minneapolis, mn october 18-21 masfaa: time to refocus put everything at your e-fingertips: practical...

MINNEAPOLIS, MN OCTOBER 18-21

MASFAA: TIME TO REFOCUS

Put Everything Put Everything at Your E-Fingertips: at Your E-Fingertips:

Practical ideas for creating a comprehensive

electronic student financial aid record

Presented by:

Vickie Crupper & Doug Levy

University of Michigan



AgendaAgenda• 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



UM-OFA Annual VolumesUM-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



UM-OFA Service ModelUM-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-service transactions/ other resources



Service ChallengesService 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



ComprehensiveElectronic

Student FA Record

Financial AidData

Documents/E-MailsReceived

In-Person Visits

Comments

E-Mails Sent

Letters Sent

Self-Serve Activityby Student

Phone Calls Received

Self-Serve Viewingby Parent

MiscellaneousDocumentation



University of Michigan University of Michigan Electronic Student FA Electronic Student FA

RecordRecord



Introducing ELVISIntroducing ELVIS

ELectronicVisitor

Information

System



What is ELVIS?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



1. The student’s M-Card is swiped. A name lookup is automatically performed.

The ELVIS ProcessThe ELVIS Process



2. A desktop dashboard notifies counselors assigned to walk-in traffic of visitors.

The ELVIS Process (cont’d)The ELVIS Process (cont’d)



3. An available counselor checks a box on the dashboard which assigns to him/her the next visitor waiting.




4. 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




5. 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.




6. After the counseling session is finished, the counselor clicks the “Visit Completed” button on the dashboard.




7. A communications record is automatically posted to the student’s PeopleSoft record, showing the date of the visit and the counselor’s name




ELVIS BenefitsELVIS 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



Keyboard Keyboard Record/Playback SoftwareRecord/Playback Software



Keystroke Record/PlaybackKeystroke 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



• 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

Keystroke Record/Playback Keystroke Record/Playback (cont’d)(cont’d)



Bulk E-Mail SoftwareBulk E-Mail Software



Bulk E-Mail Software Bulk E-Mail Software ProcessProcess

1. Identify students (ad hoc query, etc.)

2. Create message text including merge fields

3. Import student list and message text into bulk e-mail software (MS Outlook, WorldCast, etc.)

4. Send personalized messages to all students with one mouse-click

5. Student receives the message, and immediately does what s/he needs to do (yeah, right…..)

6. Record the sending of e-mail on student’s electronic record (batch upload, keystroke playback, etc)



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

recordrecord



On-Line Survey ToolsOn-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)

On-Line Survey ToolsOn-Line Survey Tools



Document Imaging Document Imaging SoftwareSoftware



ImagedStudent

Documents

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.b. Student Documents faxed are

received by Fax Server (no paper).1.a.

Student Documents received on paper are scanned.

3. Student documents

are accessed directly from the imaging

system for ad hoc

inquiries.StudentsReady 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.

6. Student documents are stored on the

imaging system for as long as they are

needed to meet regulatory and other

requirements

Example of Imaging in a Financial Aid Office



Questions & Wrap-UpQuestions & Wrap-Up



Contact InformationContact Information

Vickie [email protected]

Doug [email protected]

u

Office of Financial AidOffice of Financial AidUniversity of MichiganUniversity of Michigan

2500 Student Activities Bldg.2500 Student Activities Bldg.Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1316Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1316

Phone: (734) 763-4119Phone: (734) 763-4119FAX:FAX: (734) 615-2641(734) 615-2641



The Big FinishThe Big Finish

Drum Roll, please…...

minneapolis, mn october 18-21 masfaa: time to refocus put everything at your e-fingertips: practical...

Documents

ofa slide

wrapup slide

sayclaim slide

elvis process slide

elvis process contd

student phone calls

student phone traffic

meeting student expectations