Student Central is Indiana University Bloomington’s one stop offering student services for financial aid, student accounts and student records. We are constantly trying to find ways to improve our communications with students to help better serve the student as well as help reduce the number of contacts coming into Student Central. Through our interactions we have found most of our contacts come from the subject of financial aid. Students become confused by their financial aid awards, especially when there is a change.The Financial Aid Student Tracker (FAST) was developed by Student Central to give students more insight into what their current aid package looks like and how we got there. Previously, students would receive an electronic financial aid notification in regard to their financial aid and the changes that occurred. What we found was that it was hard for students to understand exactly what had changed. Students would view their financial aid awards and become confused since it was not clear where the changes occurred. This prompted phone calls, emails and walk in visits creating more traffic for our office. Our staff would also have difficulties determining what had changed within the student’s financial aid awards which would tie up even more time and resources. We decided that there had to be a better way for students to understand the changes happening to their financial aid awards. Therefore, we decided to seek a modification to plug the new award vs old award data in the actual electronic financial aid notification that are sent to students when their financial aid award changes. Since launching FAST, it has become a dominant resource for students and staff to use when discussing financial aid award changes. We have noticed a decrease in call, email, and in person volume regarding questions around financial aid award changes.

Submission ID: 

5132

Day:

Monday, July 15, 2019

Time:

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM

Room:

Milano VI