to see if that was still the case, I'm hoping not since her OP is from 2015. I'm just wondering if there are any issues with Starfish not being able to pull information from each of the cross listed sections?

thanks,

Tom 

[bneporadny]

Hi Tom,

Unfortunately that is still the case.  I believe that it's because in the enrollment file you have to send up what starfish‌ calls a course_setction_integration_id which is the SIS ID of the course that the student is actually enrolled in.  

I am working on updating the query that I use to pull the enrollment information that is sent up to starfish‌ so that it can determine if the course has been cross-listed‌ and if it has use the SIS ID of the parent course as the course_section_integration_id instead of the SIS ID of the course the student was enrolled in prior to the cross-listing.

By doing this I believe starfish‌ will be able to pick up the grades of the course for the student. 

I'm sure this isn't what you wanted to hear, but it is still a limitation with Starfish.

Brian

[dorgant]

Thanks Brian, that's what I was looking for. I really appreciate the quick reply!

Tom

[khimmerick]

Hi, we never received any support and didn’t end up using Starfish. Thanks

[kona]

 @bneporadny , thanks for providing this information. We are just getting ready to start the on boarding process with Starfish so any information about how it works (or doesn’t) with Canvas is appreciated. 

We don’t technically cross-list our courses, but do combine multiple sections (done on the back end of Canvas) into one course, so I’m not sure if or how this will impact us.  @James ‌ can you tell if this might be a problem for us as well?

Thanks!

Kona

[bneporadny]

Kona & James,

I will be out at InstructureCon next week.  Let's meet up and we can talk about Starfish and the implementation process. 

Brian

[kona]

 @bneporadny , that would be great!! Will you be at Hack night? That might be a good chance to connect. 

Kona

[bneporadny]

Kona,

Yeah sounds like a planning stopping by Hack night anyways. 

Brian

[kona]

Nice to have met you at InstCon!

[bneporadny]

Great meeting you as well Kona. Let me know if you have any questions with the implementation of starfish.

[kona]

Definitely will! Thanks!

[powellj]

HELP! Desperately looking to talk to other admins who use Starfish integration with Canvas. This is our first semester running Canvas exclusively (just completed a year long migration from Blackboard) and I've hit a snag.

I'm having an issue getting the courses listed in Starfish to pull data from Canvas. Starfish support has been less than stellar, as usual. Would very much be interested in how other schools handle this process.

Thanks!

[bgibson]

Sorry, I do not have an answer to your question, but I just had an instructor ask if there was some way to feed the Canvas Attendance Module data into Starfish.  He said the Attendance Module was very easy to use.  *I told him I would ask both in the Canvas Community and pass along up via Starfish.  **I'm pretty sure that with the Canvas API there would be a way, but I'm not the programmer to do it;-)

[powellj]

Hi Bill,

There are reports that you can run for Roll Call which output into CSV, if I'm not mistaken, however when we looked into it, we were looking into a more automated solution, as the reports must be run manually via the GUI. I can't say with 100% certainty (I would double check with your CSM), but I believe that the data for the Roll Call tool in Canvas is not accessible otherwise. We are looking for an attendance replacement to get away from Starfish and wanted to look into using Roll Call in Canvas since it works much, much better. We inquired about having access to that attendance data through Canvas Data, but were told that the attendance data is not available in Canvas Data because Roll Call is actually a third-party application (such as Speedgrader). They were hopeful that they could work something out in the future, but that could take a long time. Again, best to check with your CSM to make sure nothing has changed since we discussed it last year.

Jacci

[Chris_Munzo]

 @powellj ​ -- I've just written a blog post that introduces automation into Roll Call reporting.  I would appreciate your feedback.  Thanks!

Easier Access to Data from Roll Call

[aldriche]

I am also interested how large universities are using Starfish with Canvas.  Specifically, the integration between Starfish and Canvas.  Our nightly Canvas imports into Starfish will begin at 2am, but they won't finish (typically) until ~3pm the same day.

With Blackboard, the integration was so much faster.  We have over 3,000 Canvas course sites and feeding data into Starfish from Canvas has been frustrating. 

How is everyone else doing this?Thanks!

[gasellc]

Hi Eric,

We started on an implementation path between Canvas and Starfish and have run up against a number of issues. I'd actually be interested in speaking with you in more detail, so we can compare notes!

[aldriche]

Hi Crystal -

Sorry, but I just now saw this message.  Feel free to call me: 573-882-6899.

Thanks!

[rconroy]

If there are any notes either of you ( @aldriche  or gasellc) are willing to share, let me know! Our institution is also looking at Starfish and it'd be great to get some user info from those who already have it integrated. 

[bneporadny]

Hey  @aldriche ‌ or gasellc,

Do either you have any updates you can share on how the implementation we went with Starfish and how it has helped your institution with student retention?

Thanks!

[leturno]

I'd like to bump this conversation as there must certainly be updates to the Starfish and Canvas integration since 2017. 

My understanding is there is a Starfish LTI for Canvas that 'data pumps' updates to Starfish. It also places single sign on links within Canvas to Starfish. Is that all there is?

We are about to implement Starfish. Are there any 'gotchas' or 'I wish I knew that before I started..'  advice from current Canvas and Starfish users?

Scott Leturno

Moraine Valley Community College

Palos Hills, IL 60465

[bneporadny]

Hi Scott,

What you stated is correct, there is an LTI with Starfish to Canvas where you can SSO into Starfish without leaving the Canvas environment, as well as it does pull in course information like grades and logging in information. 

What you  may not be aware of is that you also have to have their "data pump" application installed locally so that it can pull the CSV files you have to create from data out of your SIS and have to put in a specific file location so that "data pump" then will pull on a nightly basis to import into Starfish.

They do not offer any API's like Canvas and therefore if you need to make changes it can be a rather lengthy wait time to see things change in Starfish. They do offer an option within Starfish where you can kick off their import process immediately, but I have found that that "immediately" process can take ours to actually run and then complete. 

I have found the documentation not be very helpful and poorly written. Especially compared to what we are used to with Canvas and the great job the Documentation team does.

The one thing that seems to be used here is for students to be able to make appointments with an instructor during their office hours. But note while this works great for students there are many gotchas and hoops to jump through to get this setup correctly. 

Hope this helps.

Brian