Announcing CampusCruiser Academic Alert, an Automated Academic Intervention Solution

FAIRFIELD, NJ--(Marketwire - Apr 23, 2012) - CampusCruiser®, higher education's source for affordable and scalable cloud-based (SaaS) solutions, today announced the release of CampusCruiser Academic Alert.

After working in concert with several client partners, CampusCruiser is pleased to introduce the newest addition to its cloud-based suite, CampusCruiser Academic Alert. The solution is focused on optimizing academic intervention and retention efforts on campus. It allows a combination of customizable attributes and triggers to be set up to automatically detect students at risk as well as track cohorts or groups.

By leveraging the data collected in the CampusCruiser LMS and/or CampusCruiser Portal -- such as, amount of time spent in content, class attendance, grades, assignments, participation levels in chats, blogs, and much more -- clients are now able to automatically alert students, faculty, and/or advisors when students' performance/interaction is above/below a defined threshold. "As we all know, by the time a student gets a D or an F for a mid-term grade, it may be too late to intervene successfully to improve the final outcome. Our solution provides the ability to improve early intervention, in what is often conducted through a very tedious and manual process," said Allen Wang, CEO and President of CampusCruiser.

"Many faculty and students are completing coursework and interacting in online classroom environments. This exciting tool will greatly enhance the ability to use that interaction to be proactive as it relates to retention," observed Chris Ostwinkle, Ph.D., Director of Distance Learning, Northeast Iowa Community College.

"Our LMS (learning management system) and Portal solution stores many data points as it relates to student and faculty activities within the online class environment. This type of information has always been readily available for faculty to access online, albeit on a class by class basis. CampusCruiser Academic Alert takes a giant leap forward, by allowing an institution to more easily define, identify, and act on academic risk indicators based on online classroom activity," said Anthony Ma, Chief Creative Officer at CampusCruiser, "and automate the process to ensure efficiency and convenience."

Some of the features and benefits clients can expect are:

• Built-in rules engine that leverages existing interaction and performance data, found in the CampusCruiser LMS and CampusCruiser Portal, to drive early and automatic academic intervention
  
  
• Mobile and online access to academic alerts for faculty, advisors, and/or students to review and act upon
  
  
• Optional importation of student Information system (SIS ) data to help track specific cohorts, such as first year students, students on probation or by major, etc.
  
  
• Affordable cloud-based solution which requires no software to install, no hardware to buy, or upgrades to manage
  
  

Client partners provided valuable advice, direction, and validation. Melissa Cox Powers, M.Ed., Instructional Technology Coordinator, Mid-South Community College, remarked, "The benefits of intervening early to insure academic success are well known. The fact that this solution can automatically alert a professor, a student, and/or an advisor that academic help may be needed is great."

On Tuesday, April 24^th at 2 PM ET, Campus Technology, a higher education technology magazine, will be hosting a webinar, Academic Intervention and Retention Based on Online-Behavior, featuring our new solution and remarks from our client partners.

About CampusCruiser

Since 1995, colleges have relied upon CampusCruiser to deliver innovative solutions, backed by unrivaled customer service. CampusCruiser's award winning products are higher education's only source for an affordable and scalable cloud/SaaS-based solution suite.

CampusCruiser solutions include learning management system (LMS), academic alert, emergency/urgent alert, email, and portal, among others. Institutions are not burdened with having to buy hardware or allocate staff resources to install, manage, or upgrade software. Integration support for student systems (SIS) and other 3rd party campus solutions are also available using single sign-on (SSO), as well as standards-based approaches for data exchange.