In CounselMore, Assignments serve as the primary communication and service delivery workflow tool connecting counselors and students.
By moving away from traditional back-and-forth emails, Assignments facilitate an efficient service delivery process, drive student engagement that is focused on task completion (away from what if questions), track progress associated to calls to action assignments, and ensure alignment with their goals and the counselors ability to serve all student equitably, all within a cohesive and organized framework.
Best Practice:
College Counseling is a busy and repetitive service. Counselors can often forget what they have covered already from one meeting to the next...this is why Counselor reply on AI note takers or time-consuming meeting notes but those tools do not convey the Counselor's service process consistently nor do they establish measurements of services rendered. Most importantly, meeting notes and spurious emails waste precious time.
The process steps of College Readiness never change - only the interpretation of each step (how preparation will pertain to a specific student's need is nuanced but the actual readiness remains unchanged)
Best Practice:
Collect questions sent to the Counselor via email or text or chat > answer those questions live at the top of the next meeting.
Collect questions sent to the Counselor via email or text or chat > and apply the question and answer to the respective Routine Assignment that defines the preparation, expectation and answers the client's question.
Steering both Student and Parent back to the original Routine Assignment resources the Counselor has already created.
Example:
The Counselor initiates the Routine Assignment on Letters of recommendation. The clients have received the Assignment Summary email.
The Counselor receives and email from the client "How do I request a LOR?"
The Counselor takes the question and adds it to the existing Routine Assignment in the Assignments tab. The Counselor then clicks Menu button > Send email.
A new Assignment Summary email is sent to the student with the Letters of Recommendation assignment moved to the top.
The Counselor has now responded without re-writing instructions and the Student has been steered back to existing resources.
Counselor’s POV
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Counselor creates and sends Assignments via the CounselMore platform.
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These Assignments are goal-oriented tasks (e.g., write an essay, complete a form, schedule a meeting).
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The system sends the Assignment via email notification to the student.
Student’s POV
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Receives Assignment Email
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The student receives an email with details and links.
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Takes Action in Portal
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The student clicks the link and is taken to their portal where they see the Assignment.
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Instead of replying via email, the student engages directly with the Assignment.
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Communicates Through Assignment
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If the student has comments or questions, they can leave a comment on the Assignment itself
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Once the task is complete, the student clicks "Done" to indicate it's finished.
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