Webcast Series

"Providing Student Services to Distance Learners"

Transcript of Student Financial Aid as an Online Service Webcast

Slide: WCET Presents a Webcast Series: Providing Student Services to Distance Learners

PAT: Hello, I am Pat Shea, assistant director for WCET and I'm coming to you today from our east coast office in Summit, New Jersey. We had some difficulties and technical problems with a server here in New York and so we're getting started a little late. But I appreciate everyone hanging in there, and those of you who were locked out for a little bit, being patient and joining us now.

Also joining us from WCET's headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, is my colleague Sue Armitage. Hi, Sue.

SUE: Hi, Pat. How are you today?

Slide: Student Financial Aid as an Online Service

PAT: Great. And our two special guests are Marianne Phelps and Norm Finlinson who will talk with us today about online financial aid.

Welcome, Marianne and Norm.

NORM: Thanks, Pat. I'm even more excited to be here now.

SUE: Great. Okay. Just so we can get an idea about you in the audience and your familiarity with this HorizonLive webcast environment, we'd like to ask you to start using your mouse and clicking on the screen. We're going to try and make this as interactive as possible a presentation.

If you have participated in a webcast before, please click on the green "yes" button, which you see over on the middle right hand side. If you have not participated, please go ahead and click the "no" button. We just going to get a sense of what kinds of directions we need to provide.

PAT: Okay. And while those comments are coming in there, I just wanted to invite people to make comments, actually, about the presentation in the chat box today. Many of you are experts in this field of financial aid and this is a good opportunity to share your knowledge and experiences with others who are attending.

If you experience connectivity problems during this presentation, please click on the help button, which you see up there in the black bar, to send a private e-mail message to tech support.

Now, Sue, how many people do we have?

SUE: Well, fortunately, the technology does a real fast count for us. We can see that we've got about, oh, about twice as many people who have not used his technology before. We've got twelve yes's and twenty-two no's.

PAT: Okay. That's good to know.

SUE: Yeah, I'd like to tell you a little bit more about this technology then. In the black task bar, sort of lower middle, you can see a "tell" button. If you click on that you may send a private message to someone whose name you see listed to the right of the chat box.

I'd also like to mention a quirk of Internet technology. The audio is travelling over the Internet in packets separate from the data packets with the visual content. If what you see and what you hear don't match up exactly, please be patient and I think you can expect eventual coincidence of content.

PAT: Okay. And I'd like to get started today by getting a quick idea of who our participants are. And rather than doing a formal survey, I'd just like to ask everyone to use the chat box to type in your primary job responsibility — director of financial aid, registrar, bursar, director of distance education — whatever your primary responsibility is on campus, you would just indicate that. It will help Marianne and Norm as they make their comments during their presentation.

Okay. So here we go. I've got some directors of financial aid; a librarian; director of teaching and learning strategy; more directors of financial aid; systems coordinator, financial aid; performance monitoring; there are lots of people in the field of financial aid, marketing manager, SCT.

Slide: WCET: the Cooperative advancing the effective use of technology in higher education

Okay. That's great. That'll be helpful. And for those of you who are not familiar with WCET, I just want to give you a little bit of background. I know we have a number of members attending, but some of you are not.

WCET is a collaborative of higher education institutions, agencies, non-profit organizations and corporations involved in distance learning. Our focus is on advancing the effective use of technology in higher education.

And you can see some information about us on the screen now and I hope you will visit our website to learn more. The PowerPoint slides and the URLs mentioned in this presentation are available on our website.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Denise Easton and U Live and Learn, our technology sponsor and producer for this webcast.

Slide: Student Financial Aid as an Online Service

And now it's time to tell you more about our guests, Marianne Phelps and Norm Finlinson.

Marianne served in a number of capacities within the Office of Post-Secondary Education of the US Department of Education during the Clinton Administration, including Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary. One of her assignments was to bring up the distance education demonstration program, which is how she came to work with Norm. Her interest in student services stems from a stint she served as the Dean of Students early in her career. Dr. Phelps is currently a senior advisor to WCET and a consultant to other higher education groups.

Norm Finlinson is the Director of Financial Aid at Brigham Young University, where he coordinates complex physical and financial planning efforts. He has served as a consultant to the US Department of Education, and is a member of the NASFAA National Reauthorization Task Force. He is a Past President of the Utah Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Dr. Finlinson earned his PhD in Educational Administration from Brigham Young University.

Now, I'm pleased to turn this webcast over to Marianne Phelps.

Slide: Agenda

MARIANNE: Thanks, Pat. And, Norm, it looks like we have some real experts in the audience, so we'll have to be prepared.

NORM: Yeah, I'm excited about the fact we have so many financial aid people.

MARIANNE: Yeah. That's good.

To start, I'd like to give you a brief overview of what we'll be covering in this broadcast. First, I'm going to talk briefly about what some of the obstacles have been to providing student aid services online. Following that, I'll talk about the components of a good online student aid service and review what the Department of Education has been doing that will help institutions provide online student services.

