The Dangers of Student Population WarmingHow our Ektron Portal Saved us Money

and maybe the World

Fall of 2013…

Good Recruiting Year

• Brought in a good sized class

• Reviewing our numbers, we noticed something

www.vccoaching.com/smarter-thinking/meme-thinking-face-1920x1080/

The Students are melting

Some deposited students don’t show up in the

fall.

This is Bad.

www.floridacollegeaccess.org/2014/05/07/florida-c-a-n-webinar-prevent-summer-melt-and-heat-up-college-going-rates/

Math leads to uneasiness…

Average tuition for 2014-2015 is $31,231 1

Average melt percent is 19% 2

Our average class size is ~400

1 www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=100642 blog.ed.gov/2013/07/summer-melt/

mathematicssas.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/math1.jpg

… and large numbers

That’s about $2.4 million dollars.

http://imgkid.com/disgusted-meme-face.shtml

Could your company use $2.4 million?

www.cockeyed.com/inside/million/million_dollars.html

Business words

We are failing in our marketing and sales process

Failing to close causes wasted money and time

Looks bad in annual reports

passionfire.com/mlm-training-the-5-4-3-2-1-most-powerful-words-in-network-marketing/

…but it’s worse than just money.

Education is not about making money.

(though it can help)

It’s about helping people grow to become the best

they can be.

Statement of Purpose (we take it seriously)

Hendrix College cultivates empathy, creativity, self-understanding, rigorous inquiry, informed deliberation, and

active learning across the liberal arts, toward the development of the whole person. Through engagement that links the

classroom with the world, and a commitment to diversity, inclusion, justice, and sustainable living, the Hendrix

community inspires students to lead lives of accomplishment, integrity, service, and joy.

Approved by the Hendrix College faculty and Board of Trustees in spring 2015

But saving the world, really?

What if one of those 40 kids stops an asteroid from

destroying civilization as we know it?

s.hswstatic.com/gif/stop-killer-asteroid-hpa.jpg

…really.

Dr. Omer L. Shedd ’93President of Promise for Haiti, which supports the 65-bed Hospital Bienfaisance in Pignon, Haiti, with two high-quality operating rooms, and the community with nine elementary schools and a clean water project. As part of his role in PFH, he is developing a cardiology and pacemaker implant program for the poor people in the country and is training Haitian physicians to perform the life-saving procedure.”

https://www.hendrix.edu/news/news.aspx?id=76046

My god, the stakes!

It’s a big complex problem!

• Who can possibly help us find a solution?

memegenerator.net/instance/43963915

The programmers, who else?

Jay Burling ’03Director of Web Applications at Hendrix College

Building in, on, and around Ektron since 2005 Has fantastic hair.

… and a few other people

Okay, it was actually a huge group

• My amazing software team

• The CIO (my boss), the CMO, and the Dean of Students

• Marketing and Communications

• Admission

• Student Affairs

• Basically a cross-section of the institution

What did we do?

Magic.

• Re-evaluated how we were communicating with our customers

• Built a system that let us better track their engagement and guide them on to campus in the fall!

http://www.tomrowan.co.uk/chronicles/designer-why-designer-part-4-2-bucks-uni

What exactly is happening?

Summer Melt is a problem

for all higher education

institutions

Research Consensus: There’s probably not a silver bullet for the entire market (is there ever?)

Problem 1: Shrinking Population

We were losing students before they every

showed up on campus.

At some point, students were simply disengaging from the enrollment process over the summer.

“It turns out that with higher education, we're failing to bridge a very important last mile. There's this whole group of low-income students who make it to college, they get in, they get financial aid, they're clearly success stories, but the pipe's leaky. And something happens in the last mile, the summer right before they go to college, and they don't show up in college in the fall.”

www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202566709/why-poor-students-college-plans-are-hijacked-over-the-summer

Ebb in student engagement

College admission is a roller coaster of

excitement

1. First, there’s admission and deposit(Yay! They want me!!)

2. Then there’s enrollment (Oh my god what is all this??)

Registering for courses, Submitting financial aid, Government health forms,Orientation paperwork,Housing agreements…

It can be overwhelming..

"You get the acceptance letter and start the celebration," said Shauna Cunningham, a high school guidance counselor who's spent the past two summers at the St. Louis Graduates High School to College Center. "They don't realize all the other steps."

