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The Dangers of Student Population WarmingHow our Ektron Portal Saved us Money
and maybe the World
Fall of 2013…
Good Recruiting Year
• Brought in a good sized class
• Reviewing our numbers, we noticed something
www.vccoaching.com/smarter-thinking/meme-thinking-face-1920x1080/
The Students are melting
Some deposited students don’t show up in the
fall.
This is Bad.
www.floridacollegeaccess.org/2014/05/07/florida-c-a-n-webinar-prevent-summer-melt-and-heat-up-college-going-rates/
Math leads to uneasiness…
Average tuition for 2014-2015 is $31,231 1
Average melt percent is 19% 2
Our average class size is ~400
1 www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=100642 blog.ed.gov/2013/07/summer-melt/
mathematicssas.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/math1.jpg
… and large numbers
That’s about $2.4 million dollars.
http://imgkid.com/disgusted-meme-face.shtml
Could your company use $2.4 million?
www.cockeyed.com/inside/million/million_dollars.html
Business words
We are failing in our marketing and sales process
Failing to close causes wasted money and time
Looks bad in annual reports
passionfire.com/mlm-training-the-5-4-3-2-1-most-powerful-words-in-network-marketing/
…but it’s worse than just money.
Education is not about making money.
(though it can help)
It’s about helping people grow to become the best
they can be.
Statement of Purpose (we take it seriously)
Hendrix College cultivates empathy, creativity, self-understanding, rigorous inquiry, informed deliberation, and
active learning across the liberal arts, toward the development of the whole person. Through engagement that links the
classroom with the world, and a commitment to diversity, inclusion, justice, and sustainable living, the Hendrix
community inspires students to lead lives of accomplishment, integrity, service, and joy.
Approved by the Hendrix College faculty and Board of Trustees in spring 2015
But saving the world, really?
What if one of those 40 kids stops an asteroid from
destroying civilization as we know it?
s.hswstatic.com/gif/stop-killer-asteroid-hpa.jpg
…really.
Dr. Omer L. Shedd ’93President of Promise for Haiti, which supports the 65-bed Hospital Bienfaisance in Pignon, Haiti, with two high-quality operating rooms, and the community with nine elementary schools and a clean water project. As part of his role in PFH, he is developing a cardiology and pacemaker implant program for the poor people in the country and is training Haitian physicians to perform the life-saving procedure.”
https://www.hendrix.edu/news/news.aspx?id=76046
My god, the stakes!
It’s a big complex problem!
• Who can possibly help us find a solution?
memegenerator.net/instance/43963915
The programmers, who else?
Jay Burling ’03Director of Web Applications at Hendrix College
Building in, on, and around Ektron since 2005 Has fantastic hair.
… and a few other people
Okay, it was actually a huge group
• My amazing software team
• The CIO (my boss), the CMO, and the Dean of Students
• Marketing and Communications
• Admission
• Student Affairs
• Basically a cross-section of the institution
What did we do?
Magic.
• Re-evaluated how we were communicating with our customers
• Built a system that let us better track their engagement and guide them on to campus in the fall!
http://www.tomrowan.co.uk/chronicles/designer-why-designer-part-4-2-bucks-uni
What exactly is happening?
Summer Melt is a problem
for all higher education
institutions
Research Consensus: There’s probably not a silver bullet for the entire market (is there ever?)
Problem 1: Shrinking Population
We were losing students before they every
showed up on campus.
At some point, students were simply disengaging from the enrollment process over the summer.
“It turns out that with higher education, we're failing to bridge a very important last mile. There's this whole group of low-income students who make it to college, they get in, they get financial aid, they're clearly success stories, but the pipe's leaky. And something happens in the last mile, the summer right before they go to college, and they don't show up in college in the fall.”
www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202566709/why-poor-students-college-plans-are-hijacked-over-the-summer
Ebb in student engagement
College admission is a roller coaster of
excitement
1. First, there’s admission and deposit(Yay! They want me!!)
2. Then there’s enrollment (Oh my god what is all this??)
Registering for courses, Submitting financial aid, Government health forms,Orientation paperwork,Housing agreements…
It can be overwhelming..
"You get the acceptance letter and start the celebration," said Shauna Cunningham, a high school guidance counselor who's spent the past two summers at the St. Louis Graduates High School to College Center. "They don't realize all the other steps."
