In the process of building an integrated Student Information System (SIS), the university recognized the value of a common system of notes, a place to record and integrate the advice that various university offices provide to students. In place of the separate notes that each office makes and keeps as it works with students, the enterprise notes system, designed to link to the SIS, will provide a place to share each student’s advising history and should help advisors to integrate and enhance the way an Ohio State student experiences advising.
The aim of advising notes is to create a record of a student’s advising contacts—the issues on which he has consulted, the advice with which she has been provided. This “institutional memory” summarizes the student’s past, and access to that information can serve to improve efficiency, increase the continuity and coherence of advisors’ conversations with the student, and provide, for the student, a more personal sense of contact, whether he is seeing the same advisor again, or some other advisor. The record can also provide useful information to other university personnel who are faced with questions (whatever their source) about the student.
Students, which went live in April 2011, are now able to log-into a designated area and review the notes written by either their academic advisors or other university staff members who have the need to document their student-contact into an official academic record (see pages 17-18 for a view of what students are able to see).
Creates a record of student’s advising contacts and advice provided; creates an institutional memory
Increases advisor efficiency and effectiveness, especially when working with students who are pursuing dual-degrees in different colleges or multiple plans (i.e., double majors/minors/area of interests).
Refreshes advisor memory prior to return visits and helps to plan next steps
Communicates critical information to other university personnel
Personalizes the advising experience
Is AdvisingConnectpart of SIS?
AdvisingConnect is a separate web site – advisingconnect.osu.edu, but a user can get to the notes of a student from the advising tab in the Student Services Center (student) in the SIS.
Why do students want access to their notes?
A university committee on academic advising was assembled to address recommendations about advising brought forward by the Undergraduate Student Government (USG). The committee has made the following recommendations to improve the advising experience for students:
- Improve clarity about the structure and process of advising in each academic unit
- Provide improved automated access to advising content
- Improve students’ access to advisor assignments
- Enhance continuity of information recorded in advising sessions
- Enhance students’ access to advisor information in advising notes
What if a student would like to request to see ALL of their notes?
According to FERPA students have the right to request ALL of their notes, including those intended for only advisors (or other Ohio State staff). Please see page 16 of this document for details.
What if a student would like to have an entire note or a comment rescinded from their advising notes?
Rescinding a comment from an official academic record requires a formal request by the student. A designee from your college unit will determine if it is worthy of removal after working with the student and will then consult with John Wanzer. The change is documented and therefore can be “undone” if necessary. Please see page 16 of this document for details.
I need to submit an urgent notice – how do I do that?
Urgent notices can only be submitted by a designated person in your college office. If you feel it necessary for a student’s record to have an urgent notice please consult with this designee who will determine legitimacy. Please see page 16-17of this document for details about what urgent notices are.
What if I cannot find a student in AdvisingConnect?Currently, all students who have an OSU ID will be found; however, please be aware that if first term students do not pay their fees by a certain time in the term, their admission will be revoked and therefore you will NOT find them in AdvisingConnect, until they have paid their fees and are re-established as a university student. If you cannot find a student you think should be there, please contact .
Can I enter notes for a prospective student?
Yes. The notes entry page is located under the Notes tab. You will be able to see the notes you entered as well as notes entered by others.
Will AdvisingConnectstay open all day? AdvisingConnect will automatically log you out after 7.5 hours.
When you leave your computer and have AdvisingConnect open throughout the day, it is important to protect this information (and other sensitive information) by locking your computer. You can do this by selecting control, alt, delete at the same time. Hit enter after you made sure that “Lock Computer” is selected.
Does AdvisingConnecthave a spell check? Your web browser (e.g., Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.) will offer the spell-check service. If you have questions about this please contact the technical staff in your office.
What if I cannot log into AdvisingConnect? – please contact .
What if I receive an error message? – For any type of error message please contact ND check to see if your note saved. It is important to provide as much detail about your error message as possible, by either a screenshot or a copy of the error message. Screenshots and a step-by-step outline of how you got to the error message will be most helpful. To do a screenshot, stay on the screen and select a button that looks similar to this:
This button copies the information and you will then be ready to paste it into your e-mail.