Slide: Barriers to an Online Student Aid Service

I think it's important to start here, because, in my experience, many of the barriers are still present at a lot of colleges and universities. For example, I think most schools first thought about online student services in connection with distance education students. And for several reasons, student aid's not been routinely available to students studying at a distance.

In part, this was because many of these students were part-time and adults and assumed not to be eligible for need-based aid. Another factor was that continuing education units, which largely bore the responsibility for administering these distance programs tended to develop their own record-keeping systems and these were often not accessible to the student aid office.

I think another reason is the complexity of the requirements for student aid. Administrators managing the service were often leery of providing aid to students and they still be for that matter. Enrolled in so-called non-traditional programs for fear they would inadvertently violate regulations and incur liabilities for their institutions.

When I was with the Department of Education I spoke a couple of times at the University Continuing Education Association and heard many complaints about continuing education students, many of whom were distance students, not being eligible at all for consideration for aid.

This is changing rapidly as distance education programs are more important to the mission of many colleges and universities and the students are more diverse. There's also demand for an online service by campus students, and a lot of efficiencies that can be achieved for the student aid office by migrating the process to an online environment.

Student aid officers have often been the strongest advocates for the development of systems to support the administration of student financial aid, and I know there are many systems experts among the student aid community. However, administrative systems serve administrative office and student services serve students and facilitate administrative operations. It's a very different perspective, and moving the student aid service to an online environment requires rethinking the systems and services required. I've looked at a lot of institutional web pages and it's clear there are still many schools that have not yet worked through these issues. In saying this, I realize that the rigidity and expense involved in modifying administrative systems is significant and not a simple process. But sooner or later I think most institutions are going to have to take on this task.

Question: If your school provides an online financial aid service

Now I'd like to pose a question to you in the audience regarding the development of your school's financial aid system. The question's going to appear on your screen and I'd like you to click a radio button to indicate your answer. If your school provides an online financial aid service, was it developed in-house purchased from a vendor or is it outsourced? If your school does not have an online financial aid service, just click the radio button next to it: no online service.

PAT: And while we're waiting for those results to come in, Marianne, I'd like to ask you to talk a little bit more about the complexity of the student aid requirements as one of the barriers to providing aid to distance learners. Could you give a couple of examples of what you mean by that?

MARIANNE: Sure. One certainly is the twelve-hour rule, which I understand the Department has agreed to change, but has yet to write those regulations. But that's certainly one of the complexities.

And I think the other is, really, confusing student eligibility requirements. For example, I think it would be hard to figure out a student who might be taking a correspondence course plus another delivery mode course, such as maybe an online course. You know, what's the eligibility of these students for aid? And the answers to those questions aren't real easy.

PAT: I see. Well, that's helpful to have more of an explanation there. Sue, do we have any results?

SUE: We do. I think only a small percentage of our audience numbers have voted so far. I've registered only twenty-eight responses, and we have lots more people in the audience. So if you could go ahead and click on one of the radio buttons to indicate your response, I'd appreciate it. I'll wait just another moment.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and publish the results.

Results: If your school provides an online financial aid service

PAT: Okay.

SUE: Oh, interesting. "No online service" was unfortunately the big winner in this vote; had no responses for "outsourced;" six from "purchased from a vendor;" and nine "developed in-house."

MARIANNE: Now, I'm not really surprised about the majority really having no online service, having done a fair amount of searching websites for good online services.

NORM: I am surprised, however, that there were no institutions in this audience at least that is considering outsourcing those services.

MARIANNE: Yeah. And let's ask that question. Has your school even considered outsourcing your financial aid service? And let's try the radio buttons here, the green "yes," the red "no" — and "yes" if your school has considered outsourcing and "no" if your school hasn't.

NORM: You know, I think that's an option that more schools are going to have to look at in the future as technology continues to advance, and the cost to retrofit offices continues to escalate, I think more and more people are going to have to view that as an option.

PAT: And, Norm, do you see other institutions outsourcing to other institutions that might do the financial aid for them, or do you see third party vendors doing that?

NORM: I think I see both. In our circumstance, for example, we're a member of a consortium of four schools that are sponsored by the LDS Church, and we have, for years, maintained separate processing facilities in each one of the different entities, and now we're seriously considering consolidating that into one entity. And I think if that becomes viable, then obviously vendors are going to serve us with that kind of service, that they'll provide to the community.

SUE: I can report on the findings for this last yes/no polling question about considering outsourcing. And it's eighteen "no," to two "yes."

MARIANNE: Okay. And that's not surprising, either, but I think Norm's right, that there will need to be more kind of sharing of resources and outsourcing.

PAT: Okay.

