August 23, 2018
MyPath is a student onboarding tool that designed to help students navigate through their educational journey by providing students with an individually tailored and structured pathway that includes career and program exploration, goal-setting, and just-in-time and follow-up messaging. MyPath is designed to align with the Guided Pathways framework to help students find, enter, and stay on the path to their goals.
Colleges adopting MyPath to support their Guided Pathways initiatives have found that the tool can help solve the pervasive problem of enrollment attrition – that is, the number of applicants to California’s community colleges that never become registered students. Of the more than 2.1 million unique, non-spam applications submitted through CCCApply for the 2016-17 academic year, 71 percent did not result in enrollment, according to the CCC Technology Center. That equates to more than 1.5 million prospective students lost.
With MyPath’s integration with CCCApply, workflows can be customized to send students directly to MyPath after application, so they can immediately begin exploring career pathways and educational programs.
With personalized guidance and reminders to take specific actions coming from MyPath, new applicants are more likely to follow through on creating an account, attending orientation, making an education plan, and registering for classes.
To date, 13 California community colleges have adopted MyPath. Rio Hondo College completed its MyPath implementation in July. Before implementing MyPath, Rio Hondo College had been losing about 55 percent of applicants because students would apply but had no idea what to do next.
“We now have a video that tells students what to expect after they apply,” said Edward Henderson, Counselor/Coordinator of Rio Hondo’s First Year Success Center. The video explains that in the next couple of days they’ll receive a student ID via email, what to do with the student ID, how to navigate the student portal and go on to next steps, such as orientation and placement testing. It is expected that the video will keep students focused and keep the next steps of their application process clear and easy to follow.
Santa Rosa Junior College, an early adopter of MyPath, sought to increase enrollments after application through the MyPath tool. To do this, the college designed a workflow to take students directly into MyPath after submitting an application through CCCApply. There, students are shown a set of advisor cards generated based on their application information. These cards include ordered task lists that prompt students to apply, take an assessment, attend orientation, create an education plan, and register for classes.
Are you interested in bringing MyPath to your campus? Please contact Keith Franco, kfranco@ccctechcenter.org, to learn more about the tool and find out how to implement MyPath at your college, or visit the Education Planning Initiative’s MyPath site.