Overview
When implementing Stellic, each institution must determine which students to include in the platform. While Stellic is designed for "active students," your institution must define this term according to your specific needs.
Key Considerations
Student Status: Each institution has student status criteria used in your business processes. Common statuses include active, inactive, completed, withdrawn, and dismissed. You must determine when students should enter and exit your Stellic data feed.
Usability: Consider the experience of the staff who work with these student records.
Data Management: By default, students removed from your institutional feed will appear in Stellic for a period of 6 months. After that, they will drop out of the interface and only be available by back-end data request. Institutions who want extended access to student records within Stellic can add Extended Archive to their contract.
Data Freshness: When a student's information stops being sent to Stellic, their data enters a snapshot state, representing the last data we received from your institution for that student.
Contractual Agreement: All students sent to Stellic count toward the number of students outlined in your contract, as maintaining their data requires infrastructure support by Stellic.
These guidelines aim to help you establish appropriate criteria for including students in your Stellic data feeds. Your Stellic implementation manager is available to provide feedback on your criteria and to discuss specific use cases for your implementation.
Key Definitions
Active: A student currently included in the student_basic data feed is considered Active.
Note: You might use the term "active" in your SIS to determine which students to send to Stellic or as a status field in student_basic. This usage differs from Stellic's definition.
Archived: Status applied when a previously included student is absent from the most recent student_basic data feed. Archived student effects include:
Student is deactivated
Red notification bar displayed on student’s profile, including the date when the student record was archived
Audit and planner become static snapshots (frozen)
Note: If a student is archived and then later included again in the student_basic data feed, you should expect their full record to reappear in the interface, including past notes and exceptions.
Activated: This means a student/user is able to log into Stellic, if they can also pass through Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication.
Deactivated: This means a student/user is unable to log into Stellic, even if they pass SSO authentication.
Access to Archived Students: The ability for admin (non-student) users to view the record of an Archived student in Stellic.
Active Student Definition
In Stellic, the term “active” means a student who is coming into Stellic through your institution’s student data feed, specifically the student_basic data. We’ve provided guidance below for identifying the active student population at your institution.
Authentication and Access Control
Three things must be true in order for a student to access Stellic:
They must be able to pass through your institution’s SSO.
They must be present in your most recent student_basic data feed coming into Stellic.
They must be activated in Stellic.
Activation is typically completed at scale by the Stellic team during your implementation, using parameters provided by your project team. At each phased launch during an implementation, your project team will work with Stellic to determine which populations of students to activate. For example, you can determine to activate all students in a specific school. Moving forward, any student who matches that school will be automatically activated.
Multiple Definition Contexts
Institutions frequently maintain different "active student" definitions across functional areas:
Enrollment reporting could use one definition
Library and resource access could use another
Academic planning could require another approach
Single Sign-On (SSO) could use another
Recommendation: Define active status based on planning and advising needs. This will allow you to focus on students who require course planning access or whose records are actively reviewed by advisors.
Timing Considerations
Consider these key decision points when configuring your active student parameters:
Entry Threshold: Determine when students should first appear in Stellic
Considerations:
When do you want staff or faculty at your institution to be able to start viewing students in Stellic?
When do you want students to be able to start logging into Stellic?
Common thresholds:
Upon admission
Upon admission deposit (if used) or activation criteria of their student record
Following orientation or specific onboarding tasks that trigger student status in the SIS
Leave of Absence/Withdrawal Handling: Establish retention periods for students with temporary or permanent status changes
Considerations:
When does a student lose access to your institution’s SSO?
How long is your allowable leave of absence period after which time a student is withdrawn from the institution? Do you have specific business processes that result in this status in your SIS?
Is there a key point where you want to ensure a student can no longer log into Stellic, such as after dismissal or withdrawal? Is there an appeals period where it would be beneficial to keep their record active?
What is your advising model for re-entry after a Leave of Absence?
Many institutions align this with their re-enrollment without readmission period
Graduation Transition: Define when graduating students transition from active to archived
Considerations:
Remember that once a student’s data stops coming into Stellic through your data feeds, that student record is turned into a frozen snapshot. Ensure you keep students in your student data feeds for as long as their degree conferral information is being processed in your SIS. For example, you will want all final grades to flow into Stellic to finish completing degree audit statuses. If you are sending the “certified” status for student program data, you’ll also want to allow that status to flow into Stellic before you remove completed students from the data feeds.
How long do you want students to be able to log into Stellic after the end of their graduation term?
How would you like to handle students who are completing one degree and progressing to another degree in the next academic year?
Best practice: We often see institutions choose to build a 30-day buffer into their student_basic and student data feeds after a student is marked as “graduated” or “completed” in the SIS. This provides a window for closing out business processes.
These parameters should be configured to support your institution's specific advising and degree completion workflows.
General best practices:
Ensure the data you need for key business processes are present in Stellic when you need them. Examples: orientation advising, viewing final grades, and closing out degree conferral record.
Ensure the student data you send is reliable, so you can trust your filters and reports without a significant population of students who advisors and staff would consider inactive or no longer relevant for business processes.
Align to the number of students outlined in your contract.
Searching for and Viewing Archived Students
To search for archived students, do the following:
Navigate to your institution's Stellic login page and sign in with your credentials.
From the left navigation panel, click Students. From the Students page, you can filter and search across students.
From the search filters, select Status. There are three ways to filter by status:
Only Active Students
Archived and Active Students
Only Archived Students
Select Only Archived Students.
If you have permission to view any Archived students, they appear in the results.
Archived Student Access Policy
Important: Your institution maintains ownership of all student data. Data exports from the back end are available upon request. Archive functionality enables continued use of the Stellic interface to view and manage historical student records.
Limited Access: Every institution has access to individual archived student records for 6 months after archival. This functionality is enabled by default.
Extended Access: In order to have Access to Archived Students beyond that 6-month mark, institutions have the option to pay for the Access to Archived Students add-on. Extended Access allows institutions to continue to view and manage historical student records for an unlimited amount of time after the student is archived. To learn more about Extended Access, reach out to your Stellic representative.