Excellence in Administrative Information Systems 2003 Award Winners

The George Washington University

Online Housing Selection
[ View the EDUCAUSE Resource Center abstract ]

Streamlining student services is a priority for all involved in campus information systems. At The George Washington University (GW), a campus-wide campaign in 2001–02 to transform student services included reengineering the student housing assignment process by developing a Web-based self-service application to replace a labor-intensive manual process. The project was on a very tight, set deadline, but was completed on schedule in less than four months by a small team consisting of one developer and project manager, the housing office, and staff for testing. GW's elegant solution pushes out to the user the ability to manage the process, and presents a simple, equitable approach for students seeking housing each academic year.

The new system, based on the familiar BANNER interface, consists of two phases. Students interested in university housing are assigned a randomly generated number which determines their entry time to choose housing, allowing GW to stagger server load and leveling students'chances for desirable housing. At the assigned time, students return to the same familiar Web site to make their choices. They can select individual roommates, and those roommates can accept or decline the selections. Students access the service via GWeb, the University's enterprise portal, where they can also see a real-time list of rooms and buildings that are still available.

In its spring 2002 debut, the Web solution allowed more than 3,800 students to successfully select rooms, real-time, on two appointed days. Benefits have been tremendous: Students love it because it frees up their schedules, eliminates lines outside the housing office, and is easy to use. The housing department's workload has decreased considerably, because rooms are automatically assigned at the end of the process. Traditionally, the university has invested more than $21,000 and over 2,000 man-hours per year to run housing selection; the new application can assign several hundred rooms in less than an hour. Ongoing support is minimal.

GWU's initiative is exemplary for its efficient use of limited resources, customization of a standard ERP, creative collaboration among departments, sensitivity to user needs, and well-managed implementation.

University of British Columbia

Student Self-Evaluation and Self-Admission
[ View the EDUCAUSE Resource Center abstract ]

Attracting and admitting a high-quality incoming class each year is a strategic challenge for all colleges and universities. At the University of British Columbia, which receives over 30,000 applications for undergraduate admissions each year and admits about 8,000 new students, low customer satisfaction among prospective student applicants and high staff frustration forced a new look at their cumbersome admissions process. The UBC solution was innovative and radical: allow qualified students to admit themselves over the Internet. With the goal of "transforming the experience of becoming a student at UBC," a nine-person team set out to address the goals of dramatically improving speed and quality of service to prospective students, increasing early offers of admission to outstanding students, and reducing the processing work involved in admissions. The resulting Web-based student self-evaluation and self-admission process has yielded several strategic and practical benefits for the University.

With the new system, BC high school students can evaluate themselves against UBC's admissions criteria to see if they meet admissions requirements for their degree program of interest. Admissible students can confirm their interest and admit themselves directly on the Web. Students who might be conditionally admissible can enter a more detailed admissions process. Inadmissable students receive guidance on missing prerequisites or grades that must improve, obtaining that valuable feedback early, and dramatically reducing later frustration and unproductive overhead processing for admissions staff.

The self-admission system is part of a larger customer-service redesign effort at the university, the Student Information Management Plan, or SIMPL. The goal of SIMPL is to present students with a seamless solution that integrates all the activities that prospective and admitted students must undertake to begin their undergraduate degree program at UBC. The university is expanding the system to encompass students from outside British Columbia, and will eventually expand to college transfer applicants.

UBC's initiative takes a pioneering approach to a common business process. In this transformation, speed and quality of service were dramatically improved, new services such as the "self-advising" features were provided, closer partnerships were fostered with high school guidance counselors and other affected groups, and the work of admissions staff was elevated from handling routine transactions to providing important personalized service.