Starfish

A Tool to Help Advisors and Faculty Serve Students

Seattle Colleges has been using Starfish to improve communication and day-to-day services for students since May 1, 2019. In the first year of Starfish use at Seattle Colleges, there were more than 41,000 student services appointments scheduled, with 28.5 percent of appointments scheduled by students themselves! There are also more than 70 student services departments available to students in the system. 

For full details about Starfish at Seattle Colleges, including tutorials and how-to guides, visit our Starfish website.

How Students Use Starfish

Students can use Starfish to:

• Schedule advising appointments and find information about drop-in advising hours
• Make appointments with tutors and find information about drop-in tutoring services
• Schedule other kinds of appointments with campus services
• Access information about student support services on campus
• View their current instructors and courses 
• Find digital to-do items and checklists assigned by their advisors
• View all messages sent from advisors, instructors, and other services through Starfish
• Request follow-up support from campus services
• Create individualized education plans using Starfish Degree Planner (as of Fall 2023)

How Advisors and Faculty Use Starfish

Although many student services providers use Starfish to serve students, two prominent groups are advisors and faculty.

Advisors use Starfish to:

• Schedule and document meetings and workshops with students
• Create tasks and Success Plans to support student progress toward their academic goals
• View and manage their advising caseloads
• Add case notes about students for other advisors to reference
• Manage drop-in advising queues
• Communicate with instructors who have reached out through student-assigned notifications and referrals

Faculty can use Starfish to find their current and past class rosters and view students’ Success Networks, which include a student’s primary advisor, secondary support connections, and current and past instructors. Faculty can also:

• Set up their course office hours in Starfish so students can see them and either make appointments or drop in, making it easy to track who has attended office hours and/or group sessions and follow up with students
• View a student’s previous course history at Seattle Colleges
• View which students are accessing tutoring services (for all tutoring services using Starfish)
• Record class attendance
• Make referrals for students who need extra support
• Provide progress feedback to students that is also visible to advisors by submitting progress surveys
• Add case notes about students that advisors can reference