DARLENE: It's very close between institutional strategic plan and departmental. Reactions are going on on both sides.

PAT: I think that's very interesting. I think, sometimes, when you can begin at the institutional-wide, strategic level, that's great. But sometimes you have to start at the departmental level and prove that it can be successful as a pilot before you can move on to an institution-wide, strategic plan. Have you found that to be the case, Darlene?

DARLENE: I have. And in some cases, Pat, when you don't yet have the executive cabinet support, sometimes it's very important to create a departmental model and departmental prototype and then use that as a basis for gaining the institution-wide support and the executive cabinet support to make it strategic.

PAT: Okay.

Slide: Parallels and Lessons to be Learned

DARLENE: Okay. Well, let's take a look now, Pat, at some of the parallels and lessons to be learned. One of the things that I wanted to do was to share the experience of those that have been doing one-stop physical centers for ten years, some of the knowledge and experience they've gained, and the path that they've taken. Those individuals and institutions have really focused on the redesigned processes. And as they've moved into delivery of electronic student services, what they found is that those same philosophies apply to the electronic student services. That it's very critical to redesign the processes electronically for the virtual center as it is for the physical. And one really key area that they've learned is — and they have moved, and provided choice for their students, and 70% have elected to do Web or self-service — what that means now for those centers is that they've had to create email and phone support centers. The generalists that are usually on the front counter are now staffing the phone, and are also staffing the email so that those students who are asking those questions, electronically, are getting the same level of excellence and the same level of information. In addition, they are focusing, and have identified that they need to find ways of creating the positive experience on the Web that they've managed to create in that physical environment.

PAT: Darlene, when you talk about redesigning student processes here, that takes a lot of time to do that. I think for many institutions it's easier for them to, sort of, Web-enize current services than it is to really focus on redesigning services. And I think to do that successfully, you really have to involve cross-functional teams. Has that been your experience?

DARLENE: Well, you do, because you really want an individual from each of the service areas represented to help define that holistic view that the student needs and wants. But I'll also tell you that if you just Web-enize your traditional manner of delivering services, it becomes very apparent when the student compares that interaction on the Web with the interaction of another institution that has done redesign. And then if you want to get to the fourth generation of Web services, it really becomes important to think and redesign how those services are delivered. I'd like to pose another question to you.

Question: What services do you currently have online?

DARLENE: What services do you currently have online? I'm sure that you have a lot of functionality already. I've gone on a lot of these websites, or your websites, and seen what you have out there. But I think it would be helpful to just get an idea from each of you what you think are the key services, perhaps, that you have online.

PAT: We'll give folks just a minute or so to answer.

DARLENE: While answering that question I'd like to provide a little information on where I see the Web services heading. There was a report by Gartner Group last year, and in that report they indicated that about 5% of colleges and universities had Web portals. And they also, based on their research, indicated that they believe that in four more years, 2005, 80% of the colleges and universities would have Web portals. Now, what that says to me is that in 2000 and 2001, if you have a Web portal, that's a differentiator and it gives you a competitive advantage and that it is consistent with some of the really great consumer sites that your students are used to using. But what that also means, that in four more years, that's business as usual. So you need to figure out how to go beyond Web portal and transactions, and how to begin incorporating or leapfrog, and add all of the relationship and experience elements into delivery of electronic student services.

PAT: How are we doing on the responses, Sue?

SUE: Not a whole lot of people responded but we can go ahead and look what they have to say. Information only, information, that's registration, orientation library. Barbara Beringer says, "All service is excellent."

PAT: So it looks like what we have here is what WCET has found earlier is that a lot of the administrative core kinds of services are the first services that are up on the Web. And then the other services like academic advising, counseling, orientations tend to follow. Okay.

DARLENE: Well, that looks like we've got some transactional information out there. There's quite a bit of functionality.

Question Results: What services do you currently have online?

DARLENE: It looks like it's probably starting with enrollment management courses which is pretty consistent. Well, I'd like to now switch to the electronic student services focus, specifically, and talk about what I've learned, or how I see the evolution is moving through the four generations.

