The revised AZUN Portal Development Plan with elements as requested by the Committee will be discussed.

Transcription

1 Page 1 of 8 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY INFORMATION ITEM: AZUN Portal Development Plan ISSUE: The revised AZUN Portal Development Plan with elements as requested by the Committee will be discussed. BACKGROUND: AZUN degree program development, development of a Web portal to interconnect the student information systems of the three universities, and marketing are Board approved priorities for AZUN. DISCUSSION: The AZUN Portal Project Plan jointly developed by the universities was originally presented to the Committee at the June meeting. At that meeting the Committee requested more detail and options for future development. The university consensus response is attached in the revised Portal Plan. Specifically, the plan addresses the following issues discussed at the June meeting: 1. A description of the increased internal marketing strategies designed to ensure current students at the three universities are aware of AZUN services, especially the ability to seamlessly cross-register for classes at multiple universities. 2. A metric of 1,000 cross-registering students per semester as the point at which phase II of the Portal Project should be implemented. The universities will request an earlier phase II implementation if the manual cross-registration process is less cost effective than automation prior to reaching the 1,000 students per semester level. 3. More detail is provided on the additional enhancements that will be made to the current Portal to ensure a high level of student services. 4. An analysis of the opportunity cost of delaying phase II of the Portal is provided. 5. A summary of the reporting process that will support the ongoing review of Portal effectiveness leading to the decision to ramp up the implementation of phase II of the Portal is discussed. 6. Options are provided to the Board for methods to develop phase II of the Portal. 7. A summary of proposed budget changes is presented for discussion. These recommendations are reallocations within the current AZUN budget to double the marketing budget from $500,000 spent in FY to $1,000,000 for the current year and setting aside $500,000 in a reserve account to partially fund phase II of the Portal Project. The budget items are proposed to be an action item at the September Committee meeting.

2 Page 2 of 8 RECOMMENDATION: It is recommended that the Committee study and discuss the plan.

3 Arizona Universities Network Portal Project Development Plan August 2007 Technology Oversight Committee Page 3 of 8 The universities have worked cooperatively and diligently to implement the AZUN Portal. Through this process many students have been positively impacted, and working relationships among the universities have been enhanced with important implications for future cooperative development of technology-delivered services. One of the most positive outcomes of the Portal development process is a better understanding at each of the universities of the demand and needs of distance students. History of the Project In early 2005 the IT/AZUN Committee charged AZUN staff to work with the universities to develop an RFP for a vendor to provide a portal to supply seamless automated student services for prospective and current students. At that time, the re-branding of Arizona Regents University to AZUN was in process. The assumption was that the increased marketing planned for AZUN would expand the demand for student services beyond the capacity of the AZUN campus coordinators, especially in the area of cross-registration among the universities. The intent of the Portal was to automate admissions, registration and financial functions that are currently manually accomplished by the campus coordinators. To the student, there is a high level of personalized support in the current manual system. The Portal will automate those functions with the ultimate goal of an Amazon.com type of experience. Through the competitive RFP process, the universities chose Decision Academic as the vendor and Portal development started in January of Phase I of the Portal, which was targeted for completion in June of 2006, was completed in December of `In hindsight, the process to develop the Portal was initially flawed. The assumption that the universities would prefer to be involved as little as possible in the design and implementation was not an accurate assessment. Other factors that slowed the development included the vendor s small staff size relative to the effort and turnover in AZUN staff. The implementation was evaluated by an external evaluator, Hezel and Associates, and the decision was made to move forward with Decision Academic for Phase II with full involvement of the universities and a new management approach. Development on Phase II started immediately in December of 2006 and has been progressing well with strong engagement by the universities. As the complexities of the project have become clear, the presidents of the universities have appropriately asked the university Executive Sponsors and CITOs to look at the macro level and make recommendations on how to move forward.

