We've collected a variety of options to fit your schedule and needs
Currently, we offer recommendations to external resources, found in the training Carmen shell. Additionally, the NACADA webinar series offered to all academic advisors in conjunction with ACADAOS is dedicated to navigating complex conversations and interpersonal skills, and would be a perfect opportunity to practice applying theory to practice.
Web sites
This asynchronous training content will serve to supplement the one-on-one and group trainings offered by your unit and the Central Support for Academic Advising team to provide you a high-level overview of the field of academic advising as a profession, a more detailed understanding of academic advising at Ohio State, advising tools and technologies, and where/how to find student data.
List of Campus Resources are available in both the training module in Carmen and the Advising Guidebook.
Here is some more information that will be useful in your professional development for documenting your many competencies, especially related to following university policy and working with our diverse student body. Be sure to track these activities for the ACADAOS Professional Development awards.
STEP UP Against Sexual Misconduct
It's important for everyone to know how to identify, disrupt and report sexual misconduct. This training reviews how to recognize sexual misconduct (including sexual assault or harassment, relationship violence and stalking), explains the impact of sexual misconduct and provides tools to address, disrupt and report inappropriate and harmful behavior.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs and activities. All public and private schools, school districts, colleges and universities receiving federal funds must comply with Title IX. Title IX extends to claims of discrimination based on sex, gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.
See also Buckeyes ACT and the Civil Rights Compliance Office (including Title IX)
Other Buckeye Learn trainings you may want to request:
- Institutional Data Policy: The course will describe your role and responsibilities in preserving security and confidentiality while sharing and storing this information.
- Campus Security Authority: this short video helps Campus Security Authorities understand their role and responsibilities under the Clery Act.
- Ethics and You: Learn about why Ohio Ethics laws is important to you, conflicts of interest and prohibited activities.
- Documenting Academic Support Interactions: This online course is to review best practices in the maintenance of advising and other student-support-interaction records. It applies the information you learned in FERPA to the protection of sensitive student support information.
Opportunities for further training and development reside multiple places at the university, and different opportunities may make more sense for some advising duties than others. Here is a list of suggestions:
Advising Skills/Knowledge:
- Collaborative Academic Appointment Documentation: Collaborative documentation is a process of asking a student to be engaged in the writing of their appointment summary while being guided by the staff person. This means that students have input into what pieces of the appointment are the most worth noting, and planning next steps for future action.
Teaching/Instruction:
- Teaching and Learning Resource Center: Explore available programming for educators to enhance their teaching skills and support student success. These opportunities can support educators to expand their use of evidence-informed instructional strategies, effectively leverage educational technology, support student success, and more.
- Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning: The purpose of the institute is to integrate and enhance teaching and learning efforts at Ohio State. The institute both coordinates and leads current and new activities focused on improving the learning experience for our students.
Recruiting/Outreach:
- Youth Activities & Programs: The policy provides guidance for those who are involved in programs or activities with children (minors); the training is a critical step in understanding the varied aspects of this policy and is required for those with care, custody, or control of minors.
Advising Technology and Tools
OnCourse, the OSU instance of EAB's Navigate platform, is designed to help students better connect with the faculty and staff who support you to reach your academic goals at Ohio State. Used across all OSU campuses and colleges, this platform manages appointment scheduling, communication, and notes/record keeping for student support interventions.
The Advising Report is a summary of a student's academic statistics. While it looks like a transcript, it is not. It provides advisor a term-by-term review of courses taken/attempted and grades earned, so the advisor can quickly scan, for example, the number of times a student repeats a course or fails a course. Advising reports are also used during the term academic status review (i.e., the review process for warning, probation, and dismissal) and are obtained via a batch process.
Additionally, the Advising Report will display this helpful information:
- Displays the student's preferred name
- Test results: ACT/SAT, English placement, Math placement, Foreign Language placement
- Previous institutions attended (it will also indicate if a degree was earned)
- Term-by-term and summary of GPA and Deficiency Points
- Term-by-term display of academics status (warning, probation, dismissal, reinstatement)
- Dean's list
- A summary of academic program(s) (college) and plan(s) (major, minor, AOI, etc.)
Access
Access to the Advising Report is granted along with SIS.
