Support, not surveillance
Reach the students who never raise their hand, without breaking the trust that makes them answer honestly.
Early support, inside a privacy model you can defend in procurement
Four steps, with a privacy guardrail at every one.
Belonging without surveillance, made practical
First Six is built on a promise: the weekly check-in is on the student's side, never a grade, never held against them. That promise is what makes students answer honestly, and honest answers are the only signal worth having.
Proactive support keeps that promise while closing the gap it leaves. Aggregate insights show a coordinator where a cohort is drifting, with small groups suppressed so no one is singled out. And when a student's own check-in says they are struggling, the staff who support them can follow up, deliberately and with every read logged. The result is early help that reaches the quiet student, held inside a privacy model the institution can stand behind in procurement.
How it works
Four steps, with a privacy guardrail at every one.
01
Students check in, in a few seconds
Once a week, a student says how they are travelling. It is never a grade and never held against them, which is exactly what keeps the answer honest.
02
The cohort picture shows where to look
Aggregate insights show a coordinator which weeks and which groups are wobbling, with any group under five students suppressed so no one is singled out.
03
Reach the students who will not raise a hand
When a student's own check-in reads struggling, or an active checker-in goes quiet, they surface in one place, so the quiet ones are not missed behind the loud ones.
04
Every look is logged
Opening a student's record is a deliberate, audited action the institution controls, the same as it has always been. Support, on the record.
Early support, inside a privacy model you can defend in procurement
The signal students generate becomes something a coordinator can act on, person by person, without ever exposing an individual to scrutiny they did not sign up for.
What we never do. The line between support and surveillance, drawn clear.
Support means seeing the pattern, not the person. We built the line between helping and watching into the product itself.
Never a background watchlist
It is an on-demand list a staff member opens when they choose to look, not a standing register running quietly in the background.
Never built from anonymous data
It reads only the check-ins a student already shares with their support team. The aggregate insights stay anonymous, with small groups hidden.
Never unlogged
Every time a staff member opens a student's record it is written to an audit trail the institution owns.
Never held against a student
A hard week is a prompt to reach out, not a mark on a record. Honesty is the point, never a risk.
Plugs into the systems you already run
SSO, roster sync, calendar integration. Your stack stays yours, and your students see only your university.
Outbound webhooks
Subscribe your own systems to signed First Six events (request created, crisis, updated, resolved), delivered over HTTPS with an HMAC signature you verify.
Help desk & CRM (email-to-ticket)
When a student asks for help, open a ticket in the help desk your staff already watch (ServiceNow, Salesforce, Jira Service Management, Zendesk), via email-to-case.
Calendar (ICS)
Add events to the calendar students already use.
Student information system
Sync enrolment and audience groups from your student information system. CSV roster import is available today; the direct push endpoint is in early access.
SAML 2.0
Single sign-on via SAML 2.0. In progress.
OpenID Connect (OIDC)
Standards-based single sign-on via OpenID Connect.
Microsoft Entra ID
Single sign-on via Microsoft Entra ID using OIDC.
FAQ
Questions about how First Six works and what it does for your students.
No. It is the individual follow-up support staff have always been able to do, gathered into one view so the quiet student is not missed. It is permission-gated, audited, and framed as support, and it never draws on the anonymous cohort insights.
Two ways. Aggregate dashboards suppress any group under five students, so no one can be singled out from a chart. And an individual's check-ins are only reachable by the staff who support that cohort, with every read logged.
Nothing they have to do. If a check-in shows they are struggling, the right person is simply more likely to reach out, and sooner.