Starfish-Advisors

Protect the Privacy of Student Records

• Both federal and university policies apply to the privacy of Starfish records. Users must adhere to all policies when accessing and creating student records.

Federal Policy

All records in Starfish are part of the student's educational record, and are protected by the Family Educational Right and Privacy Act (FERPA)

• Students have the right to view Starfish records by request
• All Starfish users must complete the FERPA Agreement which is administered for LeTourneau University staff and faculty with access to FERPA protected information.

University Policy

In accordance with University Policy on the Privacy of Student Records, confidentiality of student records applies to all Starfish records

• Users should only access Starfish records to perform their job
• Users should never look up student records out of curiosity
• Users should never include medical information in a Starfish record

Maintain standards of accurate & ethical record-keeping

Starfish is used to record recommendations and interpretations of policy. This record protects both the student and the university by allowing mistakes to be corrected, and student sto be held accountable to instructions provided by university personnel.

Responsible conduct requires university personnel to:

• Keep accurate, complete, and appropriately documented records
• Abide by the appropriate professional code of ethics-in this case, academic advising

To maintain appropriate records, Starfish users will:

• Record the recommendations and policy interpretations shared with students
• Follow appropriate conventions of documentation so records are complete, but do not include protected information
• Consult Starfish records made by others
• Follow up on tracking items (e.g., flags and kudos)

Faculty and staff can create and customize a profile that their students will see when they access the faculty or staff member's calendar. Your profile can include contact information, a photo, and other information students should know about you.

This video describes how to update your Starfish profile to give students more information about you. 

To create your profile, click on the Profile tab in the Starfish navigation menu to open the institutional profile page. From here, you can customize the following profile information:

• Contact information: Your username ad institution email are pre-populated by Starfish from the learning management system (LMS), such as Blackboard, and cannot be edited in Starfish. Other fields, such as phone number, are pre-populated from the LMS if the data exists in the LMS, but they can be edited in Starfish. The phone number text boxes will accept standard phone numbers; both US and international. You can use any standard phone number characters (like "-", "," and ".").
• Time zone: The time zone field will, by default, be the time zone associated with your institution, but you can change it if you are working in a different time zone. make sure this is accurate! If it is not, students will not see the right times when they try to make appointments with you.
• Profile photo: Uploading a photo puts a face to your name and makes students feel more comfortable making an appointment with you. To upload a photo of yourself, click on the Upload Photo link under the profile picture. This will allow you to upload a photo from the files saved on your computer. Accepted file formats are JPEG, GIF and PNG.

Click the Submit button associated with the institutional profile tab to save these updates. If you update other tabs, be sure to save each page.

Adjust Your Profile Settings for Meetings

If your institution is using Starfish Connect, you can use Starfish to schedule and document meetings with students. You can control several settings for those meetings from within your Starfish Profile.

Through your profile you can:

• Set scheduling deadline and a minimum appointment length.
• Setup one or more locations for meetings with students.
• Set preferences for when and how you receive appointment notifications.

By configuring these settings on your profile, you can control where and how you meet with students while also providing tools to your students that make it easy for them to connect with you.

Add Default Settings for Meetings

You can add default settings for meeting length and cutoff deadlines for allowing meetings to be scheduled.

To do so:

1. Access your Starfish Profile by clicking your photo or name in the top right corner of your Home page.
2. Click on the Appointment Preferences tab.
3. Select a "Minimum Appointment Length" from the drop-down choices. Your selection here will be the default for the Office Hour blocks you set.
4. Select a desired "Scheduling deadline" if you want to create a cutoff for when students can add meetings into your office hours.
5. Click the Submit button that appears in the bar above the Basics section. The Appointments Preference page will not close, but you will receive a Success dialog box stating that your appointment preferences have been updated.
6. Click the OK button on the Success dialog box.

Set Choices for Meeting Locations

1. Access your Starfish Profile by clicking your photo or name in the top right corner of your Home page.
2. Click on the Appointment Preferences tab.
3. Scroll to the section titled "My Locations."
4. Click on the Add Location button to bring up the "Add Location" dialog box.
5. Select the type of location from among the choices listed.
6. Enter a name for this location that will be recognizable and clear to students or others who might be managing your calendar.
7. Include helpful instructions for the location (example: "ring buzzer to the left of the main doors").
8. Click the Save button.

You can add additional locations as needed using these same steps. These locations will then be available as options when you set up your office hours.

Set Starfish Email Preferences

As a staff member you can set preferences for both appointment and tracking item email notifications by clicking on the Email Notifications tab within your Starfish Profile.

Appointment Notifications

In the first section of the Email Notifications tab, titled "Appointments Notifications," you can customize the settings as follows:

• Choose how you are emailed reminders about your Starfish calendar appointments.
  • Select one of the following options:
    • Send me a separate email for each appointment
    • Send one email reminder with all appointments
    • Do not send an email reminder for upcoming appointments
  • Specify when to send the reminders by choosing a time of day, on either the day before or the day of the appointments (this is required if you select either of the first two options).
  • Specify whether or not to send an alert just before the appointment is scheduled (from 15 minutes up to an hour).
• Indicate whether you would like a calendar attachment (iCal) email to be sent to your external calendar (such as Outlook or Google) when there are changes to your Starfish calendar, such as additions, cancellations, and other changes to appointments. We recommend keeping all of these options check so that any appointment activity on your calendar sends an update to your external (non-Starfish) calendar.
• Elect whether to allow busy times from an external calendar (this requires integration with Exchange or Google Calendar) to display on your Starfish calendar. This option will display based on the integrations that have been installed for your institution. If you have this option, follow the "click here" links and instructions to complete the setup for you external calendar.

This video demonstrates how you might update the kinds of appointment notifications that you receive.

Tracking Item Notifications

In the second section titled "Tracking Item Notifications," you can specify when and how you will receive a summary of notifications associated with individual tracking items. Typically, an institution will set a default frequency (daily or weekly) and a time when you will receive a digest of tracking item email notifications for the period selected. Depending on your role and workflow, you may want to modify this.

The content of your summary emails is based on how each individual tracking item is configured by your tenant admin (which roles receive an email when the tracking item is raised. Based on the roles you have in the system, the list of tracking item rules in the table beneath the tracking item notifications tells you which Flags can trigger an email notification that will be included in your summary. If any of the Flags in your list show the icon for "emergency notification" you will receive an email right away when the Flag is raised, regardless of your daily/weekly settings.

Save Your Changes

After making updates to any settings, make sure to click the Submit button. Note that you must click Submit for each individual tab within the profile. You may have to scroll to the right to find it depending on your browser and screen size. You will find a Submit button at both the top and bottom of the page.

After you click Submit, a dialog box will confirm your information is saved, but the current profile tab will remain open. Use the tabs to move to another section of the profile or click Home from eh top level navigation to return to your Homepage.