Eastern Washington University–Aligning Student Support Efforts with EdSights and Navigate360

Eastern Washington University (EWU) has long been committed to fostering student success through proactive support strategies. Historically, EWU relied heavily on Navigate by EAB to monitor student performance and identify potential challenges, drawing insights on information about students from faculty observations. While Navigate provided valuable information, EWU recognized the opportunity to further enhance its student support efforts by capturing information directly from students. 

To build on the strengths of Navigate, EWU implemented EdSights, adding a missing layer of student self-disclosure and providing a more comprehensive understanding of student needs. With EdSights, EWU not only uncovered previously hidden barriers to student persistence but also enhanced their ability to address student issues proactively. Ultimately, this approach of more effective, holistic support has positively impacted student retention.

Streamlining Student Support: A Unified Approach

EWU developed an effective workflow to merge insights from both EdSights and Navigate, creating a cohesive support system:

Weekly Coordination and Data Collection: Each week, students receive EdSights’ targeted check-ins via text message from their AI chatbot, Swoop, that are designed to capture students’ perceptions on academic, financial, wellness, and engagement challenges. 

Alignment with Navigate: Once responses are collected, EWU staff review the pre-analyzed data report from EdSights that identifies students who would most benefit from human follow-up. Using students’ IDs pre-populated in the report, EWU can quickly locate students’ records in  Navigate and create “Alerts” individually or in bulk that are based on students' specific concerns disclosed through EdSights.

With the highest-need students already identified and prioritized for EWU by EdSights, getting the student voice data into Navigate takes just a few minutes.

Customized Alerts for Targeted Support: EWU has built custom Alerts in Navigate to align with EdSights terminology and interventions, such as "EdSights Academic Follow-up" and "EdSights Financial Follow-up." This allows support staff to immediately recognize the origin of an Alert and respond appropriately to the student's needs.

Streamlined Prioritization and Response: Once these Alerts are created in Navigate, they are handled the same way as other Alerts within EWU's existing workflow. All outreach and outcomes are logged in Navigate’s case management system.

Outcomes and Impact From Using EdSights & Navigate 

• Targeted Financial Outreach: Financial Alerts from EdSights have enabled the financial aid team to conduct more precise and effective outreach, addressing the most common area where students struggle.
• Enhanced Support Prioritization: Direct student feedback captured by EdSights allows EWU to prioritize and adjust support based on specific student comments, allowing for timely, tailored interventions, and a more impactful, student-centered support system.

Looking ahead

EWU’s integration of EdSights with Navigate has created a cohesive support system that fully addresses student needs, enhancing the university's early warning capabilities. This combined approach ensures a proactive, personalized student experience by prioritizing the student voice in driving interventions. As EWU continues to refine its retention strategies, the ongoing use of both platforms will remain central, helping to develop more effective support mechanisms and ensuring every student’s success. (Jossie said the week of 8/26 she would provide 1 - 2 strategic plans that are in the works).

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"Integrating EdSights with Navigate has been a game-changer for us at EWU. Even though we were already using Navigate, EdSights added a critical layer of student self-disclosure that we didn’t have before. It has allowed us to proactively address student needs in a way Navigate alone couldn’t. With a solid early warning system, there’s some front-end work, but it’s pretty seamless to integrate. EdSights doesn’t replace Navigate; it enhances it, making things more efficient and your student support system more comprehensive and effective."

– Jossie Brown, Director of Retention, Eastern Washington University

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