“The idea was that if you could get a kid to graduate from high school, they'd been accepted and chosen where to go, that student was going to show up,” he said. “What our work shows is that in fact, students encounter a pretty complicated array of financial and procedural tasks to complete over the summer.”– Ben Castleman
www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/06/schools-working-to-tackle-summer-melt-keep-incoming-college-students-on-track
And the effects are not small
They might come back… but probably not.
The nature of non-profit, higher education means the revenue hit will last 4 years
We lose the opportunity to help a student change the world.
www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html
Problem 2: Surprise!
No one knew exactly what was going on, until it
was too late.
We never knew the extent of the problem until move-in day.
knowyourmeme.com/memes/surprised-patrick
Paper is messy… and maybe evil
Most of the communication
was in paper format
Beyond the environmental and cost concerns, it is extremely difficult to track what a student has received
http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/propaganda-ads-1940s/14
Left hands and right hands… not talking.
Offices weren’t communicating with each other,
either.
Not only did we not know what had been received, but no single group had a clear picture of what had been sent. On top of that, students weren’t sure who could help them with problems.
Lines worse than the DMV
All important paperwork was handled via mail or
when the students arrived
This lead to a lot of confusion, frustration, and congestion on Move-in day
http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/pictures/dragon-of-a-line-for-chinese-job-seekers-at-henan-job-fair.html
Well… that’s a problem
Two major issues:
1. Some of our students are missing
2. No one knows what is happening
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/962640-this-is-fine
Solution 1: Simplify and Unite
Communication and paperwork are a mess
• Students are confused by the daunting amount of work required to successfully enroll
• No one, least of all us, is sure what our messaging is trying to accomplish.
So let’s clean this up.
http://thecabin.net/news/local/2015-01-06/college-students-spend-winter-break-helping-tornado-victims-rebuild
What have we got here?
Inventoried ALL existing messaging
• What actually matters?
• What can be combined?
• What has to be paper?
• Most important: What actually requires a student to do something?
Move everything to the web!
Hendrix CampusWeb Portal
• Built on Ektron 9.1, bootstrap and knockout
• Authenticated, locked down portion of public site
• Students and parents are membership users
• Users are assigned to roles (user groups) in Ektron based on our business rules and existing systems
Clarify the message
We know who you are, lets reduce the noise.
• Only some of our messaging was universal
• Several smaller groups: athletes, transfers, international students
• Some geographical groups (send-off parties)
Target messages based on your role
• This led to development of new business rules
• Had to be used in the portal and in our email systems
Make it easy to use
Make actionable items into simple forms in the
portal
• Health insurance waivers
• Athletic participation forms
• Vehicle registration
• General “Agreements”
What do we really want?
Some things we wanted weren’t so clear cut
• Billing statements
• Document submission
• Course registration (in our SIS portal)
Step 2: Watch and Help
No insight into our student’s summer progress
• We don’t know what actions are causing problems
• We don’t know who needs help
Let’s figure out what’s going on
www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/
Checkpoints along the way
Each action assigned to a student is a task
• Tasks are assigned based on roles
• Tasks can be progressed and completed
• Tasks have a start date and an overdue date
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_cycle_checkpoint
Monitor Progress
Reports on student progress
• Aggregate progress of particular tasks
• Progress of specific individuals
• Overall progress of an entire role
Reach out and help
Contact students having problems!
• Our admission and student affairs staff called students and got them back on track
• Students appreciated the direct assistance
• We like being helpful
Fix broken interfaces and pages
• Our metrics let us figure out which tasks were clunky
• We refined them until the issues went away
Who’s actually here?
Real-time tracking on Move-In day
• The last task assigned to each student was check in
• Residence Life staff checked in students as they arrived
• Up-to-date numbers on who was here and who was not
slate.me/1eQ93JY
Drum roll please…
So how did it go?
Success!
• Reduced summer mailing costs and mailbox pile up
• increased our visibility into our incoming class for planning and budgeting
• Less move-in day related stress for parents, students, and staff
• Dramatically reduced melt percentages and increased actual revenue.
nerdist.com/nerdist-podcast-sir-patrick-stewart-returns/
Let’s review
Re-evaluated our summer communication
processes and utilized our portal system built on
Ektron 9.1 to better assist incoming students in
the transition to college, to identify trouble spots
early, and to allow for a smooth and streamlined
move-in day.
Which means…
We saved money
We eliminated a lot of stress
We increased revenue
We helped students and parents…
… and maybe saved the world