Slide: Some Characteristics of an Online Student Aid Student Service

MARIANNE: If most people are through voting, why don't we go on to the next slide. And this slide lists several characteristics of a good online student aid service. First, it builds on the federal paperless process and it organizes data from administrative systems to provide information to students. It also uses technology to assist students in accessing information and conducting business with the aid office. It also provides one-click access to personalized information. And it encourages students who need assistance from a student aid professional to contact the office by providing for an e-mail query and by prominently displaying the phone number of the office. It might also allow the student to schedule an appointment online. High tech, high touch, I think is what we're after here.

The student aid process consists of a lot of transactions between student applicants and the federal government in a college or university. It's a complex process, as we all know. However, the migration of student aid to a web-based service can reduce the complexity of the process from the student's perspective to the point where it appears to be seamless for the most part.

Now, Pat, based on your work in the student services LAAP project, what would you add to this list of characteristics?

PAT: I think that one of the important lessons we learned in the LAAP project, Marianne, is that financial aid is not a discrete service. It really influences a number of the other services. It's integral to decisions that students make, for example, dropping a class. A student may be thinking about dropping a class, but if she or he were to do so, might fall below the load requirements for a financial aid. So it's important to find ways to include financial aid information in some of the decision-making that is part of the other services.

Slide: Online Information Concerning Aid

MARIANNE: I think one of the ways that the process can become more seamless from the student's perspective is a rather simple one and that's by linking the school's financial aid web page to the department of education and other sites, so that they can access information and forms they need directly from the school's website.

This slide contains several links that some institutions use to provide access to information about student aid that isn't specific to the college or university itself.

Looking at the student aid process from a student perspective, the first step is to investigate what kinds of student aid might be available and to begin planning. Most schools have some of this information on their website, but do not provide truly seamless access.

Providing a link to the Federal Guide to Student Financial Assistance is one way of easily expanding the amount of information immediately available to students.

Some schools also link to FinAid, which provides information about aid, as well as tools students can use to project college costs, estimate student aid awards and calculate loan repayment.

Each of these tools provides information which will help students make important decisions concerning their college or university education. Other sites have similar tools, such as Florida's Facts which was developed for students in Florida.

I'd like to hear from folks now in the audience about their school's website. Does it offer links to these types of external resources? Please click the "yes" or "no" button on the screen. "Yes" means your school does offer students links to decision-making resources; "no" means their website does not offer these types of links. And if you don't know, go ahead and click the question button.

PAT: Now, we know that some don't have online services.

MARIANNE: Right.

NORM: I think there are a lot out in the community, there are a lot of lenders and guarantors that are also providing calculators that presumably will help students define better what their borrowing capacity is.

MARIANNE: Yeah, this is also true. Some of the guarantee agency websites are very helpful in that respect.

PAT: Someone has asked to repeat the polling question, Marianne.

MARIANNE: Okay. The question, does your school's website offer links to external resources, such as FinAid or the Federal Guide to Student Financial Assistance? "Yes" means that it does; "no" means that it doesn't, and "?" means "I don't know."

PAT: Well, the early results show, Marianne and Norm, that yes, most people do offer these kinds of external links to resources.

MARIANNE: Well. They've got a start on developing an online student service.

PAT: Yeah.

Slide: Paperless Processing of Federal Aid

MARIANNE: Okay. Shall we go on now to talking a little bit more about the Department of Education. In the past few years, the Department has migrated the transactions necessary to providing federal aid to a web-based environment. The FAFSA — or for those of you who aren't student aid folk, Free Application for Federal Student Aid website — is the gateway to the application and a lot of information on other services. From the time of application through loan repayment, the FAFSA page serves students at each stage of the process.

Submitting the application is the first step a student must take towards receiving an award. In addition to linking to FAFSA, some schools provide information helpful to students as they complete that very complex application. University of Maryland University College, for example, provides some very helpful definitions of terms the student encounters in the aid process.

Once the application is completed online, the student can apply for a personal identification number, or PIN, directly from the site and sign the application electronically. Using the PIN, students can also check the status of their application.

After analysis of the application, the department will notify the student via e-mail that a student aid report is available for viewing and printing. And again, if the information on that report needs to be modified, the student can do so online by means of a link on the FAFSA site and the PIN.

At that point, the department also sends the student aid report to schools the student's identified. And it is that point that communication between the aid office and the student begins. It's Norm's job to lead you through an example of how that might take place.

But, before closing, I do want to be sure everyone is aware that the promissory note for students who receive loans can be signed electronically. Those direct loans, again, through the FAFSA site, direct loan and borrowers can also complete the entrance costing requirement there.

Guarantee agencies and banks also provide for electronic signatures for Stafford loans, but given the numbers of players in that loan program, it's really hard to tell how many have actually put procedures in place that would allow for electronic signatures.

But let's ask the audience another quick question here, and that is, "Do you inform students via your website that they can sign the FAFSA electronically?" Click "yes" for if it does encourage them; "no" if it doesn't; and "?" if you don't know.

