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How to set up an advising appointment using Starfish As class registration rapidly approaches, students are eager to set up the required advising appointments with their advisor. However, some students are left confused about how to set up their appointments with UNCC’s newly adopted “Starfish” system. Here is a basic guide on how to set up your advising appointment using “Starfish”. 1. Open a browser that allows you to access the internet (i.e: Internet explorer, google chrome, safari, etc...)

2. In the URL box, enter the following website address: www.49express.uncc.edu this will direct you to the 49er express page.

3. Enter your name and in the designated areas.

4. You will be directed to the 49er homepage. To access Starfish, the advising page for UNC Charlotte, click on the large green “Starfish” button on the bottom right hand corner of the page.

5. Another page may appear before you get to the Starfish homepage. If so, enter your Niner information. If you are directed to the homepage, skip this step.

6. You will be directed to the Starfish homepage. Examine the contents of the homepage, and direct your attention to the left hand banner.

7. Click on “My Success Network”.

8. You will be directed to a page that will list your instructors and advisors. Navigate to the name of your major advisor.

9. Click on “Schedule Appointment” under your major advisor’s tab. 10.You will be directed to your advisor’s schedule for either the day or the week. You may change the schedule viewing from “day” to “week” and vice versa, using the tabs on the top labeled “day” and “week”.

11.Use the schedule to find a day and time that you find convenient to schedule an appointment. Utilize the arrows and customization buttons to expand your view of your advisor’s schedule. If a time slot is open, it will read “Sign Up”. Click “sign up” to proceed to confirm your time.

12.A pop-up will come up that will ask you to tell and confirm the details of your appointment. Fill out each field that best describes the conditions and reasoning for your visit.

13.Press “submit” if everything is to your liking, or press “never mind” to select a different date or if you’ve changed your mind about setting up an appointment. 14.Log out of Starfish. 15.Close your browser.

Audience Analysis: The audience for the instructions is UNC Charlotte students who are looking to for classes for next term. Students at UNC Charlotte are all different ages, so there is no specific age group. The instructions are for students who have little to no knowledge on how to utilize the newly adopted “Starfish” to set up their advising appointments. They will use the instructions to make their advising appointments so they may for classes for the next term. The technical background of the target audience ranges from novice to intermediate (as experts should be able to make appointments without much chance of fail). Some technical

constraints may include lack of internet connection (which is necessary), and lack of computer access (which is also necessary).

Final Memo Naturally, writing instructions seemed rather easy for me. I believed all that instructions included was list of steps that helped guide them towards completing a certain task. Essentially, that is what instructions aim to do—but much to my surprise, they are a little more complicated than that. Instructions that are superbly easy for a target to follow are hard to write. Instructions that make sense to the author may not necessarily make sense to the target audience. While it may seem remedial to the writer, instructions should be so easy that someone without any type of background knowledge should be able to follow the instructions somewhat easily. Through this project, I was able to at least somewhat understand how much time and effort goes into writing instructions. For the most part, I didn’t have to make many revisions in my instructions. The steps were fairly straight-forward and to the point.

As far as difficulties go, it was fairly tedious having to spell out each and every step. For someone who knows the content in which they are writing about, doing something like that certainly seemed unnecessary. However, thinking about the target audience, spelling out every step bluntly is completely necessary to create proper instructions. The group project was revolved around “How to create a blog”. I was the final editor. Everyone played a part in coming up with a topic and putting it into action, but Neph, because of her extensive background in blogging, helped the most in putting the project into action. We all collaborated nicely, and consequentially, there weren’t many problems at all.

Pre-test Questions: 1. 2. 3. 4.

On a scale from one to ten, how “tech-savvy” would you consider yourself to be? Have you used “Starfish”, the advising portal site, in the past? How well do you follow directions? (Scale from 1-10) Do you consider yourself to be a kinesthetic, visual, or auditory learner? (Do you

learn by hearing, seeing, or doing?) 5. Do you find it more convenient to set up appointments in person or using technology? Post-test questions: 1. On a scale from 1-10, how well did the instructions cater to your level of “techsavviness”? 2. After following the instructions, do you feel more comfortable using starfish? a. Yes b. Somewhat c. Not at all d. What’s Starfish? 3. On a scale from 1-10, how easy did you find the instructions to follow? 4. After using the instructions, how do you prefer to set up your advising appointments? a. Starfish

b. In person c. Other 5. How well do you understand starfish? a. Well b. Somewhat well c. Ehhh… d. Not well e. Not at all