Braden Hiley, freshman, recently selected the classes he wants to take for the rest of his time at MHS through the new Academic Plan on Infinite Campus.
Despite facing some challenges while trying to use it, Hiley said he prefers the Academic Plan over the system he had used to select freshman year classes. With the previous course selection process, students could only sign up for classes for the upcoming year. Another limit of the previous course selection process was that there was no way to track the courses students need to graduate without looking at their transcripts.
“It was a good change,” Hiley said.
The Academic Plan course selection process was implemented district-wide this year, and it allows students to select courses more than one year in advance.
Associate Principal Dr. Michael Wegener worked closely with the guidance team to implement the Academic Plan. The most challenging part of the new program, he said, was training guidance staff on how to implement the new system with teachers, students and parents.
Wegener also was learning how to use the Academic Plan system and simultaneously being introduced to the district as the 2023-2024 school year is his first year in the district.
“I don’t have previous experience with course registration in the district, so whatever I used this year was going to be new to me,” Wegener said.
Jeff Marx, guidance counselor, said despite the learning curve, the Academic Plan is more effective than the previous system.
“It’s like we’ve changed from using an old school flip phone with a two inch non-color screen that only made phone calls and sent text messages, to a new smartphone with a seven inch color touch screen with GPS, internet, video chat capability and mapping capability,” Marx said.
Marx said the benefits of the new system far outweigh those of the old.
“The planner tool helps develop the skills for longer-term four-year planning with a solid goal of graduation in mind, instead of just planning one year at a time,” Marx said.
Marx said the new planner will allow counselors to more easily see that students have planned all of their graduation requirements, and administrators can plan hiring and staffing needs more than a year in advance.
“Those new benefits for long-term planning at the student and leadership level, a larger view of a student’s four-year path through a complex list of graduation requirements, and the ability for students to make adjustments to that plan on their own during the year are significant,” Marx said.