PAT: And while those results are coming, Norm, how do you do it at BYU?

NORM: Well, we certainly encourage students to use the electronic signature on the FAFSA, our experience with the students is that it speeds up the process. We can have the information back to our office as one of the designated schools in a matter of days, instead of weeks. And so we encourage the students that inquire in our office and those that actually come into the office to go through the procedure to do it with the PIN number.

PAT: I see.

MARIANNE: Some of you may not have heard the question based on your observations. Let me try again. We're interested in how many of you encourage students to sign the FAFSA electronically on your website. How many of you don't would be a "no;" and those of you who don't know, click on the question mark.

SUE: So the polling results show fifteen are saying "yes," that you do inform your students that they can sign the FAFSA electronically. Two are saying "no" and three don't know.

MARIANNE: Okay. My research in this area has been pretty conclusively that most schools don't mention that, and that strikes me a really important thing to encourage students to do if you're moving to an online service.

NORM: Yeah. And it's just logical, again, because the time is truncated significantly in terms of getting that information back to put the package together for the student, or at least to get the student started in the verification process, whatever one needs to do it or complete that student and their financial aid.

MARIANNE: Norm, why don't you now begin with your discussion of the work at Brigham Young University?

Question: Which of the following best describes your school's website level of functionality?

NORM: Okay. First of all, before we get into that, I would like to ask a question of the audience. And again, the question will appear on the screen. I'm really interested to know what best describes the participants' level of Internet integration, with their functionality with the Internet currently.

So if you would check the options there, and please click the radio button the best describes what level of Internet integration you've been able to achieve in your particular financial aid office.

Again, the first one asks if your website only offers links to other information, if you actually provide information and update that information periodically would be the second option; third option is if you provide to the students forms that can be printed and filled out by the student, then submitted through the mail, to the financial aid office for processing, and then of course, the third, or the fourth option, excuse me, would be a presentation of forms right on the Internet that students can fill out and submit directly to a system.

PAT: And Norm, while we're waiting for those results to come in, where is BYU on this?

NORM: Well, I'm going to talk about that in just a few minutes. But I think we've achieved a situation that allows students to access the Internet, to submit their data over the Internet, and submit that to us electronically, and it's provided an interesting opportunity for us to reallocate some of the resources in our office. And I'll talk about that in just a few minutes.

PAT: All right. I see we have a question about our question. Which people say, really, all four could be true.

NORM: I think we're looking for the highest level of integration.

PAT: Right.

NORM: So, if in a certain circumstance, all would be true, then certainly number four would be the option to be selected.

Results: Which of the following best describes your school's website level of functionality?

SUE: Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and post the results. Okay. Okay. Twelve is our response for the highest number and that's "provides the printable forms." The next one, we've got a tie for "offers links to information" and "provides information." And coming in last with only four votes is "allows forms to be completed and submitted online."

NORM: Oh, I am encouraged, though, that we have represented in the audience several institutions that apparently are collecting the data through the Internet as we are here at BYU. I think that's the wave of the future and I'd like to talk about that for just a few minutes.

Slide: Brigham Young University Automation Milestones

Now, we, in the financial aid office at BYU have operated an extremely high and extremely automated financial aid system for a number of years, and just to anticipate a question, we've developed that system in-house.

Now we knew that when Internet technology became practical that we would want to incorporate that into our processing system. And I think maybe at this point I need to make a point that we're not just talking about an Internet interface to the financial aid office, but we're talking about an Internet interface to a more sophisticated processing system. And, again, we've spent years developing that at BYU.

Now, our first implementation of the technology, of the web technology, was developed out of a concern that we had at our institution of student borrowing. We'd created a planning process to help students identify or develop information that would be unique to the student, it would help them make wise decisions about going into debt. And we were anxious to include all student borrowers in that exercise and therefore we developed an Internet version that interfaced with our system, which didn't require a whole lot of resource and processing resource. That allowed us to collect the data from students without the documents that normally are required.

Slide: Financial Path to Graduation

Now, this process, we called the Financial Path to Graduation, and it's a seven-step process that a student is asked to go through to help them identify the maximum level of borrowing that is unique to that particular student.

I believe you see on the slides now a summary of the steps that a student would go through in this process. And our reason for developing this was that we wanted to catch students on the front end and not on the back end, and we had to have that information accessible to us in a database so that we could actually be somewhat proactive and go out and find these students and counsel them.

Now, the first year, at that that time, BYU had approximately ten thousand borrowers that were processing annually their loans. That first year, we allowed them to use the system and made it voluntary, and informed them about it in our entrance counselling and in our literature, and we had only about seventy-five students who took advantage of the program.

So the second year — and this was the '98-'99 academic year — we decided to make it mandatory for our students to complete this process, this planning process, before we would certify their Stafford loans. We were somewhat concerned about access, of course, and we were also concerned about a perception that we were just putting more hurdles or hoops in the way of students getting their money.

