BUILDING AN ONLINE APPLICATION AND INTEGRATED DATABASE

Mount Royal’s Experience

The need

1500 paper applications

+

Manually determine eligibility and assess financial need

+

Photocopy package for each award students wants to apply for

= too much overtime

Creating a Plan

Goal – increase student satisfaction with the awards process through simplifying the application and accelerating the payment of awards

No Canadian awards module for Banner at the time (2005) so we would need to build our own

Eliminate the duplication of databases in Student Awards, Finance, and Foundation

Create an online awards application that would automatically populate the database for ease of selections

Speed up the payment of awards to students for the purpose of recruitment and retention

Getting everyone on board

- Consultation with: Executive, Faculty, Donors, Finance, Foundation, ITS, Students

Altering the Timelines

-- Identified a need to increase student satisfaction with awards process

-– Get money into the hands of students more quickly

- Create a front-end awards timeline

-- Required the rewording of all awards

New Policy

Create a new policy to reflect new timelines and represent the goals of the student awards program

Shape definitions of scholarship, bursary, award to simplify criteria and eligibility of new awards going forward – less room for “creative criteria” in the new system

Assembling the Team

Phases and Revisions

One year to build a plan and gather business requirements

One year for most development (application, tables, forms)

Further additions included several reports and improvements over two years

Built in 4 phases Application Forms Reports Automatic matching

Building the Application

Gather business requirements before starting build

Financial need section closely modeled after application for Alberta student loans

Originally built so students selected awards they wished to apply for

In the last phase of the project, the system was improved to automatically match students to awards for which they may qualify

Developing the Forms and Tables Set-up forms allow the user to create

attributes and filters for each award Data entered in forms in Foundation is

linked to Student Awards forms Tables built so that the user could make

changes without ongoing reliance on IT Services

Enter info in forms to defer fees and release funds to students

Building the Reports

Reports were the last thing to be developed

Approximately 50 reports available to system users

Selection reports developed to present only eligible candidates

Programming New Awards

Foundation Set-up

Foundation continued

Foundation continued

Student Awards Set-up

Student Awards Set-up continued

Program Set-up

Questions Set-up

Attachments Set-up

Selection Report Set-up

- All data entered in forms feeds the website which lists all the awards by entrance/incourse and by faculty grouping

- Data also used to create report of awards listing

Website

One application only – scholarships and bursaries in the same application. Same application for entrance and in-course students.

Application

Logging On

Assessments

Application View Form

Financial Need Review

Financial Need Review continued

Selections

Running Selection Reports

Selection Report – 1st page

Selection Report – 2nd page

Selection Report – 3rd page onwards

Payment of Awards

Entering Value of Awards

Entering Recipients

Creating Financial Memos

Student Account

Students will see deferral for the value of the award on their account before having to pay the fall fees.

Verifying Recipient Status in the Fall

Expiring Financial Memos

Releasing Financial Memos

Released Memo

Reports and other Features

Reports Menu

Sample Reports

Annual report summary with breakdown by entrance/incourse, faculty, scholarship or bursary, donor or internally funded, etc.

Governor General medal selection reports

Reports for identifying eligible students for Alberta Scholarships offered by the province

Application Data Reports

Report to determine number of applicants for each scholarship – can send out targeted contact to students in programs with low award application numbers

Application statistics by year or term Awards without recipients Award recipients without a SIN and

contact info for T4A purposes

Reports for Nominated Awards General reports for nominated awards

that give lists of students in specific programs or faculties including course/credit and GPA information

Entrance student ranking reports based on high school marks, previous post-secondary, regardless of having completed an awards application

Awards Ceremony Report

Report can be generated that lists all award recipients and their contact information as well as the associated donor contact information

The information can easily be sorted by faculty and distributed to faculties for the planning of their ceremonies

Recipient Award History

Administration Tables

Tuition and fees by program and year Selector codes Application periods Expected parental contribution All financial need assessment maximums Financial need budget amounts

Outcomes

Student Experience

More students are applying (more than double)

Ease of applying Much faster application process Award money into student hands much

faster More variety of students receiving

awards

Staff Experience

Variety of reports at our fingertips Integrated with other departments No duplicates of databases Easier and faster to assist students More time for research and making

improvements elsewhere Less paperwork