FERPA is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education. For more information about what FERPA is
FERPA is not about “WHAT we put in notes,” it is about how we protect the notes we enter.We are responsible for training on how to write appropriate notes in a student’s formal academic record and this guide is supposed to do this.
Let’s clarify…… /
The shade in SIS means that the student DOES NOT want directory information released to anyone. Directory information may include the following: name, address, phone number, and e-mail address, dates of attendance, degree awarded, enrollment status, and major field of study. This information by law can be distributed without a student’s request IF the shade is NOT invoked. See the FERPA Quick Reference guide for more information. This is located in the Online Advising Encyclopedia - required).
All student information releases can now be completed online by clicking on Student Information Release in the Personal Information section of the Student Center. FAQS:
Confidential information stored on computers must be protected by a password.
Student records are not to be transmitted electronically without a guarantee of privacy. A receiving fax machine must be in a secure location and operated by employees cleared to work with confidential files.
Confidential e-mail messages must be encrypted or stripped of all information that identifies the student. Never put students’ SSN in an e-mail, and ask students not to use SSNs in e-mail to you.
E-mail is considered to be an educational record and subject to FERPA[1]
Potential confidentiality problems with electronic notes are similar to confidentiality problems in allowing someone to see a hard copy of a student’s records.
It is a good idea to include this statement in your e-mail signature: E-mail is not a secure form of communication. The confidentiality of information transmitted by e-mail is not guaranteed.
Units should have an established fax and e-mail policy that incorporates FERPA and includes confidential taglines and other safeguards.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, the federal law safeguarding the privacy and disclosure of student records.
Advisors should consult their unit’s policies relating to compliance with FERPA and with exceptions to FERPA. There are some instances in which a student’s permission to disclose educational records is not required (see examples below), but individuals should not disclose educational records unless permitted by unit policy and appropriate supervisory personnel.
When necessary to protect the health and safety of students or other persons, educators may share confidential information with law-enforcement officers, medical personnel, and others without student consent.
Educators may disclose education records to a student’s parents[2] if a health or safety emergency involves their son or daughter.
If a student is a dependent for income tax purposes, educators may disclose education records to parents.
If a student has committed an offense related to drugs or drinking, educators may disclose educations records to parents.
2 See Fisher, Karen, “Department of Education Offers Guidance on Balancing Campus Safety and Student Privacy Rights”, October 31, 2007, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
For more information regarding the privacy of student information and FERPA, see You might also want to contact the university’s attorneys for advice.
For more information regarding the university’s obligation to retain student records, see
For information about the possible impact of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), covering the use and disclosure of private health information, see
For information about the policies relating to electronic documents, see
Private student records remain subject to a judicial subpoena and discovery in lawsuits. Marking a record “confidential” does not protect it from required disclosure to the student or to the court system. Contact the university’s attorneys for advice.
Public universities also have obligations to the public, and they must comply with public records laws. Contact the university’s attorneys if your unit receives a public records request. If the request comes from a media outlet, also contact university relations.
December 2007
Adapted by Jennifer Belisle and Gloria Eyerly, Advising and Academic Services, College of the Arts and Sciences, from Counseling and Student Support Office, California Department of Education (Paul Meyers, Consultant). "Can Parents Demand to See My Counseling Notes?"
Assume that what you write may be viewed by students, their parents, or the general public.
Ensure that the statements you make orally or in writing are necessary, permitted, and
required as a part of your employment and your responsibility as a professional to your
students.
- In general, your primary purpose in writing notes should be to convey to a reader—whether another advisor or the student—the main substance, the goals and outcomes of the meeting, along with any agreed-upon follow-ups (with responsibility for who will do what delineated clearly). Notes are not encyclopedic: all the details of what you discussed are beyond the scope of a summary.
- Write what you know to be true (e.g., a student tells you they are depressed. You did not diagnose them, so this is something inappropriate for an academic advisor to include in any type of note).
- The information in notes is always confidential, but some of the information students confide can be very private. Use coded or general language—and your own good judgment—to describe sensitive or highly personal information or situations that a student has confided. For example, you might want to say “walked student to the Younkin Success Center” in order to impress upon the reader the urgency of the situation.