So we kind of prepared for an onslaught of complaints from our students and we certainly notified the president of what we were doing so that he could prepare his staff for the complaints that would materialize. But, in fact, we didn't get a lot of complaints from our students.

But I have to say that there was one law school student that sent an e-mail and suggested that we change the name of this from the Financial Path to Graduation to the Financial Path to Aggravation.

PAT: Wonder if he still feels that way several years later?

NORM: We didn't do that. But our concerns really turned out to be in vain. The students seemed to embrace it. Parents were really taken with the process, and it has worked out very well for us. And since that implementation four years ago we've had about thirty-two thousand students go through that. And, again, our purpose is to find these students who may over-borrow, or borrow unnecessarily at the front end so that we can counsel them.

PAT: Okay, I'd like to ask a question, Norm. When a student fills out this form on the website, what happens next? Does data actually go to a database, or does it go as an e-mail message to your staff, and then they have to key in all of that data?

NORM: No, that information, once it's submitted through the Internet, goes right directly into our system, and that process has saved us a lot of resource in our office that we've been able to reallocate to other activities.

Slide: Results of Financial Path

You might be interested to know that the implementation of this Internet-based program — and this is just kind of an aside, in terms of automation in general — but it's had a significant effect on our borrowing patterns of our students. Over the last four years, borrowing at BYU has decreased by about 24%. Now, that's true not only in terms of numbers of borrowers, but overall amount of money borrowed, too.

Now, by itself, we would consider that a great accomplishment, but it suggests that our students are finding other ways to finance their education than just going into debt.

It also suggests to us that, prior to implementation of that program, students were making decisions about going into debt without the adequate tools to help them.

Now, one of the greatest misconceptions that we have found as we've gone through this whole process of providing loans to students is that, because the government has set certain borrowing limits, both annual and aggregate, then as long as students stay within those limits, they'll be okay, because the government wouldn't let them get into trouble. We all know what kind of trouble a thought like that would get us, right?

NORM: We've always believed that those limits that the government has provided are extremely generous for our students, and we know of students who have over-borrowed unnecessarily and excessively.

So one of the other outcomes from the implementation of this Financial Path to Graduation program has been a significant reduction in our default rate. And now, according to the most recent information provided by the Department of Education our cohort draft default rate for the year 2000 is 0.6%. When we started, four years ago, we were at a rate of about 1.6%. So we've reduced that significantly.

PAT: And, Norm, what is the national average, do you know?

NORM: It's up around 5%.

PAT: I see. So that's a big difference.

NORM: Yeah. The other result that we're just starting to see is that our students who are graduating now, and who've borrowed, are graduating with significantly less debt than the national average. In fact, as I recall, our last report showed that our graduating class was graduating with an average of debt of about $10,800, and that's compared to a national average of almost $17,000 for a four-year public institution. So we're just starting to see that effect.

PAT: Well, that's great and Norm has been wonderful in that he has created a demo that you can actually see of this Financial Path to Graduation. It's on our website. And I think, Sue, we'll put the URL up. I think you actually put it up a little earlier.

SUE: I did. But I'll do it again.

PAT: That'd be great. So people can go and kind of walk through this process of planning to borrow money.

And now, Norm, I think you are actually going to take us through a demo of another project you have there at the financial aid office. Do you want to tell us about that?

Slide: A Paperless Office: The Final Frontier

NORM: That's correct. Our success with the Financial Path has encouraged us to continue our development on the web. And we have created a system that collects data and provides it to our system. It's called our VIP system. VIP is an acronym for Virtual Immediate Processing.

I believe that technology, for the first time ever, has provided the environment for development of a completely paperless financial aid operation. And this has been our dream for years to actually deal with students without having to move paper back and forth. That dream was almost realized when we implemented our first version of the VIP system and that was back on September 25th of 1999.

The first version contained a feature — because we weren't sure how students were going to respond to this online process — and so we allowed them to select whether they wanted to continue the traditional paper process or to go to this new method of online service. And what we found was unfortunately old habits are difficult to break, because the majority of those students selected to continue to go with the traditional mail and document method of processing financial aid.

So we decided that, with the new version, which was deployed in February of 2000, we would make it mandatory — we would take away that option — and make it mandatory for everyone to do it on the web. And we did have a few complaints about this process. But again, there were no real issues of accessibility to the Internet, even though some had to be inconvenienced by going to a public library to do it or high school or some other public place. But we even have provided a bank of computers in our office so that students can come in here and go through the process and be serviced.

Slide: Route Y: Login screen

SUE: Okay. What I'm going to do now for everybody is launch a brand new browser window. I'm going to launch the VIP site, so you might want to move browser windows around your screen, make them comfortable. If you would like to revisit this site later, I encourage you to do so. So why don't you go ahead now and bookmark it or add it to your favourites folder.

