Navigate user of the month: December 2019

How has your department/unit benefited from using Navigate?
Navigate has helped our department streamline access to student appointment scheduling as we previously used to use a third party program. Now, all appointments can be scheduled through a consistent platform at VT. Navigate allows us to display our availability to students which puts the power in their hands to be able to sign up for an appointment that best fits their availability. Also, it makes Change of Major meeting scheduling easier as well with the “Explore Major” options.

What feature in Navigate do you utilize the most?
I, personally, use the Report on Appointment feature the most. When a student comes into our office we have a kiosk set up where they check in. Navigate then alerts the advisor that a student is waiting, and we can start an appointment. On my second monitor I display the report so that the student can follow along with my notes and the meeting more effectively. During the majority of my meetings we outline what their 4 year (or remaining) plan will look like, so it’s then typed out in a digital format in this report. This is great for when they have questions about a previous meeting, or want to make changes as all you can refer back to it and what you discussed and easily copy and paste the previous report into a new Appointment Report, make changes and save it. At the end of the meeting it’s then easy to copy this report and email it to the student through the Navigate platform so that they also have a copy.

What would you tell other advisors who are thinking of using Navigate?
Navigate has a lot of functionality and it’s definitely worth the time to familiarize yourself with the program. I love the integration into the Outlook Calendar so that if I block off time it appears directly in Navigate, and whenever a student schedules an appointment it blocks off that timeslot on my calendar. The access and search feature also make it easy to track students who are looking to change into your major and any meetings you’ve had with them. Campaigns are a great tool to set up appointment blocks and to communicate with specific subsets of students. As well as the advanced search feature if you need to outreach to a very specific set of students. Overall, it has been a very welcomed addition to my advising tool-kit.