Slide: The Evolution of Web Services Covers Four Distinct Generations

DARLENE: And this first generation is what I consider the replication of the physical, traditional environment. The focus is on content, it's internal view of the institution. It's internal vocabulary. The one word that I pull out that I think really helps define this, is the word, "bursar." The word, "bursar" isn't an everyday word that a student would use. And they have to learn what that means when they interact with an institution. So we use those different words in the vocabulary, not only in speaking with the student, but also what we've put on the Web. So let's move to our first example. The first generation Web portal.

Slide: Generation 1 Displays Content in an Easy to Find Manner

DARLENE: This is an actual home page of an institution. I've taken the name of the institution off so that it won't be apparent. But what you'll see when you look at this front page, their home page, is that everything is divided into silos. It's all internal language. It's internal view. And it replicates the traditional, physical environment. And it's all perfectly good information, but the student is used to interacting with consumer sites that really focus on experience.

Slide: The Evolution of Web Services Covers Four Distinct Generations — Generation 2 highlighted

DARLENE: So let's take a look at generation two and see how the service has evolved. And I'll show you some examples of that. In generation two, we move from just content to putting the content within context. And so in the context area we might have prospective students.

Slide: Generation 2 Displays Information by Customer and Content

DARLENE: And let's take a look at an example of a generation two, and I've selected the University of Delaware. This is their homepage. So the first thing a student or parent would see when they go to University of Delaware, this is their homepage. And on the right, it has the context. Prospective students, current students, parents and alumni. So if I were to select prospective students, it would have all of the content for prospective students in one place for me. And so now we're starting to, at least, filter all of that information and help the user get what they need. If we look at the next slide.

Slide: Generation 2 Displays Information by Customer and Content — Student Central

PAT: A sort of a group of paths through the website.

DARLENE: It is. We're looking at a looking group level. We're looking at the generic student. And another example is the University of Texas at Austin, and this happens to be their current student. So they have collected the information that a current student would need, but you probably can't read the small print, but what I'd like for you to think about or talk about on this one is that under admissions, it's "Apply for admissions," "Check your status," "Find an in-state transfer," "Class registration," "To see the registration," "Register for a class," and, "Paying a fee receipt," "View my class schedule," you'll notice that this is switched to all action words. We're telling the student what they need to do. We're stating to put a focus on profit and that's very different than just having the words and the content there.

PAT: So you can see the beginnings of a relationship starting to form.

DARLENE: Exactly. We're adding value now to this information. We're helping guide the student just a bit. Okay, well, let's look at generation three.

Slide: The Evolution of Web Services Covers Four Distinct Generations — Generation 3 highlighted

DARLENE: Now generation three is what I consider the true portal. It has personalization, customization and community. It still focuses on transactions, but it has those elements. At generation two it's a collection of students and in generation three, it's me as an individual: it's my information. So let's look at an example of personalized and customized.

Slide: Generation 3 Displays Information that is Customized and Personalized and Creates a One-Stop Virtual Center

PAT: Now, Darlene, when you say personalized and customized, by personalized you mean for me, the individual, it's a message directly to me, with my information, and by customized you mean I can put whatever information I want on that particular Web page?

DARLENE: That's exactly what it means. It's my grades, my financial information, my personal address and personal information. And the customization is that I get to choose what items are going to be on the screen and I'll show you an example of that in a minute. What we're looking at now is the University of Minnesota. And there's a couple of points I wanted to make on this website. The first was about branding. You'll notice that they have the ticket, the one-stop "M" ticket? That's their branding. The University of Minnesota has created a set of criterion standards, and if anyone wants to include their services in the virtual one-stop center, they have to meet the standards and criteria and then they get to use that one-stop ticket on their page. Now, if you're looking at that and you see student, faculty and staff, and that was all that we saw, that's generation two, because that's a collection of generic individuals and it's just general content. But when we go to my one-stop, that's my personal information and that's what we would have on the student page.

Slide: Customized and Personalized One-Stop Virtual Center

DARLENE: Let's take a look at the University of Texas Austin again. The University of Texas Austin, this is the home page. This is my one-stop. This is my Web portal. And what I want to bring you attention to here is the consistency of branding, the consistency, the look and feel, navigation on the left, so they have a consistent navigation. They have the left column that has the different information that you might need. But under campus information, that's where you get to customize what you want on your website. And under the Texas Daily, you get to choose what you want to see there. But the navigation is consistent from page to page. The look and feel is consistent from page to page, and it's my personal information. And they also will push or publish information to me based on my individual set of needs.