Please follow along with Norm as he just directs us all through this site. We are not in control of this browser window, so you'll need to scroll or click along with Norm.

NORM: Okay. What you see in front of you is mostly a black screen, and, at the top, there's an emblem that says Route Y. This represents our security system at BYU and, again, the metaphor is driving on the freeway — you don't get to have permission to drive unless you get a driver's license, which requires you to take a driver's test and, in our circumstance, the test includes information to make sure that you are aware of the fact that there are certain privacy issues that you have to deal with when you're in and looking at data, and so on and so forth. But once the student gets through the security system, you can do that just by clicking on the button there, takes you to another screen that welcomes you into BYU's system. And again, this is just a demonstration. Obviously, you're not within the firewall there of our security system.

PAT: Okay, so shall we click on start?

Slide: Welcome screen

NORM: Yes.

PAT: Okay.

NORM: Okay? And, as you go to the next screen, go ahead and click on the icon that will take you to the VIP system.

Slide: First screen of VIP system: Financial Aid

Now, you should be viewing the first screen of our VIP system. At the top it says Financial Aid. There are two lines under that, one representing the current processing year, the other representing the next processing year. Obviously, we're in a position that we can process two award years simultaneously.

Now, on this front screen, we have the capability to provide individualized messages or customized messages to students based on something that's happening or is not happening with their processing, or we have the ability to provide a generalized announcement to all students. And those two lower statements on this screen can change every time a student comes in to look at it.

Now, if I can get you to go up to the line that says September 2002, and August 2003, and hit the apply button — the apply icon — that will take you to the screen that allows our students to apply for programs that we offer here at BYU, both institutional, federal and, I guess, some state programs too.

Slide: Application screen

But the system is customized so that you will only see the programs that you are eligible to apply for. That is to say, a graduate student that we recognize will not be eligible to apply for a Pell grant. We have certain programs that are available to our law school students but would not show up unless you are identified in our database as a law school student.

Now, if I can get you to click on the application status...

Slide: Financial Aid Application Status 2002-2003

This is actually divided up into two sections, two main sections. The first one talks about paragraphs that we provide. Those would include instructions or information, would not suggest that you needed to provide any data. For example, if you were not making satisfactory progress and we were not in a position to process your aid because of that, we would explain there.

The next section represents the forms that we traditionally have had in paper, but that are now on the Internet. And again, let me say that as you scroll down, you'll see a number of sub-sections and it looks like one large form. And it basically is, but it's a customized form based on the information that the student has provided us on the FAFSA. So no two students will see the same form. Depending on what we need to complete their verification process, they will provide that information uniquely.

Now, if you scroll down to the bottom of that form, and again, there's probably more that we've put into this form than a student would actually be required to fill out. But I wanted to give you a sense of the kinds of forms and information that we require.

But on the bottom of that there are two sections that are omnipresent. One asks for an updated e-mail address for the student so that we make sure that we have the most updated information that we have to communicate with the student, and the other asks the student to evaluate the service that they're getting from our financial aid office, and then to provide some sort of explanation if they have had a poor experience with our office.

NORM: All right. If you click on the awards icon, it will take you to a screen that displays all of the awards that a student will see once they've completed the process.

Slide: Financial Aid Awards 2001-2002

If a student goes, for example, you see the first one — this particular student, Brigham Young, has been awarded $450 in Pell Grant as an annual award. And if you click on that it will take you to a breakdown of that award per semester and per the number of hours that particular student is enrolled for.

Slide: Brigham Young Pell Grant Award Information 2001-2002

PAT: Awards was what you had to scroll back to the top and click on awards.

NORM: Yes.

PAT: Okay.

NORM: Okay. The other section that — and I think is really kind of unique and helpful for the student — is the Messages-Petitions feature that allows the student to go in and, for example, if the student is requesting some sort of a consideration of our professional judgement, they can go in, they can fill out their petition right here online. If they need to provide some sort of third-party documentation, they can tell us don't send this to a committee yet to be reviewed because something is coming in. And in that regard, we do receive faxes or copies of documents that support information in a petition. This particular section also allows the student to ask questions. And as soon as those questions are asked, that comes up into a processor's queue. The processor has the option to answer the question or send that on to the counsellor to answer, and the responses are logged into the system. So we can see when a student has asked a question, when we responded, and any of those responses, and any of that dialogue would be displayed here in the system.

We do have, just below those icons, there's "What do I do next?" section, which would be a kind of a new users help, for getting through the system. Those students who might be struggling with navigation on this particular site can go there and kind of get a step-by-step explanation of how one goes through.

Now, let me kind of give you a sense, now that we've gone through that, let me kind of give you a sense of what happens to a student at BYU as they go through this process.

PAT: Do you want people to do now, Norm, is close that, or minimize the window?

NORM: Absolutely.

PAT: Now minimize that window, and then you'll return to the HorizonLive screen.