- Use paper notes for situations not appropriate for electronic (shared) notes. For example, if a student is acting inappropriately and you become worried about your safety. [Be aware, however, that all paper notes could be obtained and potentially made public in a law suit. Marking them “confidential” does not exempt them from disclosure.]
- Notes cannot replicate specific materials (an annotated degree audit; the name, address, and telephone number of a referral; or a list or check sheet you routinely use in working with students) you gave to a student as takeaways during an appointment.
- Summarize what you discussed as it relates to a student’s academic success. If your conversation is personal in nature and you wish to alert a university staff to such, please put that in your advisor only notes (see guidelines on page seven). A student already knows you had a “personal” conversation and therefore doesn’t need to be reminded in a note that is available to them.
- Always document your referral; this indicates you did something about the student’s situation.
Medical Documentation / General Business Processes
- Your review of medical documentation offered by a student, and a notation that you have reviewed such documentation, can be sufficient for purposes of petitions, and retaining a copy of the medical documentation may be unnecessary. In cases when it is necessary to retain such confidential information for purposes of a petition, make a copy of applicable documents with permission from the student. File the documents in a locked file area, and shred if requested by the student.
- Submission and storage of medical (or other pertinent) documentation is a business policy discussion that needs to happen within your college/department/office.
- The point of view you employ in writing notes is up to you, a matter of personal and stylistic preference. Notes can be effectively written from various perspectives:
- First-person plural: “We discussed. . . .”
- Second-person singular (addressed directly to the student, though with the understanding that advisors are also an intended audience): “You told me. . . .”
- First-person singular: “I referred student. . .” (overt); “Referred student. . .” (implied).
- You can start a note in order to remember you met with a student if you primarily work on walk-in advising. The notes remain in edit mode, starting with INITIAL creation of note, for seven days.
- It might a good idea to include a lecture about the business of taking notes in your University Survey 100 course.
Copying emails into AdvisingConnect
/ Copying AdvisingConnect notes into email
One of the most important items to remember about e-mail in general – there should never be restricted data about a student in an e-mail. Please visit
to learn exactly what elements are considered restricted.
- If we (institutionally) are “maintaining” the record and it is “student identifiable” in a reasonable manner, and it’s at all related to his educational experience (doesn’t have to be directly academic), then it’s an education record.
- Be sure to review an e-mail exchange you plan on pasting into AdvisingConnect. Often a student will e-mail you with intentions of you only viewing the content. If a student included details about a very personal situation, you need to redact that from your e-mail prior to pasting into AdvisingConnect.
Listed below are the following offices that use AdvisingConnect – in addition to advisors in a college office/department/unit.
- Student Services Center (SSC). Staff, who works on escalated issues and SAP appeals (view only)
- Student Advocacy (view only)
- Undergraduate Research Office (view/write)
- Undergraduate Admissions – Land Grant Scholarship advisors (view/write)
- Academy Program (view/write)
- The Metro School advisor (view/write)
- Honors and Scholars – program coordinators (view/write)
- Office of the University Registrar – uses it to troubleshoot, figure problem cases, and for late fee appeal reviews. (view only)
- Student Athletic Support Services Office (SASSO) (view/write)
- Office of International Affairs - Study Abroad (view/write)
- Office of Undergraduate Education (view/write)
- Office of Diversity and Inclusion – retention counselors (view/write)
- Office for Disability Services (view only)
- Student-Athlete Support Services Office (SASSO) – (view only)
Use of Terms / “Coded” Language
Now that students are able to read the notes you decide they can read, it’s important to consider the use of acronyms that are usually familiar to advisors. For example, using ODS instead of Office for Disability Services when reminding a student of the referrals you’ve made. As you are developing your point of view for writing a note for the student to read think about what acronyms make sense or which ones may be confusing. / The information in notes is always confidential, but some of the information students confide can be very private. Use coded or general language—and your own good judgment—to describe sensitive or highly personal information or situations that a student has confided. Below is one example:
- “Walked student to the Younkin Success Center” in order to impress upon the reader the urgency of the situation.