FA25 Course Selection Retro by Steven Mockler

Key Milestones and Events

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 13:39:22 UTC

February: Individual Provisioning Proposal submitted & work begins with tech
April 22: New Tool Launches
- Maren attended SOA touchbases
- Addition of Academics Related items to checklist
- Automations based on transcript status
- Better tracking in Salesforce
- Launch new, escalated advising model
- June 23: Automated Placement Updates begin
June 30: 80% of eligible students register for courses
- 93% of students eligible to register
July 18: Course Selection Closes

I have a thought

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 14:08:34 UTC

a really, really good thought

2025-08-14 14:15:46 UTC

Time period extended to about 3 months from 2 weeks

Helped estimate number of sections

diannalampitt — 2025-08-14 14:15:50 UTC

Having the numbers earlier helped with section estimation

Having students complete the math placement exam before selecting courses

2025-08-14 14:15:51 UTC

colleendutton — 2025-08-14 14:15:56 UTC

Extending the course reg window was a game changer!

Math Placement

diannalampitt — 2025-08-14 14:16:33 UTC

The new question regarding STEM and pushing people to take the Math placement helped so much. Best change so far!

PRG - requiring an AAU primary/alternative on the course selection form

2025-08-14 14:16:39 UTC

2025-08-14 14:16:52 UTC

Starting earlier before the bulk of waitlist pulls, students had more certainty of what attending Verto would look like , similar concept for payments

2025-08-14 14:17:10 UTC

Course selection as a checklist item

2025-08-14 14:17:38 UTC

The framing of course selection this year was amazing for SOAs and having students complete other required materials. I presented it as a step-by-step in order to get to course selection (unofficial transcript, access to Canvas, math placement, THEN course selection)

Academic Advising

2025-08-14 14:17:48 UTC

Real time answers to student questions alleivated uncertainty around selecting courses

Colleen's weekly updates on completion

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 14:18:02 UTC

Colleen's weekly updates helped to show progress over this period. Helped to know that the process was moving

colleendutton — 2025-08-14 14:18:14 UTC

The updates to Course Selection and student permissions made the tool easy to use.

Course Selection Dashboard in SF

2025-08-14 14:18:55 UTC

Helped to plan sections more accurately

Students enjoyed office hours

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 14:19:02 UTC

Students appreciated the office hours that AAHQ offered, as shown by survey completion.

Great training opportunity for Colleen, Israel, and Hillary

2025-08-14 14:19:33 UTC

Ability to have academics hold office hours and advising. Even if it seems only 10% utilized, 10% take 90 % of the time. This is also the same time period SOA's are doing passports and visas, and SOA is the only team in the org that does that service. If we have to spend 90% of our time with 10% of the students who have a problem that is not "our department", it takes away from our ability to focus on our "key/core" item that nobody else helps with but is absolutely critical for students getting onsite

Academic Office Hours + Extended Window

2025-08-14 14:20:22 UTC

This gave students more time and information to confidently select courses. Less frantic students contacting staff that may not know the intricacies of academics/their channel school/majors

Tech making form more mobile friendly

2025-08-14 14:20:30 UTC

Maren

2025-08-14 14:20:31 UTC

Maren joining SOA, answering in slack, looking into cases not giving canned responses. She is truly the best !

colleendutton — 2025-08-14 14:20:56 UTC

Interdepartmental TEAMWORK worked!

Academic Advising & Office hours

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 14:26:11 UTC

Critical to help give students insight into the "study" part of "Study Abroad." Helps to realize our value proposition of high support throughout the entire process, pre-departure to post-Verto

colleendutton — 2025-08-14 14:29:30 UTC

Too many methods of communication for questions. (eg. Chatter, Mogli, email, Slack.....)

No Melt

diannalampitt — 2025-08-14 14:29:42 UTC

London had very little to no melt this year which effect our course planning. We also had a lot of late additions which do not help when we are at max capacity in a lot of the classes which already have a lot of sections.

2025-08-14 14:30:35 UTC

Students missing that the CReg Guides outline transferability to all courses, not just those on offer in their location

Primary Selections

diannalampitt — 2025-08-14 14:31:06 UTC

As an ADAM I underestimated the alternate selections and over estimated the primary selections that hindered my section estimation.

2025-08-14 14:31:33 UTC

Minor but always comes up (and continues to come up now) : courses listed for specific schools or majors are "recommended", not required, but students (and parents) feel it is required and necessary.