Slide: VIP Process

NORM: Right. So a student who's processing financial aid at BYU as Marianne has suggested, completes the FAFSA, and designates our school to receive the ISA information. Now, as we receive that information our system automatically generates a letter that goes out to the student. Now, this is one of two hard copy letters that we will send out to the student. When I said that the paperless office was a dream and we've almost reached it, that's exactly what I meant: we've almost reached it.

We indicate in this letter that all future communication will be with our office and the applicant will be through the Internet. The student is instructed to go to the Internet and which icon to push on to get the application started, and then the process begins.

Now, we at BYU have chosen to verify a hundred percent of our applicants, and so all students have to go through the verification process. And the forms that are provided to the student are customized to the student based on the information that we have received from the ISERV.

The student completes those forms online and submits the data. As long as there's data missing, then the forms will remain visible to the student and they can continue to fill in data. As soon as all of the data has been filled in and that form has been submitted, then that form goes away to the student.

That data is taken into our system. The verifications are done through the system. If there's a discrepancy in data between that the student has provided to us and that the student has used to fill out the FAFSA, then we have to reconcile that data. Until the processor has the option to make corrections and send those off to the central processor, or, you know, occasionally, a student will make some error in transposing that information from their record to the Internet and, if it's an obvious problem, then the processor has the option to serve that form back up to the student to complete again online.

Now, as the process is complete all the verification information we've received and all discrepant data has been reconciled, then we send a second letter to the student. And this letter contains a summary of all of the information that the student has provided to us through the VIP.

The student is instructed to review the data, the summary sheet, and make any changes that are appropriate, to sign it and, in the case of the dependent student, provide parental signatures and then return that to our office to be imaged. We continue to require the student to provide a hard copy signature, because we have not yet worked out an electronic signature in terms of verification requirements with the Department of Education.

As soon as that document is received in our office then the award is posted on our VIP system, and the student can go in and find out exactly what their awards will be.

Now, as I mentioned, students have the option to ask questions, to make comments, to submit petitions online, and once those have been submitted, those are processed through our system here, they're reviewed by an individual who has responsibility for that student, and they can, again, choose to respond back to the student or provide that to someone else who can respond back to the student. We have teams that review petitions and make decisions in the office, on professional judgement. And, again, that information is posted back to the student. So the response we're getting from the students is that they submit a petition, it takes a day or two for us to review that and get the decision back to them and they're excited about that.

Now, the only capability or functionality that we originally designed into the system that we have not been able to make available to students is the ability for a student to actually go in and look at a counsellor's schedule and set up an appointment or an interview, either in person or on the telephone.

And that's basically the process that a student goes through here at BYU.

PAT: That's pretty impressive.

Slide: What is Virtual Immediate Processing? (VIP)

NORM: Okay, now let me just summarize what this VIP system does for us here at BYU. First of all, it collects data from students. It replaces the old paper documents that were continually getting lost and eaten by who knows whom, and it takes away a lot of the excuses that the students formerly provided to us in terms of, "I provided that two weeks ago, two months ago," whatever. Now we can document everything that we receive and it comes into the system. It empowers the student to be in control of the process, which I think is a real key to this whole VIP processing system.

Again, no longer is it because the financial aid office was backed up and they were two weeks behind in their inputting. No. The information, the data is processed immediately, as soon as we get it.

PAT: Norm, there seems to be some confusion among the attendees about whether or not you receive tax forms from students.

NORM: Yeah, let me address that. And that's a good question. We are a QA school, which allows us some latitude in terms of the documents that we do collect to complete the verification process. What we do is we provide the form, or information from the form, or, I should say, columns from the form for the student to fill out and from the tax form. And we accept that, and then we do a random sample half way through the year of about three hundred of our students and we actually collect the tax forms. Now, the last time we did that, we found that 83% of the students in our sample — and that's a random sample — were perfectly accurate in terms of the submission of their tax data. We found that there was another 9% that had a few transposition errors, but it did not affect at all their eligibility, and we found that there was another 7% that, in fact, had made errors. Now, one of those individuals had input the correct information, but filled out his taxes incorrectly.

NORM: We were able to help him out there.

PAT: Right.

NORM: So, again, if you're not a QA school, you probably don't have that latitude in terms of the verification process. But we, in fact, do.

SUE: People are also interested, Norm, in the software that BYU has used, for this system. People are wondering about PeopleSoft, in particular.

NORM: We've looked at different vendor packages. We have not found one yet that provides the kind of functionality that we have built into our own system here. So everything has been built in-house and we've kind of included everything that we wanted to include.

Now, let me just make two additional points about this system. Number one, it's allowed us to do some other things with our financial aid resources, and some of you may be familiar with our effort here, and I think it's a growing effort in our financial aid community, and that is that we're trying to help students not just get the financial aid or get the loans as quickly as possible, but actually help them develop skills in terms of looking strategically about their financial resources and providing to them an opportunity to develop an overall strategy.