Training
Advising units generally describe this document (and its use) during their on-boarding process. There is now training on this topic available through the Central Support for Academic Advising in the Office of Undergraduate Education, please reach out to advising@osu.edu to find out when the next session is planned. Additionally, Kris Wethington.2 put together documentation (these are updated from prior versions):
Helpful Tips
- Most of the data on the Advising Report is a snapshot of the student's data in the SIS as of the exact moment you run it. Ultimately it is outdated as soon as it is done running. With regards to program/plan/sub-plan data in the summary section, there are rules that determine when this data gets associated with the term summary data (this data is located on the left side of the report) on the advising report when it runs. Essentially, a student's CPP stack data will display for a particular term when the change was made on the first day (or before) each term.
CollegeSource online is a tool advisors user to obtain course descriptions for the courses a student is seeking take at another institution and transfer to Ohio State, or attempting to apply, after the course has already transferred, to his/her degree program.
Access
No need to request access; it's a public resource.
Training
TES (Transfer Evaluation System) is another CollegeSource product that does require a log-on. It has more versatile search functions for looking up course descriptions than the standard CollegeSource product.
Access to TES is granted when you register for your TransferologyLab account or by emailing registrar@osu.edu.
TransferologyLab (a CollegeSource product) is a free web-based tool for transfer information. Using this system, you can obtain accurate information about how courses will transfer and apply to a degree program. You will need an account to use this tool. There is a student version called Transferology.
Access
For Advisors: www.transferologylab.com
In order to access this tool you must, first, request an account. The request is sent to the Office of the University Registrar (registrar@osu.edu), who will notify you within 24-hours once your account has been created.
Training
The Central Support for Academic Advising in the Office of Undergraduate Education includes a demo on how to use TransferologyLab in the Transfer Credit training they offer to new advisors. They also have pre-recorded demo videos available upon request. Email advising@osu.edu if you want to know the date of the next training or to get access to the video demos.
One of the most important tools students and advisors use in degree planning is the Degree Audit, which also includes the Transfer Credit Report. A student can use Buckeye Link to run a degree audit, which provides an evaluation of how all the courses they have completed are used to meet both general and major area course requirements. An advisor can also run this report using Buckeye Link, but most often run the report through the SIS from a student's Student Services Center (Student).
Access
Advising units are responsible for requesting access for new advisors.
Training
- The Degree Audit and the Transfer Credit Report will be covered through your advising unit's training plans.
- OUR has training guides for advisors and for students: http://registrar.osu.edu/degree_audit/index.asp.
- the Central Support for Academic Advising in the Office of Undergraduate Education also offers trainings on the degree audit (together with the advising report) and on transfer credit for new advisors. Email advising@osu.edu to learn when the next training is scheduled.
Helpful Tips
- Default programs are updated each morning, usually before 9 am. If you make a change to a students primary program in the SIS, today, for example, the Degree Audit WILL NOT reflect this change until approximately 9 am the following day.
- Minors are updated instantly. If you add (or delete) a minor in the SIS, today, for example, the Degree Audit WILL reflect the change if you immediately re-run the Degree Audit on the same day. The same goes for course adjustments, grade changes, etc.
- Transfer credit is handled through the Degree Audit, and then the transfer evaluators post from the Degree Audit to the SIS. As an example, let's say that a departmental representative faxes a request to the Transfer Credit Center to change a course from Chem G000.01 to Chem 1100. The transfer evaluator makes the change in the Degree Audit and it immediately is reflected on the Degree Audit and Transfer Credit Report when you run another report. However, the SIS is updated around 4:30 in the afternoon each day, so in practice, the impacts of posting/changing transfer credit (e., change in rank, etc.) won't be reflected until the following day. This process is true, both for changes in evaluation and new credits being posted.
Beginning in the 2024/2025 academic year the university began it's implementation of Buckeye Degree Planner (BDP), a platform with enhanced functionality to plan students' future semesters of coursework in addition to auditing students' progress. This system includes reporting features that will enable academic units to do timely outreach to students with progress concerns.
Helpful Tips
- Information is updated nightly at 7pm. If you make a change to a students primary program in the SIS, today, for example, the Degree Audit WILL NOT reflect this change until the following day.
