Naviance Student: Features and Benefits for College, Career, and Life Readiness

Naviance Student is a comprehensive educational data management platform designed to support students in their journey towards college, career, and life readiness (CCLR). Used by K-12 schools and colleges, Naviance provides a suite of tools and resources to help students discover their strengths and interests, explore career possibilities, plan for their future, and connect with colleges. This article explores the various features and benefits of Naviance Student, highlighting its impact on students, counselors, and the overall college application process.

Accessibility and Account Management

The Naviance student portal can be accessed both at school and from home, ensuring that students have anytime, anywhere access to its resources. To access the portal, each student needs their district username and password, and assistance is readily available from teachers or librarians.

For parents and guardians, access to Naviance is granted through a Source account. Once registered, the account remains active as long as the student is enrolled in the district and "opted in" for Naviance, the parent has an active Source account, and they are identified as a parent or guardian in the student information system.

Graduating seniors retain access to the district’s student portal until graduation. Those who wish to continue using Naviance after graduation must change their username and password in Naviance before July 15th. Support is available over the summer through Let’s Talk, where users can submit requests with a phone number and a brief description of their issue or question.

Streamlining the College Application Process

Naviance plays a pivotal role in streamlining the college application process, benefiting students, counselors, and colleges alike.

Tracking College Applications

The platform allows students to track colleges they are considering and document their in-progress college applications. This feature helps students stay organized and manage their application deadlines effectively.

Electronic Transcript Management

Naviance has revolutionized the process of sending transcripts to colleges. The transition from hard copy transcripts to electronic transcripts has been facilitated by Naviance, allowing school districts to send students’ transcripts with a simple click of the mouse. This eliminates the paperwork nightmare that was once associated with applying for colleges. However, it's important to note that some colleges may still require written transcripts.

Counselor Communication and Support

Naviance facilitates direct communication between students and their school guidance counselors, simplifying the application process. Students can request transcripts, school reports, and letters of recommendation from their counselors directly through the platform.

Integration with Common Application

Naviance integrates with the Common Application, a widely used college admissions application portal. This integration simplifies the application process on the high school end, making it easier for students to apply to multiple colleges.

Career Exploration and Planning

Naviance offers a range of tools and assessments to help students explore different types of careers and discover majors that may be of interest to them.

Career Module

In the Career Module, students can explore various career paths and identify potential majors. While choosing a major isn't mandatory before entering college, it is beneficial to explore the possibilities.

Career Cluster Finder and Career Interest Profiler

The "Career Cluster Finder" and "Career Interest Profiler" are simple assessments that help students discover career matches based on their interests, personal attributes, and preferred subjects. The results of these assessments provide insights into a student's strongest fields of interest and those of lesser interest.

Career clusters group careers with common features and skills, typically requiring similar education and training. Exploring careers as clusters can be a valuable way to find a suitable career match, especially for students with general areas of interest but uncertainty about specific career paths.

Students are encouraged to add potential careers to their "career list" in Naviance. Even if a student cannot decide on a specific major, the tools in the Career module can help narrow down their choices.

Academic Planning and Goal Setting

Naviance provides features to support students in academic planning, goal setting, and staying organized throughout their high school journey.

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Course Planner

Naviance’s Course Planner enables middle and high school students to map out six- and four-year course plans, respectively. This tool helps students align their class choices with graduation requirements and their own strengths and interests. Multi-year course plans help students stay on track for on-time graduation, align their academic focuses, and create tangible goals. Research suggests that students who make formal course plans attempt more credit hours each semester than students who do not, potentially accelerating their postsecondary journey.

MyPlanner

Under the "About Me" tab, students can set goals and reminders for tasks that need to be completed. The MyPlanner section serves as a reminder tool and online "to do" list, helping students stay organized and on track.

Resume Builder

Naviance also offers a useful function that helps students create a resume, a crucial document for college applications, scholarships, and future job opportunities.

College Search and Selection

Naviance provides tools and resources to help students research and select colleges that align with their academic profile, interests, and goals.

