Put Everything at Your E-Fingertips: Practical ideas for creating a comprehensive electronic student financial aid r

1. Put Everything at Your E-Fingertips: Practical ideas for creating a comprehensive electronic student financial aid record Presented by: Vickie Crupper & Doug Levy University of Michigan

2. Agenda • University of Michigan Financial Aid Office • Volumes • Service Model • Service Challenges • Components of a Comprehensive Electronic Student FA Record • UM Electronic Student FA Record • A Few Cool (and cheap) Tools • Questions, Wrap-Up

3. UM-OFA Annual Volumes • 20,000 students applied for aid • 60,000 phone calls were received • 15,000 walk-in visits occurred • 250,000+ document pages were received • 500,000+ e-mails and/or letters were sent • 650,000+ hits were made by students on financial aid self-serve web transactions • 50,000+ view-only hits were made by parents on financial aid self-serve web transactions

4. UM-OFA Service Model • Professional staff speak directly with all visitors. • Staff are assigned on a rotating basis to walk-in advising, answering phones and responding to emails • Satellite office is staffed part-time • E-mail is preferred form of communications • Proactively provide students with information and encourage them to utilize self-servicetransactions/ other resources

5. Service Challenges • Managing Information and Data • Achieving More with Less • Meeting Student Expectations for Immediate Response • Meeting Parent Expectations for Information/ FERPA Conflicts • Archiving Documentation for Audit Trail • Validating what students verbally say/claim

6. LettersSent Phone Calls Received Financial Aid Data Comments E-Mails Sent In-Person Visits Miscellaneous Documentation Self-Serve Activity by Student Documents/E-Mails Received Self-Serve Viewing by Parent Comprehensive Electronic Student FA Record

7. University of Michigan Electronic Student FA Record

8. Introducing ELVIS ELectronic Visitor Information System

9. What is ELVIS? An automated student sign-in, queue management and reporting system Replaces old paper sign-in approach OFA-developed MS Access database application Data is integrated with PeopleSoft, both on the front end and the back-end Also used for student phone traffic in OFA

10. The student’s M-Card is swiped. A name lookup is automatically performed. The ELVIS Process

11. A desktop dashboard notifies counselors assigned to walk-in traffic of visitors. The ELVIS Process (cont’d)

12. An available counselor checks a box on the dashboard which assigns to him/her the next visitor waiting. The ELVIS Process (cont’d)

13. The counselor clicks the “Show Previous Visits” button and then cut-and-pastes the ID from ELVIS into PeopleSoft to bring up the student’s FA Status screen The ELVIS Process (cont’d)

14. The counselor goes from his/her office to the lobby and greets the student by first name. (This impresses the student who did not initially give his/her name to the receptionist). The student then follows the counselor to the counselor's office. The ELVIS Process (cont’d)

15. After the counseling session is finished, the counselor clicks the “Visit Completed” button on the dashboard. The ELVIS Process (cont’d)

16. A communications record is automatically posted to the student’s PeopleSoft record, showing the date of the visit and the counselor’s name The ELVIS Process (cont’d)

17. ELVIS Benefits • Increased privacy for students • More productive advising sessions with the student • Proactive staff resource management • More effective peak-load management • Data-driven evaluation of service • Data-driven training of staff • More flexibility in the physical layout of the office • More professional, satisfying and efficient sign-in and waiting-room experience for visitors

18. Keyboard Record/Playback Software

19. Keystroke Record/Playback • Many tasks in financial aid require repetitive keystroke data entry • post receipt of student/parent tax returns • acceptance/declination of awards • aid year setup • etc. • Record/playback software can help save time, effort and minimize data entry errors • It also can be used to post items such as e-mails sent, survey results, etc. to a student’s comprehensive electronic FA record

20. Keystroke Record/Playback (cont’d) • How it works • Click the ‘Record’ button • Type in a set of repetitive keystrokes • Assign a hot-key (i.e. alt-p) to the keystrokes • Type only the hot-key each subsequent time you want the repetitive keystrokes to appear. • Inexpensive – usually under $100.00 • Search web for “keyboard macro” • Keyboard Express, Journal Macro, iMacros • Some work with web, some not

21. Bulk E-Mail Software

22. Bulk E-Mail Software Process Identify students (ad hoc query, etc.) Create message text including merge fields Import student list and message text into bulk e-mail software (MS Outlook, WorldCast, etc.) Send personalized messages to all students with one mouse-click Student receives the message, and immediately does what s/he needs to do (yeah, right…..) Record the sending of e-mail on student’s electronic record (batch upload, keystroke playback, etc)

23. Bulk E-Mail Software Process Step 6 – E-Mail recorded on student’s record

24. On-Line Survey Tools

25. On-Line Survey Tools • Many survey uses in a financial aid office • customer service/satisfaction • student budget (housing, books, etc) • loan counseling • scholarship effectiveness • health care coverage • etc. • Inexpensive (less than $100 for 1-year, unlimited use) and easy to use for all steps in the process (survey setup, sending survey, tracking respondents, tabulating/analyzing results) • Popular ones: SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, Surveygizmo (google “survey tools” for comprehensive list) • Where appropriate, record the responses on student’s electronic FA record (batch upload, keystroke playback, etc)

27. Document Imaging Software

28. Example of Imaging in a Financial Aid Office 1.b. Student Documents faxed are received by Fax Server (no paper). 2. Data entry staff access each scanned student document image, post the document as received on the financial aid system tracking module and index the document to the imaging system 1.a. Student Documents received on paper are scanned. 3. Student documents are accessed directly from the imaging system for ad hoc inquiries. Imaged Student Documents 6. Student documents are stored on the imaging system for as long as they are needed to meet regulatory and other requirements Students Ready for Verifi- cation 4. Documents for students ready for verification are auto-routed to a work queue. 5. Counselors access the imaged documents for students ready for verification, along with the corresponding screens from the financial aid system.

29. Questions & Wrap-Up

30. Vickie Crupper vcrupper@umich.edu Contact Information Doug Levy douglevy@umich.edu Office of Financial Aid University of Michigan 2500 Student Activities Bldg. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1316 Phone: (734) 763-4119 FAX: (734) 615-2641

31. The Big Finish Drum Roll, please…...