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101 BEST PRACTICES >> Administrative IT

11/24/2006

80 :: AID G'ES VIRTUAL

Traditional, brick-and-mortar financial aid offices may soon be a thing of the past. Now, thanks to an educational financing option known as the Virtual Financial Aid Office, schools can outsource all or part of their student financial aid efforts online. The patent-pending service run by Weber and Associates is touted to eliminate all paper from the financial aid process. On the front end, students at participating schools sign up, log on, and complete a financial aid interview. On the back end, the VFAO communicates with its client school to make sure that the student is indeed attending, then prepares a financial aid award and originates a loan with a guarantor or bank.

President Harry Weber explains that the company specializes in managing Pell Grants, Federal Family Education Loans, and Federal Direct Loan processing for 30,000-plus students at more than 130 different institutions in 32 states, Guam, and Canada. He notes that the biggest benefit to outsourcing financial aid is cost savings; the VFAO enables schools to save big bucks on staffing and overhead, though they still must have a financial aid officer on campus to answer student questions. This individual has private and secure access to the system so he can know where a student is in the process at all times. More info here.

81 :: KNOW THY CUSTOMERS’ PAIN POINTS

Chicago’s DePaul University has taken strides to track and improve service to its students, faculty, and administration through the use of technology. DePaul’s Information Services (IS) department was tasked with examining how students interact with and view various university services. The goal: Identify solutions that would improve the overall student experience. The group worked with Touchpoint Associates to create a customized Customer Experience Management (CEM) model for Higher Education, designed to help organizations understand their key customer experiences and identify specific ROI-driven projects. This model provided the framework for DePaul’s assessment.

The first step was to discover and organize students’ experiences based on the way they prefer to interact with the university (phone, in-person, web, etc.). Based on the rich data collected, new solutions were prioritized by the direct impact on student pain points. In 2006 the university began work on over 100 new initiatives, including basic process changes and development of new applications and systems that support the overall student experience. Solutions have been as simple as a change in paperwork collection and as complex as a new online degree audit application that allows students to track their academic success. The CEM model is used to inform and shape how the IS group builds and maintains systems for their internal and external customers (students, staff, and faculty).

82 :: VIRTUALLY REGISTERED

At Florida Community College at Jacksonville, students don’t have to leave their dorms to register for classes (a process that is still arduous at best at many of the nation’s colleges and universities). Under the direction of Rob Rennie, FCCJ CIO and winner of a Computerworld IT Leadership Award, the college (encompassing 24,000 online students and 82 64,000 total students) has created an interactive computer simulation in which students meet with advisers, register for classes, and take campus tours via the school’s online portal. This “virtual campus” incorporates avatars that guide every student through each process, asking questions and making recommendations based on each student’s profile. Needless to say, the kids feel right at home: The simulation is constructed on the same technology that powers many of today’s popular video games, allowing students to navigate an environment that is authentic and familiar. What’s more, FCCJ has effectively differentiated itself from peer schools and increasingly popular online universities, while fostering a greater sense of community among students.

83 :: SNACKIN’ ON THE WEB

Thanks to DCSnacks.com,
students can order
goodies online.

At George Washington University (DC), the latest offering in online student services revolves around pretzels, potato chips, and soda. Thanks to a new third-party service, DCSnacks.com, students now have the ability to order their goodies online. This effort began back in January 2003, when then-GW student Matthew Mandell launched an online business enabling students to purchase snack food for delivery between the hours of 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. on school nights. At the time, the service met a huge need: None of the convenience stores on or around campus stayed open that late. Per student request, the school ironed out a deal with DCSnacks.com, giving students the capability to pay for their goodies with Colonial Cash, or the money stored on the debit strip of their GWorld Card ID cards. Today, students can log on to the website, order anything from tasty morsels to reams of printer paper, and pay for the transaction with their ID cards. When DCsnacks.com employees deliver the food, the employees check the cards to make sure the user matches the photo on the card, and upon positive authentication, they hand over the goods. More info here.

84 :: GOOD IT ADMINISTRATORS SPEAK UP

MIKE YOHE talks.

According to Mike Yohe, executive director of electronic information services at Valparaiso University (IN), a CIO worth his salt must intelligently manage the burden of communication, if IT is to function properly, campuswide. “When things are going wrong, get out there and say, ‘I know this isn’t good. Here is what we are doing to fix it, and this is about how long it is going to take.’” Every Friday, Yohe also pens a newsletter that is sent to a campus subscriber list. It discusses what is going right, what is going wrong, what is coming up in the following week, and what is on the horizon. “I throw in a few things about how to manage a PC, or other tips,” adds Yohe. “It runs a couple of typed pages, and it’s written so that busy people can skim through it, find things they are interested in, and learn about places to get more information. It has my ‘voice’ and my return address. Even the student newspaper occasionally picks up items from my newsletter. It also has turned out to be a good way for me to keep in touch with what is going on in my own organization.” More info here.

85 :: UNIFORM ACCESS TO INFO, FROM ANYWHERE

In the University of Alaska system, campuses and students are spread across a geographic area more than three times the size of Texas. Not surprisingly, the school needed to move a bevy of mission-critical administrative systems into the online space, for easier access. At the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year, officials under the leadership of CIO Steve Smith turned to SunGard Higher Education for help. The vendor came back with a $4 million, five-year plan to put most of the services in the institution’s “administrative core” into a web-based portal called UAOnline. Next, after a stage of further enhancements that brought hardware vendor Hewlett-Packard into the mix, Smith and his development team rebranded the portal as MyUA. The current iteration of the portal boasts web-based e-mail for students, as well as access to systems for financial aid, course registration, and course management. It offers online applications, the ability to access online transcripts, and a direct tunnel into the UA library catalogs, as well. Smith says that the only real challenge thus far has been in tweaking the portal code so that each individual campus can add its own colors to the template .More info here.