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Home Page
The Home page is where you, the advisor, will spend the majority of your time. From here, you can access really just about anything in GradesFirst. By default, GradesFirst starts on the My Assigned Students tab. This tab will display those students who you have been assigned as their advisor.
Note: If you do not see any students, more than likely your students have not yet been assigned to you. Please ask your GradesFirst Administrator (known hereafter as “GFA”) for help on this.
Below is a sample of what your Home page may look like.
In the main student grid, you will notice several key pieces of information next to each student’s name: Category, Absences and At-Risk.
Category is a specific way to “group” similar students together. For instance, as you can see in the screenshot above, we have our students in sporting categories (e.g. Football and Billiards). However your institution may elect to define categories differently. Some institutions elect to define categories as the student’s major, while others define categories are extra-curricular activities.
How are Categories used in GradesFirst? As noted above, categories are used to group similar students together. This is extremely helpful for reporting and sorting purposes. For instance, I can print ANY report in GradesFirst for just a specific category (or group of students). Categories are also visible on most of our student grids, so it is a great visual aid as well.
Note: Categories should be automatically defined, and assigned, by your GFA. So if you find that your students are not assigned any categories, please let your GFA know.
Absences are automatically calculated when attendance is taken by the professor, or even advisors, in GradesFirst. For instance, in the example below, Bryan Battle has 3(1) absences. If you mouse-over the number of absences, you will see the first number “3” refers to the total number of absences Bryan has accumulated while the number in parenthesis “1” refers to the total number of unexcused absences.
At-Risk is a visual identifier, manually set by the advisor that flags a student as at-risk of leaving (or being dismissed by) your institution. Similar to Categories, you can run any report for specifically at-risk students. Below is an example of what an at-risk student would like look in your student grid.
To mark a student as at-risk, advisors would click on the student’s name to view their profile page. Once on their profile page, click Edit User Settings in order to access the student’s login and other personal information. At the very bottom of this page, in the section called Student Details is where the advisor would check the Student is at Risk box (see screenshot below).
Note: Advisors should follow their institution’s rule in determining which students should be identified as at-risk.
Send Message
Sending an email or text message to your students couldn’t be easier with GradesFirst. Simply check the box next to your student’s name and click Send Message. This will bring up the Send a Message screen.
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