And we've done that by taking our counsellors here in the financial aid office and retooling them — training them — to be financial planners. So we do provide that resource to students. But, again, the only reason that we can do that is that we've been able to liberate some personnel resources in the office.

And the other advantage that this provides to the students is that it allows them to see the process from start to finish. They know exactly where they are with the process. They don't have to call the office. They don't have to guess. They know exactly when things are being processed.

We provide to them an e-mail to tell them every time their status changes, every time they submit something and we process it, we send them an e-mail saying that you need to get back into the VIP system and find out exactly what has happened.

PAT: Norm, this is a really impressive system. Thank you very much for this tour today and for creating the demo so others can go through it at a later time.

And now, Marianne, we have about five minutes left, and I know you had a number of other schools that you just wanted to mention to people, if we could go through those quickly.

Slide: Examples of Online Aid Services

MARIANNE: Yeah, let me do that quickly and then there might be a minute or two for questions. And I know they're out there. There are — in addition to Brigham University's, the link to their web page — you'll see some others, and I'll just mention quickly some features.

Florida State University also has a system that provides for online personalized web services, although I don't think it's quite as automated as the BYU one.

USC, similarly, has that sort of system. They also provide the College Board Scholarship service profile application online, which is something that many private schools, I understand, require.

Texas has an interesting twist in that they also offer access to parents. I haven't seen that on another site, although that may be true.

And the University of Minnesota website has some different kinds of links.

So I would just encourage you to take a look at these and see what some other people are doing, in addition to Brigham Young, although I do think Brigham Young is probably the most automated system, at least, that I'm aware of.

PAT: Okay, well, thanks, Marianne, for those additional sites to look at. And now, I think if Sue could put up the contact information for both Marianne and Norm. If you have questions and you'd like to learn more about either presentation you'll have that that contact information.

Slide: Contact Information

And on behalf of WCET and all of our attendees, Marianne and Norm, I want to thank you for the wonderful presentation that you have provided today.

Slide: This series is brought to you as part of WCET's work on its Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership Project

And I'd also like to take just a minute to tell folks that on July 17th will be our next presentation.

Slide: Providing Student Services to Distance Learners Webcast Series

That will be with Burnie Blakely of IBM, and he will be discussing the scenario-building process and universal modelling language that some of the schools in the LAAP project have used to communicate between their student service personnel and their IT staff, so that the software or the technology solution that gets developed ends up doing what the student service people would like for it to do.

And I think, Marianne or Sue, you were going to tell a little bit about our new resource section of our website.

Slide: WCET Website: Resources

SUE: I am. I'm going to open up if you close that new browser window, I'm going to launch another one, or else it will just be in the same browser window that we looked at the BYU VIP system. If you're like me and have XP you probably have a whole bunch of windows cascaded under a certain icon on your taskbar, but I've launched the WCET's new website on our LAAP project. I'd like everyone to know that Marianne Phelps has written a terrific article on student financial aid for our new website. We have lots of resources on many student services, so I hope you'll take the opportunity to each take a good look at it.

In the webcast series section of the website, you will find the PowerPoint slides and the URLs mentioned for this and all the webcasts, as well as the links to the eight archived webcasts we have now. This webcast was recorded and will probably be available to you in a day or two for approximately one year.

And if everybody return your attention now, please, to that original HorizonLive window, we have a few more things to talk to you about.

Slide: WCET Evaluation

PAT: Okay, and now I'd like to take just a few minutes to get some feedback about today's presentation. And so we will have an evaluation form on the screen there in a second or so. And I ask if you would just tell us a little bit about your experience with this presentation. And again, I apologize for this technical difficulties we had earlier, but that's not common, and just had to kind of muddle through.

Marianne or Norm, do you have any concluding remarks you would like to make here? Or would you like to answer a couple of the last questions as we're waiting for the evaluation data to come in.

NORM: I noticed there was a question raised about the verification, the 30% requirement. And again, let me just say that we are a QA school and this has been responded to by some of the other participants. But we are a QA school. We are not limited or subject to the 30% verification requirement. We can kind of choose our own verification parameters, but what we, in fact, have done at BYU is decided that we would do a comprehensive verification of all of our students, but we do that on a hundred percent of our students.

And there was also a question about the size of BYU. We have approximately thirty thousand students at BYU. We have probably two thousand graduate students, so the majority of those students are undergraduates.

PAT: Okay. There was a question about Pell grants. What percentage of students on aid can receive a Pell grant?

NORM: Of the thirty thousand students we disburse probably ten thousand Pell grants. So we have about a third of our students who are receiving Pell grants.

Slide: Thank you for joining us

PAT: Okay. Well, I think we are about out of time, so thanks again, Marianne and Norm, and also Sue, for your help making this all come about today. And thanks to our attendees and we hope that we will see you again online, particularly on July 17th when we talk about online student services and scenario-building. Thanks again.