University Pilot Brief
The academic recovery engine that cuts DFW rates in gateway courses
Student-facing early engagement for retention. OVR IT pairs execution support students will actually use with a pilot model designed for provosts' offices, Disability Services, Student Affairs, and campus implementation teams.
The opportunity
Support is available. Follow-through is still breaking down.
Many students with ADHD know what they need to do. The harder part is starting, prioritizing, recovering after missed work, and turning accommodations into day-to-day academic follow-through. OVR IT helps close that gap with a student experience built around action, not just awareness.
Non-Enrollment Risk
~3× more likely to leave by year 2
ADHD students vs. non-ADHD peers (DuPaul et al., 2018, PMC6586431)
Persistence Gap
49% vs. 59%, 8-semester persistence
Unmedicated ADHD students vs. non-ADHD peers (Anastopoulos et al., 2021, PMC8797030)
Gateway Course DFW
30-40% at comprehensive universities
Gardner Institute, via Every Learner Everywhere
The gap in early alerts
Before-the-fail, not after-the-alert.
Early alerts help. A propensity-score-matched study of 6,716 students found instructor alerts were associated with lower course withdrawal and more students finishing at a C or higher (Han et al., 2025, Studies in Higher Education, 50:11). The breakdown happens on the student side of the alert.
Awareness
Only 47.2% had heard of their early alert system
Survey of 356 undergraduates at Arizona State University (Imundo et al., 2025, Applied Sciences, 15:11, article 6316)
Sentiment
43.6% of alerted students felt bad on receiving one
The most common initial emotion among students who had received an alert (Imundo et al., 2025, alerted-student items n = 110)
Follow-through
22.7% reached out to an advisor afterward
Alerted students who contacted an academic advisor after the alert (Imundo et al., 2025, alerted-student items n = 110)
OVR IT is the student-facing layer those systems are missing. We catch disengagement before the gradebook does: the student gets one clear next move while the grade is still saveable, and the campus gets advisor-safe signal from that same action.
No demographic prediction. Risk models that lean on demographics have labeled Black students high risk at 2 to 4 times the rate of white peers (The Markup, 2021). OVR IT does not predict risk from who a student is. It responds to what a student actually does: starts, stalls, completions, and recoveries.
Student layer
What students experience
Syllabus ingestion
Students upload a syllabus to bring deadlines and grade weights into one view.
Photo Scanner
When a syllabus, handout, or whiteboard holds the assignment, students photograph it and OVR IT extracts the structure into the same plan.
Verification
Students confirm extracted information before saving, maintaining accuracy and student agency.
Goals
Semester-level goals connect to the daily plan, so today's task ladders up to what students came to college to do.
Time-window planning
OVR IT works with the time a student actually has, not a hypothetical schedule.
Energy Tracker
Students log when they actually focus best. The recovery engine schedules deep work into real energy windows instead of an idealized 9-to-5.
Deadline Map
A visual layout of upcoming assignments and exams across courses. Surfaces collision weeks before students hit them, not after.
One clear next move
Students get a realistic next move instead of a full-task avalanche.
Grade Predictor
Weighted what-if scenarios show which assignments actually move a grade. Helps students decide where to spend their next hour and gives advisors a data-grounded conversation starter.
Recovery support
When a student falls behind, OVR IT takes a recovery-first approach: help them re-enter instead of disengage.
I'm Overwhelmed
A one-tap reset for the moments when nothing feels doable. The system shrinks the next move down to something genuinely startable.
Semester Heartbeat
An EKG-style view of deadline pressure across the full term. Students see crunch periods before they arrive, not after they've already missed something.
BRIO
BRIO. A proactive AI coach that opens conversations using the student's own academic context. Checks in before deadlines. Helps re-route when plans fall apart.
Assignment Decoder
Breaks any assignment into the smallest possible starting point, the first clear action a student can take right now.
Co-Focus Rooms
Body doubling for students who work better alongside others. Recent research supports this intervention for ADHD populations (Ara et al., 2025, arXiv:2509.12153; preprint).
Essay Grader
Inline feedback on drafts, clarity, structure, argument quality, so students ship a stronger version before the deadline instead of submitting a first draft.
Weekly Recap
A short, judgment-free reflection at the end of each week. What got done, what didn't, and what's worth carrying into next week, without making a hard week into a referendum.
Study for Good
Milestones trigger a donation to ADHD support organizations on the student's behalf. Effort connects to community impact, not just personal grades.
Institutional layer
What campus teams can operationalize
Disability Services
Disability Services
- Extend support beyond accommodation approval
- Reinforce follow-through between appointments
- Identify where students may need earlier outreach
- Complement existing case management workflows
Student Affairs
Student Affairs & Success
- Surface patterns in activation and follow-through
- Support targeted intervention for at-risk cohorts
- Add an execution layer to broader retention work
- Demonstrate measurable support investment
IT & Procurement
IT & Procurement
- Pilot-first rollout with clear scope, no IT overhead to begin
- Domain detection and school activation codes for cohort-scoped pilots
- Canvas LMS sync for grade context and course intelligence (optional)
- SSO and integration planning aligned to campus readiness
- Reporting, export, and governance posture for institutional review
- Data processing agreement available for security review
Reporting
Reporting campuses can use
Each reporting category is designed to communicate clearly to a different institutional stakeholder, without overclaiming outcomes or presenting pilot activity as validated proof.
Activation & Adoption Brief
Who started, where engagement is forming, and where drop-off appears early.
Accommodation Effectiveness View
How usage patterns may help teams understand support uptake and follow-through.
Retention Risk Radar
Signals that can help teams identify where additional support may be needed.
Operational Throughput View
A clearer picture of adoption, usage patterns, and support operations over time.
Executive ROI Narrative
A structured way to communicate pilot activity, adoption, and institutional learning to leadership.
Pilot model
Designed to start small and scale with evidence
OVR IT is built for a pilot-first engagement model. Start with a defined student cohort. Expand based on pilot learning, not assumption. Every pilot ships evaluation-ready: a comparison cohort is defined up front, reporting is disaggregated by course section and cohort, and we never claim causal lift without a comparison cohort.
Governance & trust
Institutional readiness, without unnecessary complexity
Start a Pilot Conversation
Fill this out and Darrell will follow up within 2 business days.