4 Page 4 of 8 Summary of the Recommendations To best meet the needs of students and achieve the public policy goals of the Regents, the following recommendations, described in more detail later in this document, are offered: a. Increase the focus on marketing AZUN to prospective and current students to increase the number of students participating in AZUN services. b. Enhance the tracking and regular reporting of prospective student contacts, new students admitted and students cross-registering through AZUN. c. Drive further development of Phase II of the Portal in response to increasing numbers of cross-registering students. d. Continue to implement changes and improvements to the Phase I of the Portal to better meet student needs and increases in demand. e. Base development on the experience of the users (prospective and current students). f. Ensure greater involvement of the presidents in AZUN governance issues. Increase Marketing One of the Board approved original primary purposes of ARU/AZUN was to attract new and underserved students into the university system. In the MOU between the Board and Northern Arizona University the number one goal was to provide new students access to distance delivered degrees and certificates. To attract new students marketing initially focused on brand awareness, and only in the last year has recruiting of specific student populations been the primary focus. Increasing the number of new students is initially only possible through increasing marketing efforts. As the services AZUN provides become better known, more potential students will come to AZUN through word of mouth referrals. In order to increase the number of current students at the three universities taking advantage of AZUN services, and especially to impact awareness of their ability to cross-register, multiple strategies will be used. Preliminary discussions have indicated that advertising in student newspapers and on student radio stations, ipod broadcasts, additional printed collateral information, and increasing communication to advisors at each of the universities may be the best options for raising current student awareness of AZUN services. Cross-registration awareness will be enhanced through additional Web links on the universities registrars pages and registration screens. The emphasis in implementation of these links will be to ensure that students may move seamlessly from university to AZUN services and back to their home university s system. Enhance Tracking of Prospects, Admissions and Cross-Registering While tracking of prospective student contacts has been ongoing, and AZUN cross-registering has been tracked at each university by the AZUN campus coordinators, a more robust tracking process is needed to measure the impact of AZUN and for accountability. Especially lacking is

5 Page 5 of 8 information on prospective students referred from AZUN to ASU and UA. A method of tracking the prospective student s status (admitted, still undecided, no longer interested) is required. Drive Further Development in Response to Increased Student Cross-Registering As described in the history section above, the Portal was originally commissioned when the assumption was that the marketing efforts would overwhelm the AZUN campus coordinators with many more students cross-registering among the universities. Tens of thousands of unique Web hits and thousands of student prospects have been recorded, but cross registrations have not increased at the rate anticipated when the Web Portal was proposed. The universities believe that fewer students have taken advantage of the cross-registration functionality for a number of reasons. For distance learning students, each university makes a commitment to provide the courses needed for students to complete the degree programs they offer online. While there are occasional complaints from some traditional on-campus students and their parents that students have found it difficult to complete their undergraduate degrees in four years due to lack of course capacity, the number of students in that situation who take advantage AZUN cross-registration indicates that the problem is not as severe as anecdotally reported. Many of the cross-registrations continue to be current university students who are matriculated in collaborative degree programs such as the Master of Engineering and Secondary Teacher Education that require students to take courses from more than one institution to complete the degree requirements. With the increases in marketing efforts proposed above, and with better tracking of prospective and current students using AZUN services, AZUN staff will report to the Committee each semester and, in consultation with the universities, recommend the timing to Portal Phase II implementation in response to student demand or changing needs. In the interim, the universities pledge to continue to provide a high level of seamless student services through the AZUN Portal, AZUN campus coordinators and university staff. It is anticipated that the metric that will make the current manual system less cost effective than automation is approximately 1,000 students cross-registering each semester at each university. This estimate is based on ensuring that students receive timely service commensurate with the current level. The AZUN campus coordinators would be supplemented by clerical level staff support to a level of three total FTE as the cross-registration demands increase. As part of the report to the Committee each semester, an evaluation of the quality of services provided to students and cost of the manual system vs. the cost of automating the Portal (Phase II of the Portal Project) will be provided. If the universities find that the tipping point for moving from the manual system to the fully automated system is fewer than 1,000 students, they will recommend an accelerated Portal development schedule to the Committee. Changes and Improvements to the Current Portal Phase I of the Portal replicated the functions of the original AZUN Web site (course and degree search with articulation information) and implemented the online admissions function. Updates to fix bugs are in process. Additional enhancements to the Portal will be developed to:

