SUMMARY
- Texas State University’s College of Education advising team (12 advisors) guides thousands of students through critical stages of their degrees
- Advising information changes constantly, and one mistake in registration can affect a student’s career
- Shared TextExpander Snippets let the director push updates to every advisor with a single click
- A graduation task that takes most campus teams two or three days now takes the department about half a day
- The department nearly eliminated student appeals and moved from reactive to proactive advising
A public research university with campuses in San Marcos and Round Rock, Texas State University serves more than 37,000 students across more than 200 degree programs. An institution of this size needs a passionate, disciplined faculty and staff, especially in its advising departments.
Led by Director of Advising Joya Konieczny, the College of Education’s 12 advisors guide thousands of students through the critical stages of their time on campus. The department is busy, but it keeps serving students at a high level thanks to its standards and systems.
We live by the words accurate, thorough, and consistent. And TextExpander helps us check those three boxes in most of the tasks we take on.
Joya Konieczny, Director of Advising, Texas State University College of Education
The challenge: a lot to know, and it keeps changing
Academic advising is detailed work. Every student’s plan is specific, and advisors need to know, or quickly find, a huge range of information. That information changes all the time, so every advisor on the team has to receive and apply each update.
The department’s old approach was training advisors, then retraining them after a mistake had already happened.
How they use TextExpander
With TextExpander, Joya pushes information updates to the team’s shared Snippets with a single click, so every College of Education student gets the same, correct information from their advisor. The department uses Snippets to store and communicate:
- Academic policies
- Course information
- Degree paths
- GPA calculations
- Staff prompts
- Customized student notifications
Accurate
With a single update in TextExpander, every advisor automatically uses the most up-to-date, correct information.
Thorough
Advisors are short on time. Automating repetitive work leaves room for real, human-to-human conversations with students.
Consistent
In advising, inconsistency directly affects students. TextExpander keeps every answer consistent and correct.
TextExpander enabled our advising department to raise the bar. Before, we had lower expectations because our advisors were limited to their memory and human consistency.
Joya Konieczny, Director of Advising, Texas State University College of Education
The results
Joya’s team works with many other departments on campus, and the difference in speed is clear. One graduation requirement takes most campus teams two or three days to complete. The College of Education’s advising department finishes it in about half a day, and Joya credits a large part of that to TextExpander.
- Student appeals nearly eliminated. Staying accurate, thorough, and consistent helped the department almost eliminate student appeals, which is far from the norm in academic advising.
- From reactive to proactive. The whole team now gets ahead of issues instead of fixing them after the fact.
- More authentic conversations. Advisors no longer search for course information or type out degree plans with their eyes on the screen. They can listen and engage with students.
We consider TextExpander mission-essential. I would encourage any academic advising department to give it a try. I’m confident you will like it.
Joya Konieczny, Director of Advising, Texas State University College of Education