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The Student Success Plan

The open source SSP case management software supports a holistic coaching and counseling model which expedites proactive interventions for students in need. SSP is designed to improve retention, academic performance, persistence, graduation rates, and time to degree. Through counseling, web-based support systems, and proactive intervention techniques, students are identified, supported, and monitored. SSP can be used with any targeted population of students, such as at-risk students or athletes. SSP is a multi-tiered system, with strong security controls to allow many different college roles to work with the student, while maintaining student privacy. The software provides case management tools: Student Intake, Action Plan, Journal, History, Comprehensive Referral Guide, and Early Alert. Data is collected and analyzed to provide reports that allow decisions to be made about future efforts.

Read the EDUCAUSE Review article by SSP Project Director Russ Little.

Read about new features in SSP 1.2!

Open Source Software

SSP became open source software through a Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) grant. Partners from NGLC include CCSSO, EDUCAUSE, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, iNACOL, and The League for Innovation. Institutions select open source software for its many inherent advantages, including control, reduced cost, choices, and community.

The Student Success Plan Tools

  • Student Intake: This multi-page, web-based form facilitates an intake process to help intervention staff understand the individual student and recommend services that the student needs.
  • Action Plan: Coaches and Intervention staff collaborate with students to create actionable and measurable plans to address challenges that students are facing. These plans connect students to resources available at the institution and in the community. Intervention staff can view students' profiles, intake status, and early alerts to help them create, track and manage Action Plans that are unique to each student.
  • Journal: The Journal is used to record all contact with students. It includes journal notes from other staff assigned to provide services to students as well as other department-generated student information. It is also secured by role to protect student privacy. To make electronic record keeping faster and easier to track, the Journal allows configurable predefined entries to match specific processes, or departments.
  • History: This tool provides “one-click” access for employees supporting students to view all concurrent or historical interactions with a specific student, based on the users access level, and what they “need to know”.
  • Comprehensive Referral Guide: This shared knowledge base of support offerings, referrals, tools, and resources, allows coaches, counselors, and advisors to identify the best available options for students, and create a plan of action for them to use for the student.
  • Early Alert: Faculty and staff identify student challenges and send early alerts with their reasons and recommendations to engage the appropriate intervention staff. The Early Alert tool provides a feedback loop to the originator to encourage long-term engagement.

Documentation On-Demand

        SSP Feature Brochure
        Unicon Services for SSP
        New Features in SSP 1.2

Why Adopt SSP?

There are many advantages to implementing SSP. They include:

  • Improve student retention and success
  • Increase graduation rates
  • Implement a systematic, comprehensive counseling and intervention process
  • Implement an early alert intervention process
  • Develop and maintain referral sources for addressing student challenges and opportunities
  • Remove silos between offices that support students
  • Create self help tools to connect students to resources that help them overcome challenges to their success

History of SSP

SSP is mature technology that has been in use for 10 years. It has been recognized with 11 national awards, and the project has received grant funding, including the latest grant from NGLC.

SSP was developed by Sinclair Community College. Sinclair’s data indicates that students who are involved in SSP are more likely to return the next term; they are more likely to complete more courses successfully; they have higher GPAs and they are more likely to be enrolled two years later.

According to Sinclair statistics from 2005 – 2011, students using SSP were five times more likely to graduate. For quarter to quarter retention rates (Fall ’10 to Winter ’11), transitioned SSP students (students who have completed the SSP process) had a 37% higher rate of retention compared to students who qualified for the program but did not participate and a 26% higher rate of retention than students not designated “at risk”.
 

Learn more about SSP.

Unicon Services for SSP

  • Processes Discovery
  • Deployment (installation, technical configuration, and branding)
  • Integration (SIS, LMS, other)
  • Custom Development
  • Training
  • Support
  • Hosting

Read more about Unicon services for SSP.

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