Turning Data from Canvas Into Action: How Dropout Detective & Grade Guardian Drive Student Success

Solving the Student Support Visibility Gap in Canvas

Helping students succeed is a fundamental goal of every school. Whether in higher education, K–12 districts, or professional programs, institutions rely on advisors, counselors, and faculty to support struggling students. One of the biggest challenges? Identifying at-risk students before they fall too far behind.

Back in 2012, Kimberley Munzo was serving as Director of Online Education and Canvas administrator at a college where she was responsible not just for academic programming but also for student retention. Canvas housed the most current and relevant student data, but there was no simple way to view a student’s performance across all courses in one place.

To get a full picture, advisors had to manually pull data from each course, evaluate grades and engagement individually, and then compile a report by hand. To streamline this process, Kim built a spreadsheet that consolidated student performance data—and soon realized this tool could help others. That insight led to the founding of AspirEDU, Inc. and the launch of our flagship solution: Dropout Detective.

Supporting Higher Ed with Actionable Data from Canvas

Dropout Detective is a hosted software solution that integrates seamlessly with Canvas, offering one clear view of each student’s performance across all their courses. Academic advisors, program directors, coaches, and deans can see student risk levels at a glance—without digging through individual course pages.

Every student receives a daily-updated Risk Index Score, much like a credit score, that highlights potential concerns. This allows school staff to spend less time searching for at-risk students, and more time supporting them.

We’ve proudly partnered with Canvas since 2013, and have been working with Canvas schools for over 12 years. Some of the most impactful enhancements came directly from educators:

• Hey, AspirEDU!  Your view for counselors and deans is wonderful but our instructors need a view of the students in their classes.”
  ✔️ Instructors and professors now have their own views to support retention efforts.
• “Hey, AspirEDU!  It would be great if Dropout Detective could allow my advisors and sports coaches to have personalized dashboards of just their assigned students.”  
  ✔️ Clients can now build and manage dashboards to focus on just their assigned students or students most relevant to them
• Hey, AspirEDU!  You do a good job with data but we sometimes need to manually flag a student that may have non-academic risk factors.” 
  ✔️ Dropout Detective allows instructors and others to place “alerts” on students that trigger emails to advisors.

We’ve always focused our enhancements to Dropout Detective on complementing—never duplicating—Canvas functionality. Our LTI integration includes direct links back to Canvas, helping Dropout Detective feel like a natural extension of the world’s best LMS.

Meeting the Needs of K–12 Schools with Grade Guardian

While Dropout Detective started in higher education, the need for a comprehensive student view is just as strong in K–12. As Canvas adoption expanded across districts, we began receiving referrals from Canvas CSMs and neighboring districts. Today, our client base is split evenly between higher ed and K–12.

We learned that in K–12, the priority isn’t dropouts—it’s visibility. Teachers, counselors, and school leaders simply need an easy way to monitor how students are doing across all their classes. To meet that need, we rebranded Dropout Detective for the K–12 market as Grade Guardian—Same system, friendlier name.

K–12-Specific Features Include:

• Role flexibility: Teachers who are also coaches or counselors can toggle between the course view of their students and a list of their advisees.
• Virtual school support: Many districts have virtual schools that welcome students from other brick-and-mortar schools to take online courses. Districts can build dashboards for “home” schools to monitor their students enrolled in online courses.
• Observer insights: See linked Observers and their contact information right inside Grade Guardian.
• Progress reports: Automatically generate and email progress updates to students and Observers.

Grade Guardian takes the data that lives in Canvas and makes it more actionable for K-12 school personnel.

Absurdly Fast Implementation

We know what you are thinking. “This sounds like something that would benefit my school. But how long will it take to implement?” Because of our smooth integration with Canvas, we can complete the technical integration with any school of any size within one week. We have done these integrations hundreds of times in our 12+ years as a Canvas partner.

Personalized Support from Real Educators

One of the great frustrations that we all endure – outside of education – is the lack of support for products we buy. Support shouldn’t be a luxury. At AspirEDU, every client receives Platinum-level service—no extra packages or upgrades needed.

We assign a dedicated Business Relationship Manager (BRM) to each new client. These BRMs are former Canvas admins, teachers, and advisors—and most importantly, former users of Dropout Detective and Grade Guardian. They’ll guide your setup, lead training, and remain your ongoing partner via phone and email.

We believe support should be responsive, human, and helpful.

Why Wait?

Schools everywhere are navigating tight budgets, high expectations, and increased accountability. Families are more engaged than ever, and the need to keep students on track has never been more urgent.

Dropout Detective and Grade Guardian empower schools to support every student, earlier and more effectively—without adding to the workload.

Join the hundreds of Canvas schools already using our tools to drive student success.

Start helping more students today — Request your demo

Going to InstructureCon? Drop by our booth #58 or Join us for our Speaking Session