PAT: This would be a good time, Darlene, to pose a question from the chat box. There's a concern over the security and privacy of information that people post or include in their own page.

DARLENE: Yes.

PAT: Do you have any concerns about privacy and security of personal information?

DARLENE: Well, privacy is a critical issue on all of the campuses and for those institutions that have implemented the virtual one-stop centers, they've had to deal with the authentication, one log-on, one ID, and how they would validate that the individual does have access to that. So, they've all addressed that and I haven't heard of any of them, other than just the one or two cases where someone has left a screen up or someone has printed out a page with their password on it. But I haven't really heard of any problems with security of the personal information.

PAT: And it looks like Chris Brooker says, "By utilizing a secure authentication, they've managed to provide more security."

DARLENE: Excellent.

PAT: So it looks like some of the folks on the website are sharing information about how they've handled that problem also.

DARLENE: Well, Pat, let's take a look at the next slide, LSU.

Slide: LSU PAWS — Customized and Personalized One-Stop Virtual Center — Community

PAT: Now, is that Louisiana State University?

DARLENE: It is. Louisiana State University and they have a one-stop portal also. And again, my definition of portal, it's personalized, customized, has community and has a large range of transactions. On the left is "My Desktop," and it's too small for you to read the detail, but it has all of the functions that I might want to perform, so I could locate people, publish information, course information. But this is an example of their chat or their discussion or their community. And it's a great example of how you can start to help use the technology to create relationships.

Slide: The Evolution of Web Services Covers Four Distinct Generations — Generation 4 highlighted

DARLENE: Okay, let's take a look at generation four. Generation four is where all of you will want to go with the delivery of your electronic student services. If 2004 is the target when 80% of your peers will have Web portals, you need to be thinking now about how you design into those Web services and portals that high touch, high tech relationship and experience. So let's look at our first example.

PAT: Darlene, is this where you start to see some artificial intelligence involved in these sites?

Slide: Generation 4 Creates High Touch/High Tech

DARLENE: Well, it is, Pat. At this point, when you start to get the high touch, high tech, it probably is the best example that everyone would know about would be Amazon.com. I'm sure many of the folks online have used Amazon.com and you've bought a book, you've bought a CD, and Amazon.com will you know, talk about data mining or artificial intelligence, they will mine that information about you so that the next time you come online, they'll present you with other CDs by the same artist or other CDs in the same genre or same genre of books or the same author. So you start to learn about the individual's preferences, interests and then you present information to them.

So the commercial sites and models have some excellent examples that we might think about picking up and using for education. And you have on the screen now the criteria for the fourth generation. It goes back to what we learned about, the one-stop centers, it has process orientation: we're guiding the students through it. It's a holistic view. We create decision-making guides. We're presenting personalized recommendations for their enrollment schedule. We're presenting personalized recommendations within their major. It's proactive communication. Happy birthday cards. It's based on whether you're about ready to become a junior; you haven't selected your major. You need to file for graduation. That's where we start mining, to find out the individual needs and interests and then pushing that information back and creating enhanced communities.

Slide: Generation 4: High Touch/High Tech UT Austin — Decision Making Guide

DARLENE: Well, let's take a look at our first example of generation four. And I'm going to go back to UT Austin again. They've done an excellent job with the electronic services that they've created. And the example I've pulled out is a job search. But it really is a good example of a decision support tool, in that they focus on the job interest, the salary, the date, the time, and that helps narrow or put on filters for all the data that's out there. There's a wealth of data out on the website, and you really need to help the student narrow it to what applies to them. This might be applied to housing searches, parking searches, class schedule searches, major searches.

PAT: I would love to see a guide out there for helping students find their major. I have a couple of daughters who could make good use of that. So if anybody in our chat box has some suggestions for a good Web resource in that regard I'd be very interested in it.

DARLENE: Does anyone have a decision-support tool out there now for students? And if so, on what topic? I'd like to see that appear in the chat box.

Slide: Generation 4: High Touch/High Tech BYU — Decision Making Guide

DARLENE: Let's look at our next example while some of those are coming in. Brigham Young University has an example and, Pat, this goes along with what you were talking about — helping your daughters choose a major.