- If students are adding classes in SIS, they can also add them to the "Planned" portion of BDP to see what degree requirements those courses fulfill.
- For a short time, transfer credit will continue to post to the Degree Audit System. As implementation advances, this will move to BDP as well.
Ohio State's current Student Information System (SIS) is powered by PeopleSoft. Implemented in 2006, our PeopleSoft instance has many custom features as well as several helpful data queries that advisors can run. The Central Support for Academic Advising in the Office of Undergraduate Education offers training on the most commonly used features of the system for new advisors, as well as regular updates about additional features throughout the academic year.
Access
If you are a new advisor looking for access to the SIS, please contact your supervisor. Your FERPA and IDP trainings will be need to be completed before access will be granted.
Zoom is the university's video conferencing platform. Open Zoom and navigate to Settings.
To ensure the privacy of our meetings with students we recommend these settings (at a minimum):
- General Settings
- Hide potentially sensitive information on mobile task switcher [On] - this is for using Zoom with mobile devices
- Meeting
- Require that all meetings are secured with one security option [On] - this decreases the likelihood of "Zoom bombings"; staff need to be proactive about communicating passcodes or the need to authenticate if meeting with parties outside of the university
- Waiting Room [On] [Everyone will go in the waiting room] - this requires staff to select the participants who are allowed into the meeting room; selecting this option means that your next student won't pop into your current student's appointment
- Embed passcode in invite link for one-click join [On] - this will append the code to your join link to allow for one-click joining Pro Tip: creating a personalized "go" link for your advising appointment room will allow you to change the passcode without having to email ever person on your calendar!
- Only authenticated meeting participants and webinar attendees can join meetings and webinars [On] - this will require participants to be signed into a Zoom account (it does not have to be an OSU Zoom account)
- Participants video [On] - protects participants' privacy
- Audio Type [Telephone and Computer Audio] - provides the most flexibility for students to join in the manner that makes sense for them
- If Waiting Room is not enabled, phone dial-in only users will [Be blocked from joining the meeting] - this adds protection against people calling in to others' appointments
- Block users in specific domains from joining meetings and webinars may be used in the event that a persistent bad agent intrudes on your meetings
- Only authenticated users can join meetings from Web client [On] - this will require participants to be signed into a Zoom account (it does not have to be an OSU Zoom account)
- Mute all participants when they join a meeting [On] - protects participants' privacy
- Meeting chat [On] - allows the student to grant you FERPA permission and enables you and the student to share links, messages, continue to communicate if the microphone is off, etc.
- Enable continuous meeting chat [Off] - this ensures that students don't see other students' private information if you are using the same Zoom room for drop ins or appointments
- Allow participants to delete messages in meeting chat [On] / Allow participants to edit messages in meeting chat [On] - these allow you to remove any inappropriate messages during meetings with multiple attendees Pro Tip: if an attendee gives you FERPA permission in a chat or shares something inappropriate, you should capture a screenshot for documentation purposes
- Meeting Polls/Quizzes [On] - this allows you to set up a Poll/Quiz for obtaining FERPA permission during an appointment
- Require answers to be anonymous [Off]
- Allow removed participants to rejoin [Off] - prevents a persistent bad agent from rejoining a meeting after you've removed them from the room
- Consider: Allow users to change their name when joining a meeting, Allow participants to rename themselves, Hide participant profile pictures in a meeting all provide flexibility for the student buy could be leveraged by a bad agent to share inappropriate messages/images
- Automated captions [On], Language Interpretation [On], Sign Language interpretation view [On] - make your meetings more accessible
- Audio Conferencing
- Show international numbers link on the invitation email [On] - allows support of international students
- Mask phone number in the participant list [On] - protects students' privacy
Other Zoom settings for smoother/easier advising meetings
- Meeting
- Enable Personal Meeting ID [On] - allows you to create a unique easy to remember Zoom room link; it can be used for quick appointments with unique pre-determined settings if Use Personal Meeting ID (PMI) when scheduling a meeting [On]
- Screen sharing [On]
- Who can share? [All Participants]
- Remote support [On] - to help the student with troubleshooting
- Show a "Join from your browser" link [On]