“The idea was that if you could get a kid to graduate from high school, they'd been accepted and chosen where to go, that student was going to show up,” he said. “What our work shows is that in fact, students encounter a pretty complicated array of financial and procedural tasks to complete over the summer.”– Ben Castleman

www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/06/schools-working-to-tackle-summer-melt-keep-incoming-college-students-on-track

And the effects are not small

They might come back… but probably not.

The nature of non-profit, higher education means the revenue hit will last 4 years

We lose the opportunity to help a student change the world.

www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html

Problem 2: Surprise!

No one knew exactly what was going on, until it

was too late.

We never knew the extent of the problem until move-in day.

knowyourmeme.com/memes/surprised-patrick

Paper is messy… and maybe evil

Most of the communication

was in paper format

Beyond the environmental and cost concerns, it is extremely difficult to track what a student has received

http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/propaganda-ads-1940s/14

Left hands and right hands… not talking.

Offices weren’t communicating with each other,

either.

Not only did we not know what had been received, but no single group had a clear picture of what had been sent. On top of that, students weren’t sure who could help them with problems.

Lines worse than the DMV

All important paperwork was handled via mail or

when the students arrived

This lead to a lot of confusion, frustration, and congestion on Move-in day

http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/pictures/dragon-of-a-line-for-chinese-job-seekers-at-henan-job-fair.html

Well… that’s a problem

Two major issues:

1. Some of our students are missing

2. No one knows what is happening

http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/962640-this-is-fine

Solution 1: Simplify and Unite

Communication and paperwork are a mess

• Students are confused by the daunting amount of work required to successfully enroll

• No one, least of all us, is sure what our messaging is trying to accomplish.

So let’s clean this up.

http://thecabin.net/news/local/2015-01-06/college-students-spend-winter-break-helping-tornado-victims-rebuild

What have we got here?

Inventoried ALL existing messaging

• What actually matters?

• What can be combined?

• What has to be paper?

• Most important: What actually requires a student to do something?

Move everything to the web!

Hendrix CampusWeb Portal

• Built on Ektron 9.1, bootstrap and knockout

• Authenticated, locked down portion of public site

• Students and parents are membership users

• Users are assigned to roles (user groups) in Ektron based on our business rules and existing systems

Clarify the message

We know who you are, lets reduce the noise.

• Only some of our messaging was universal

• Several smaller groups: athletes, transfers, international students

• Some geographical groups (send-off parties)

Target messages based on your role

• This led to development of new business rules

• Had to be used in the portal and in our email systems

Make it easy to use

Make actionable items into simple forms in the

portal

• Health insurance waivers

• Athletic participation forms

• Vehicle registration

• General “Agreements”

What do we really want?

Some things we wanted weren’t so clear cut

• Billing statements

• Document submission

• Course registration (in our SIS portal)

Step 2: Watch and Help

No insight into our student’s summer progress

• We don’t know what actions are causing problems

• We don’t know who needs help

Let’s figure out what’s going on

www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/

Checkpoints along the way

Each action assigned to a student is a task

• Tasks are assigned based on roles

• Tasks can be progressed and completed

• Tasks have a start date and an overdue date

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_cycle_checkpoint

Monitor Progress

Reports on student progress

• Aggregate progress of particular tasks

• Progress of specific individuals

• Overall progress of an entire role

Reach out and help

Contact students having problems!

• Our admission and student affairs staff called students and got them back on track

• Students appreciated the direct assistance

• We like being helpful

Fix broken interfaces and pages

• Our metrics let us figure out which tasks were clunky

• We refined them until the issues went away

Who’s actually here?

Real-time tracking on Move-In day

• The last task assigned to each student was check in

• Residence Life staff checked in students as they arrived

• Up-to-date numbers on who was here and who was not

slate.me/1eQ93JY

Drum roll please…

So how did it go?

Success!

• Reduced summer mailing costs and mailbox pile up

• increased our visibility into our incoming class for planning and budgeting

• Less move-in day related stress for parents, students, and staff

• Dramatically reduced melt percentages and increased actual revenue.

nerdist.com/nerdist-podcast-sir-patrick-stewart-returns/

Let’s review

Re-evaluated our summer communication

processes and utilized our portal system built on

Ektron 9.1 to better assist incoming students in

the transition to college, to identify trouble spots

early, and to allow for a smooth and streamlined

move-in day.

Which means…

We saved money

We eliminated a lot of stress

We increased revenue

We helped students and parents…

… and maybe saved the world

Questions?

Contact me

• Email: burling@hendrix.edu

• Twitter: @jayburling