PAT: Yes.

DARLENE: They've created a worksheet for freshman. And on that worksheet for freshman, it has a step-by-step guide — so you can see there's five steps that it's going to guide them through — but they also have all of the resources and all of the contacts that they would need to help them build and define their first semester. So it's an excellent way of helping create that decision tool, providing a very positive experience, and also starting to form that relationship. You're going well beyond just the transaction of the information.

PAT: Very interesting.

Slide: University of Delaware — Prospective Students

DARLENE: Okay, let's look at another guide in the University of Delaware prospective students. I've pulled this off of the prospective students and I'm just showing one page. But you can start to see that they have a step-by-step guide. I go from prospective students to prospective undergraduate students. And if I chose the undergraduate it would continue offering me choices, and then would continue funneling me down the line, helping me move from point to point until I got all of the information I needed. So that would be a step-by-step guide.

Slide: Generation 4: High Touch/High Tech — U of Minnesota Student Admissions Workbench Enhanced Community

DARLENE: Now, the next example is University of Minnesota. And I wanted to switch gears here just a bit. We've been talking about students and improving services for students and creating the student-centric view. But what's important, and what we discovered in looking at the physical centers, is — and most of the institutions discovered very early on — is when you're focusing on improving services for students, you also have to provide equal attention and focus on improving the ability of staff to deliver those services. So, with electronic student services, how are you going to train and support the staff to answer email or phone? How are you going to provide that general range of knowledge? How are you going to create cross-functional teams to help define and build those services? In this example, this is the student admissions workbench. You can choose cohorts, you can build in reports. You can see down on the bottom you can choose the kind of reporting mechanism you want. But it becomes a workbench to help you better work with a student in that area. So that becomes a very, very important area.

PAT: I think that's absolutely critical, Darlene. Many campuses start with redesigning their student services from the students' point of view, and that certainly should be the driving force. But I think we have to balance that with providing the staff with the right tools to respond to students. I mean, you can design incredibly wonderful student services, but if you don't give staff the tools they need to provide those services — it just won't happen.

DARLENE: Well, and that's another one of those very important critical success factors. You know, you can have all of the best-laid plans, but if you haven't helped the people who are going to support and implement it equally, you're going to have a very tough time of sustaining it and also being successful.

Slide: University of North Carolina Online Personal Assistants

DARLENE: Well, let me show you another example of high relationship, high experience. This is the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. And on the left you can see that they have a "UNCG Online" button. And when you punch that button, you'll get a chat box. And that chat box will bring up a generalist and that generalist will — live, as we are now — respond to the student's questions. But when you have someone out on the Web, they may or may not have access to the phone, but they do have access to the Web, so how are you going to start staffing and then presenting that information for them to create that live added-value service chat?

PAT: And is that staffed by staff, volunteers or students?

DARLENE: It's staffed by a generalist. And one of the things that they do is the generalists have decided to build an FAQ log, so that as they get questions from the students, they're entering that information so that anyone who responds will provide the same answer and consistency. And that becomes, then, a valuable tool for the staff.

Slide: UC Gateways

DARLENE: Well, let's look at the next example which is UC Gateway. This is the University of California Gateways project. This focuses on the under-served student and it's a portfolio. And in the portfolio, they have the ability to contact their success team. So they've built a relationship with three staff members. They have their phone number, their email, and they have their test scores, their backpack. They're helping this group of students prepare to go to college. These are first-time college or, first-time students. They're eighth to twelfth grade. No family member has gone to college. So they really need help. So this is a outstanding example of how you would start to form relationship and how you would really create that positive experience that would help with retention, would help with recruiting, would help with yield, would help with any number of things for a cohort you wanted to target.

PAT: Darlene, is this gateway project, is this the one associated with Francisco Hernandez?

DARLENE: It is. It's the University of California at Santa Cruz is the prototype model.

PAT: Oh, that's great. He's going to be our luncheon speaker at the annual conference in Coeur d'Alene on November 2nd. We'll have to ask him about it.

DARLENE: You will. He'll have some really nice stories for you about that.