2025-08-14 14:31:39 UTC

I believe this is user error on the part of the student, but I'm not totally sure how visible it is to the students in the form that they also need to select alternative courses to be able to submit

Budget Blocker

diannalampitt — 2025-08-14 14:32:02 UTC

Having to average 16 students a class when planning sections when I have 3 classes that don't hold 16 students.

2025-08-14 14:32:16 UTC

Lots of good resources and continuous improvement in that area. How can we get them in front of students and families in a way that people digest? The resources are great, people don't always understand how to use them

2025-08-14 14:32:24 UTC

Lack of visibility for students that they are ranking their course selections

Lack of integration in Canvas

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 14:33:14 UTC

Enrolling in PACE still dependent on manual enrollment, and slows down students ability to complete things in a timely manner. Esp. critical for those late add students

When students change their emails, not automatically changed in Canvas

Turnaround time getting students in Canvas and processing placement exams

2025-08-14 14:33:16 UTC

(processing placement exams already solved with the automated uploader!)

Additional Courses

2025-08-14 14:34:15 UTC

Students have to click "agree" on the tab to see if there are any additional courses to choose from. Not the clearest UX

Manual Program updates

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 14:34:31 UTC

Israel had a lot of editing and updating to partner records across the semester

Need to highlight the changes in student population

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 14:42:14 UTC

Ship of Theseus problem, the class stays the same, but could be all different students all different interests

Steph and Jodi working to better surface information to onsite teams

Banner IDs

2025-08-14 14:42:58 UTC

Missing IDs, having to chase them down weekly. Unclear ownership.

5 Primary Selections

diannalampitt — 2025-08-14 14:46:32 UTC

Ensure students have to select 5 primaries. And no duplicates. EG ENGL 1112 and ENGL1114. They will be in one or the there but reviewing the numbers tells a different story.

2025-08-14 14:47:00 UTC

Hide course information tab in MyVerto, until schedules are released. Students thought Add/Drop was where course selection took place.

colleendutton — 2025-08-14 14:47:10 UTC

Consolidate or centralize all relevant data for students. Too much in too many places.

2025-08-14 14:47:19 UTC

I look forward to the case mgmt system in SF for escalated or challenging cases

Basket of Courses based on program/area of study

stevenmockler — 2025-08-14 14:47:53 UTC

Creating a wizard that helps build students selections based on these criteria so that they already have a basket of courses selected when they open the tool. Based on how full their basket is, they can either add things to it or change things out

Close course selection earlier

diannalampitt — 2025-08-14 14:48:09 UTC

Close course selection a week earlier to help onsite staff prepare for number of sections. Faculty get antsy when they want to get a sense of section numbers but we haven't closed course selection yet to help them get a better idea. I know this is hard with AP scores.

2025-08-14 14:48:10 UTC

While helpful that SOAs are notified via chatter why transcripts/prior learning credits are denied, it would be amazing if that could be added into the denial email as a note.

2025-08-14 14:48:28 UTC

If we continue to use rankings in schedule building and audits. Make it clearer on the Course Selection form how to rank and what rankings the student is selecting (e.g., number their selections)

2025-08-14 14:49:24 UTC

We have lots of great resources, some fun videos (shorts) to understand how to use the resources and steps . Large documents are intimidating for people and people's lives are busy.....but they will watch a 1 -2 minute video

Automate enrollment in PACE

2025-08-14 14:50:35 UTC

SOA academics training

2025-08-14 14:50:41 UTC

I don't know how this would work but for example we had an SOA this year who was trained to also assist the SFS department with more permissions/access/visibility. As Verto gets bigger/staff size increases having an SOA with less students who can also help with academic advising sessions may be beneficial

2025-08-14 14:53:14 UTC

I don't know how to verbalize this or what specific changes I want haha, but the academic accommodations process is a headache/something we don't have visibility or training on

2025-08-14 14:57:30 UTC

Some students can only physically send an official transcript. While we don't want more students than needed to mail physically, more visibility on where exactly this needs to be sent if they fall into this category

2025-08-19 08:16:18 UTC

I still think we should be working on proposing tracks and limiting student choice a little bit. Most universities have set tracks for freshmen.

Eligibility changes

2025-08-19 08:19:58 UTC

Find a way to notify ADAMs of elig changes that lead to changes in course sel.