June Wong, a senior business major at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, has always found planning courses and tracking her degree progress to be a daunting task, even with the presence of academic advisers on campus.

"Academic advising for me has been a struggle," Wong said. "I saw an adviser for the first two years of my degree, and they really didn't have much to say."

Wong, like most students, opted to figure out on her own what courses to take to complete her degree, but she admits there are problems with that as well.

"It's confusing and you're going to make mistakes," she said.

Students now have the option to use a new online tool that essentially takes on the role of an academic adviser by allowing students to figure out what courses they need to take to complete their degree on time.

The Star degree system, first launched as an administrative tool at UH-Manoa several years ago, is being extended as an online program for students across the UH system. The program has been available to students for the past couple of months, and Manoa interim Chancellor Denise Konan plans to make a formal announcement about the system this month.

"One of the concerns we've had on this campus for a very long time is our graduation and retention rates," said Ron Cambra, assistant vice chancellor for undergraduate education. "One aspect (to improving) that is a reporting system that allows students to follow their academic journey accurately."

The tool also fills a need for a growing generation of students using more and more online resources. However, the tool won't replace academic advisers, but would be a supplement to them, Cambra said.

"This changes (academic advising) completely because now what is in front of the adviser is also in front of the student. The nature of the conversation between the student and the adviser also changes. The conversation becomes: What is the value of this particular academic major? What does it take to get that major completed? What are the possibilities for career paths?" he said.

The university also plans on announcing new requirements for academic advising, including mandatory advising during a student's first two years at Manoa, and mandatory declaration of a major by a student's junior year.

Cambra said the online system could also improve graduation rates. About 56 percent of students who enter UH-Manoa as freshmen take six years to complete their bachelor's degrees. Cambra says UH-Manoa lags behind the average graduation rate of its peer institutions, which is about 10 percent higher.

While academic advisers have been able to help students track their progress and suggest necessary courses, many students choose not to make regular visits.

That's the case with senior art major Liana Sano. She's made a few visits with academic advisers in the art department but never bothered to see a general academic adviser to plan out prerequisite and general course requirements.

"The art advisers don't really know a lot about the general requirements, so I've done all of that on my own," Sano said.

Having the new degree-planning tool could help her figure out if she's taken the courses she needs to graduate on time, she said.

"I wish they would have had something like this sooner," she said.

Many students often end up taking courses they think will fulfill necessary requirements, only to find out much later that they were wrong, said Cambra. The new online tool can tell students specifically if a course fulfills a general education requirement, a prerequisite requirement or some other type of necessary course.

Freshman Whitney Fergerstrom has not decided yet what she wants to study and said she probably won't see an adviser until she wants to declare a major.

Fergerstrom said she plans to use the online tool to help plan general classes and start thinking about how they would fit into a major. "I don't want to take a class that doesn't fill a requirement. I don't want to waste my time or my money," she said.

Because the tool is available to all students within the UH system, community college students can use it to figure out how their coursework would translate into degree requirements at one of the four-year campuses, said Louise Pagotto, acting vice chancellor for academic affairs at Kapi'olani Community College.

"What's important and what's different about this program is they can do different scenarios and they can see how well their past choices are lining up with what they might want to do," she said.

Reach Loren Moreno at lmoreno@honoluluadvertiser.com.