College Search Tool

Naviance's College Search tool is valuable for both students and counselors. It allows users to connect directly with over 300 colleges actively recruiting on the CollegeVine platform.

Scattergrams

Naviance utilizes scattergrams, which provide students with valuable data points regarding GPA, SAT scores, and the outcomes of previous applicants from their high school to specific colleges (e.g., accepted, rejected, waitlisted). A separate graph is created for each college to which students from a high school have applied in recent years. Each application is marked on the graph, without revealing identification, showing the applicant's GPA, SAT score, and the outcome of their application. This information helps students assess their chances of admission and make informed decisions about where to apply.

Impact of Scattergrams

Studies have shown that scattergram visibility can significantly increase college application rates, particularly among students who receive free lunch and black and Hispanic students. According to Christine Mulhern, a Ph.D. population of high school students, scattergram visibility increases applications by 40 percent among students who received free lunch and 36 percent for black and Hispanic students. She adds that scattergram visibility also has larger impacts for in-state public colleges, increasing applications by 62 percent.

Mulhern also notes that admissibility signals may be most relevant to decisions about applying to highly selective colleges because admissions probabilities are much lower at these colleges.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Curriculum

Naviance recognizes the importance of social and emotional learning (SEL) in student development. The platform offers a CCLR Curriculum that is scoped and sequenced for grades 6-12. The benefits of SEL are well-documented and include improved academic achievement, improved social behaviors, and lower levels of distress. The curriculum can be assigned by teachers or accessed and worked through independently.

Counselor Perspectives and Technology Acceptance

A study utilizing a qualitative dominant crossover mixed analysis examined why school counselors choose or do not choose to use Naviance. The study further explored whether school counselors’ acceptance and use of Naviance enhances counseling practices, job productivity, and efficiency, using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the theoretical framework.

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is comprised of four constructs: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitudes, and actual behaviors. TAM predicts the level of technology acceptance and usage.

The study found that bandwidth, training, and connectivity influenced some counselors’ attitudes toward usage and productivity; however, overall attitudes toward Naviance were positive.

Perceived Ease of Use

Research has indicated that individuals are more likely to accept and use new technology if they perceive the technology as easy to use. School counselors have found certain types of technology easier to use, such as desktop computers, VCRs and monitors, overhead projectors to create visual presentations, and Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Perceived Usefulness

Technology acceptance is also influenced by perceived usefulness, which is determined by a user’s belief that a type of technology enhances job performance.

Attitudes Toward Technology

The more positive the attitude about technology, the higher the actual usage. It is important to note that there are external forces that shape a person’s perceived ease of use and usefulness of technology, and these forces may negatively affect attitudes. Such barriers include limited training on new software, age of the user, bandwidth challenges, slow data access, time delays in downloading content, and limited equipment. Moreover, large counselor caseloads might be a barrier to perceived ease of use and usefulness.

Naviance Insights and Reporting

Naviance offers insights and reporting tools to help schools and districts measure the effectiveness of their CCLR initiatives.

Student Readiness Report (SRR)

The Student Readiness Report (SRR) provides staff, students, and families with an easy-to-read student summary that measures student progress toward graduation and postsecondary goals. Family involvement in a student’s schooling improves graduation rates and bolsters regular attendance.

Insights Premium

CCLR initiatives must be measured in order to determine their usefulness. Insights Premium provides data and analytics to track student progress and identify areas for improvement.

PowerSchool Integration

Naviance integrates with Schoology Learning and PowerSchool SIS, bringing CCLR preparation into a student’s profile to render a more complete portrait of their progress. The Naviance CCLR curriculum is accessible through Schoology, helping students connect what they’re learning in class to their future plans.

Naviance's Impact on Diversity and Equity

While Naviance has been criticized for potentially benefiting students with advantages in the college application process, research suggests that it can also be particularly beneficial for black, Latino, and economically disadvantaged students.

Mulhern finds that black, Latino and economically disadvantaged students are among that biggest beneficiaries.

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