Slide: The Evolution of Web Services Covers Four Distinct Generations

DARLENE: Well, let's quickly review the four areas of evolution of Web services. The first generation focuses on content, so that's your physical silos, institutional perspective, institutional vocabulary. It's usually the starting point, but you want to try to move off of that fairly quickly. Generation two focuses on who — perspective students; then what. It still is institutional views, still perspective, but you can start to get the action words in there. Generation three, you're at a true portal. Personalized, customized community. It's focused on transactions. And then generation four is where you start adding relationship and experience and high touch, and that focuses on how and it's guided and data mining — it's all of those elements that you start to provide.

Question: What generation best describes your current Web services?

DARLENE: I'd like to ask a question here and I'd like to ask the individuals to respond which generation they think best describes their current electronic student services, and I'd like them to pick one of the four generations.

PAT: I think there's also an "other" option, because there might be schools that are hybrids.

DARLENE: Okay.

PAT: When your not completely in one of the four generations.

DARLENE: And after you've done that — after you've selected one, two, three, four, other — I'd like for you to go to the chat box and in the chat box I'd like for you to let me know if there's other institutions that you would recommend that you believe have excellent models and should be recognized as best practices in electronic services.

While we're collecting that information, I'd like to focus on an area of consumer Web portals, and let me talk just a bit about that while we still have this on the screen. This is, again, the lessons learned. I like to focus on the lessons learned so we don't reinvent the wheel and we share the information learned. In the commercial websites, from Digital Magazine, they did a study and one of the problems with the Web services, they all have on their Web — here's an email that if you have a question email, if you want something, email. Well, 56% of those websites didn't answer the email within forty-eight hours. And 54% didn't answer the email at all. So when you're trying to focus on customer satisfaction, student satisfaction, student success, if you have an email and you're asking the student to communicate in that manner, it becomes very important that you have a process and you have criteria and you have measurements to know how you're doing in that area because it will become a dis-satisfier.

Question Results: What generation best describes your current Web services?

PAT: Okay, Sue, do you have some results? Oh, here we go.

DARLENE: Okay, so 56% are in Generation two. That's great. And 9% in Generation three Web portal. And it looks like about 7% have some fourth generation services, which are excellent. I'd love to find out what you have in there. I'll have an email up later and anybody who wants to email me that, that'd be super. I'd love to collect that information. And let's see, it looks like, also, that they're suggesting to check out the University of Michigan, at MSU. UCLA has a great portal, "My UCLA." Columbia Teachers University threaded discussions. Oh, Central Piedmont Community College. I wonder what they have? That sounds great. Online development at Houston Community College. Wow. Okay, I'd love to hear more about those and find out what you're doing, because I'm always looking for new examples and new models. And as well as I'm sure Pat is.

PAT: Absolutely.

DARLENE: Pat, do you have any comments here?

PAT: No. I'm delighted to see these and I hope people will continue to add some as we move along here.

Slide: Disney.com

DARLENE: Okay, well, let's take a look now at some consumer sites. And there's four consumer sites I'd like to discuss. Amazon.com, iQVC, eBay and Disney. Disney is customer satisfaction, eBay customer-friendly, QVC overall and Amazon overall. I won't show examples of Amazon.com overall, but just a brief Disney. When you go to the Disney site, does this equate to their brand or what? I mean, it's perfect. This is the experience of Disney replicated on the website. It's not about transaction, it's about experience.

Slide: QVC home page

DARLENE: Okay. Let's move to the QVC website and I wanted to show you there the live chat. And we're doing a bit of that today so I won't spend a lot of time, but you could chat with the advisor, the chat with the financial aide, chat with the majors, chat with different groups, to make it more personal with the electronic student services.

Slide: Lands End - My Personal Shopper

DARLENE: One of my personal favorites is Land's End. And Land's End, the first screen that I want to show you, they provide a choice, up front, of how you choose to interact with them. Well, let's see, it looks like we're on Personal Shopper on 43. Okay?

PAT: And say you want to go shop with a friend?

DARLENE: Let's do 42 for just a second.

PAT: Okay.

DARLENE: Okay. On this one, this is where we're choosing whether we phone or chat. So, you need to consider how you're going to communicate with your students, how you're going to interact with them live while they're doing electronic student services. And then the next one, My Personal Shopper, I want you to think about how you might create My Personal Advisor or My Personal Schedule," how do you use that data mining and AI to present information? In this example, on slide 43, they're taking My Personal Shopper — I answer a series of questions about my preferences in clothing, style, color, size, and then they present back to me those clothing items that would fit the description, and then I can choose from those. And I think that's just a dynamite way where we start using decision guides and some of this data mining to start — not just presenting them information, but helping them direct the information.