6 Page 6 of 8 1. Make the Portal more student-friendly and intuitive 2. Coordinate with the universities and community colleges to integrate the Course Applicability System (CAS) as appropriate into the Portal to ensure students have easy access to articulation information. This is in support of the Joint Conference Committee (JCC) recommendations. 3. Improve the functionality of the Portal for the campus coordinators to simplify their use of the system to ensure timely and accurate interactions with students. These enhancements will also allow the coordinators to serve more students in the same amount of time. 4. Provide ongoing testing to ensure Portal software bugs and changes in the universities SISs do not degrade student functionality 5. Move and fully integrate the Master of Engineering program Web site in the Portal 6. Provide each university with a development instance of the Portal software for quality assurance (QA) purposes 7. Implement a change management process that fosters discussion among the universities. The university AZUN teams will continue to meet on a regular basis to accomplish these goals, as well as collaborate on enrollment automation and data generation, and to maintain the team structure to support a fast ramp up of Phase II when implementation resumes. The overarching goal is to ensure that the current Portal is not a detriment to providing services to students. Base Development on User Feedback The universities will continue to stay student-centered as the primary driver for the AZUN initiative. An increased level of quality control surveying will be implemented to ensure that students are satisfied with the services provided through AZUN. Incremental changes will be instituted as needed, and the macro level data generated will drive Portal development in the future. Greater Presidential Involvement in Governance In recognition of the importance of the AZUN initiative to our students and the State of Arizona, the university presidents commit to a higher level of involvement with AZUN s strategic direction. This involvement will streamline decision-making and ensure that commitments have the full support of the institutions. Opportunity Cost of Delaying Phase II of the Portal The universities and AZUN teams believe that the work that has been accomplished on Phase II will be directly applicable to future implementation. The work thus far has involved the universities in defining Phase II, with the functional software requirements gathering largely complete. This is a natural stopping point for two reasons. First, the next step in the process is to

7 Page 7 of 8 involve a vendor or the universities IT teams in developing the software that meets the defined needs. Second, this gives the universities time to complete implementation of a new SIS system (ASU) and to enhance the functionality of a legacy system (UA), thereby enabling a faster deployment of Phase II of the AZUN Portal. A Northern Arizona University analysis of the current Decision Academic contract indicates that the university may modify the contract at any time without penalty. Further, Decision Academic has committed to the completion of final bug fixes and enhancements to Phase I as proposed by the universities. This is the logical point to end Phase II development within the current contract with Decision Academic. Since the universities and AZUN s functional and technical teams will continue to meet on a regular basis, the ramping up of Phase II can be accomplished quickly. The teams will focus on implementing enhancements to the current Portal to increase student satisfaction and AZUN Campus Coordinators abilities to serve the increasing number of students and address further automation of AZUN services. Similarly, the Executive Sponsors and CITOs of the universities will continue to meet on a semester basis to prepare the report to the Committee. Review and Reporting Requirements Each semester the universities and AZUN staff will report on the following metrics: 1. Analysis of AZUN impact on current students a. Number of cross-registering students b. An assessment of the effectiveness of the universities in meeting students needs c. An analysis of the cost of continuing serving students manually compared to the costs of developing Phase II of the Portal d. Effectiveness of internal marketing to current students e. The number of courses that are fully subscribed, restricted or needed but not offered 2. AZUN impact on new students a. Number of contacts with prospective students b. Number of students who are admitted 3. Result of AZUN student service surveys a. Level of satisfaction with services b. Student desires for new services and functionality Options for Board Consideration The Board may choose to ramp up the implementation of Phase II of the Portal in response to changes reported each semester. During the evaluation of Phase I several options were presented

8 Page 8 of 8 by Hezel and Associates to re-conceive the project and consider other options for Phase II. Building on those recommendations, the universities propose that Board options at the time of implementation include: 1. A new contract with Decision Academic 2. A technology approach developed by the universities (Example: ASU proposal that was considered between the end of Phase I and the beginning of Phase II) 3. Using existing Portal software, but with the universities IT teams developing Phase II without a vendor s involvement 4. Contracting with a new vendor Summary of Recommended Budget Changes The Committee will be asked to approve two major budget changes that will be forwarded as an agenda item at a future meeting: 1. Increase the marketing budget to $1,000,000 for FY The budget for FY was $500, Create a new budget line item in the amount of $500,000 as a reserve for Phase II Portal development. This reserve would be used along with current operating funding in the year that Phase II development is implemented.