On the next slide, 44, Shop with a Friend, I wanted to present this just to have you think about what you might do, how might you use this? You might use this with Enroll with a Friend, Find Housing with a Friend, Commute with a Friend, Study with a Friend online. How might you allow more than one person to go through a process at the same time? Now, one of the things I'd like to find out at this point is what other commercial websites do you think have excellent examples that people should be considering when they're building models for their electronic student services?

PAT: Christina had already beat you to the punch, Darlene.

DARLENE: Oh.

PAT: She talked about Nike.

DARLENE: Excellent.

DARLENE: Are there any others that are out there for commercial sites that we should be considering?

Slide: IBM Best Practice Partners

DARLENE: Okay. Well, this is a list of the institutions that have been identified as best practice models. There's twenty-three of them. And we host a conference once a year — it was last August at Tufts University. We'll hold one again next August. And we'll also continue to add institutions to this list as we focus on best practice models and student services.

PAT: Okay, we've got some more answers, besides Nike. Toys'R'Us, Drugstore.com, Eddie Bauer...

DARLENE: Oh, good. I'll have to go look at those. That's always exciting to find new models and then pick out parts that we might apply to the student services electronic student services. Okay. Well, they're putting up on the screen my contact information, so if any of you have questions, feel free to email me or to phone me, whatever is most convenient. It looks like my email's up there.

Slide: Questions

PAT: And, Darlene, I think you have a book coming out that has chapters in it by a number of the best practice partners. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

DARLENE: Yes, it's a case studies book. Each of the best practice institution and partner members will be discussing their lessons learned, their critical success factors and their models. And that should be out in February of 2002. It'll be published by SCUP. And SCUP is a Society for College and University Planning, and I have their website listed here also.

PAT: Okay. That's great. Well, on behalf of WCET, and all of our attendees, thank you, Darlene for an excellent presentation. I think there've been some exciting new trends that you've pointed out to us today and it looks like we have lots of work ahead in order to get to this new relationship environment, both face-to-face and electronic, if you're telling us that is the direction to go.

DARLENE: Well, it's exciting times and we finally have the technology that will support this happening, so I'm really looking forward to hearing about and seeing the new models that the institutions are starting to provide.

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

PAT: Okay. Well, I'd like everyone to know a little bit more about this webcast series. It's been brought to you as part of WCET's work on its learning anytime, anywhere partnership project called Beyond the Administrative Core, Creating Web-based Student Services for Online Learners. This project is funded by the US Department of Education. Our special thanks go to our corporate partner, HorizonLive, and especially Brendan Kehoe and Matt Wasowski for making it possible to bring you these presentations electronically.

Slide: Providing Student Services to Distance Learners Webcast series

PAT: And if you'll go to our website for additional information, you will see the links to this webcast series. The URL is on the screen. And there, you'll be able to register. And since this was recorded, you can access the archives. Our next webcast will be November 14th at noon, Mountain Time. Mike Leonard from Penn State University and the Chair of the Technology and Advising Commission for the National Academic Advising Association...

DARLENE: Sue, do you have any additional comments? I know we're going to plan to stay on about another half hour if anyone wants to ask additional questions.

SUE: Yes, well, I was thinking as I was watching the comments in the chat box, a lot of people asked for the URLs of the sites that you discussed today, Darlene, and, in fact, we should go ahead and add those to our WCET website. So, even though the pictures are kind of small, it's because, you know, the window is only so big - it's hard to see those sites and really explore them. So hopefully, Darlene, you and I can figure out the URLs and I'll include them.

DARLENE: We will.

SUE: People can check them out.

DARLENE: In some cases, we'll have to give you the contacts for the institution because you'll need to get a guest ID. So once you get into the Web portal, you'll need a guest ID to go in. And that's something, when you're developing your electronic student services, I suggest you plan and create a guest ID — that really is very helpful.

Slide: Thank you for Joining Us

SUE: Okay. Well, now is the time for the evaluation.

Question: Evaluation Survey