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The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal Integrating Technology into Advisement Services R. J. Multari, University at Buffalo
Fundamental to the future of academic advisement services is the incorporation of technology. Forces outside as well as inside the academy are driving administrators toward technical solutions to advisement and retention challenges. During a time when service improvement is a goal, the incorporation of technology causes dilemmas for administrative staff, as the extensive use of technology in a service industry such as academic advisement and counseling is viewed by some as too cold and impersonal (Stedman, 1995). The challenge then is to incorporate technology to achieve efficiency while controlling it so it does not become intrusive in processes where student interaction is at stake. Likewise, advisement and retention staff must also take into account that today's student is used to doing things electronically. For example, students already interact electronically with advisement and student support services staff and save their campus interface time for the classroom setting. Academic advisement staff, therefore, can use new tools to enhance their capacity to provide better student services and even to improve human interaction. Clear thinking about the possibilities of technology, careful revamping of business functions, and finding the right mix of technologies for an institution are essential (Stedman, 1995). Higher education is at an important junction regarding the use of technology. In many areas of administration, including advisement, registration, records, and retention, computer systems are aging. In upgrading these systems, the challenge is to avoid simply mimicking what staff members are doing on paper. In the case of systems supporting student advising services, the next generation of software programming should use computer and communication technologies to complete certain transactions, thereby allowing students to interact directly and more frequently with their academic records (Stedman, 1995). Moreover, software programming is now providing other academic personnel, such as faculty, with easier access to institutional data about students. Higher education “is at an information technology crossroads precisely because it is higher education” (Stedman, 1995, p. 77). Colleges and universities are repositories of knowledge and are expected to know how to make expert use of it, in both administrative processes and the classroom. Therefore, it makes sense that academic advisement offices are able to take information provided by students and use it to respond quickly, accurately, and personally to them. Subsequently, advisers across campus, not just in student financial aid offices, should be able to combine data about students, such as grades, course loads, and housing locations, in order to provide efficient help for their advisees. Thus, in upgrading computer systems and communication technologies, advisement and records units should expect these upgrades to enhance their functions and services and not just substitute automation for slower manual processes (Stedman, 1995). Forces Impacting Technology in Advisement Services Information and communication technologies have been around for decades. Why the sudden pressure to incorporate them more comprehensively? Academic administrators are being pushed, if not thrust, into this new work environment because there are more external forces than internal ones driving this movement. First, customers expect it: computer-literate students are eager to interact electronically (Lewandowski, 2001). Second, it is easy—or certainly easier than in the past—to incorporate technology into advisement and retention management. Commercial software firms recognize potential markets in education and have created products, Web sites, and software for college advisement and articulation services by using computers, and, in some cases, utilizing electronic data interchanges (EDIs). Colleges and universities increasingly have no choice but to use these products in order to seem modern to prospective as well as current students (Lewandowski, 2001). Third, the federal government has become fairly automated, and the U.S. Department of Education and many supporting financial aid agencies such as Sallie Mae have incorporated technology to manage their student programs. The expectation is that, in the very near future, all colleges and universities in the United States will be able to transmit comprehensive data directly to government databases on a daily basis, regardless of technological platform. Other forces driving academic administrators toward incorporating modern technology include the following:
Concepts in Technology and Application Development The most important question to ask when addressing the buy-versus-build software issue is, who manages the service? Most software packages are built based on someone else's concept of how to complete the work. If an institution uses a commercial package, the process must be arranged around external business concepts and ideas of how the package processes student information (Stedman, 1995). Therefore, no single advisement/degree audit/articulation/student records package is perfect for every higher education institution. Each organization provides its services in a slightly different manner; thus, if a package is purchased, modifications will often be necessary. On many occasions, the modifications can take as long and cost as much as building the student information system from scratch (Smith, 1999; Olsen, 2000). Asking advisement and related support staff to evaluate each feature of the software and to provide a list of modifications that will be needed may give an idea of cost, but, even then, a modified package reinforces the old way of conducting business. Likewise, buying a software package and insisting the advisement and related support staff use it “as is” greatly underestimates the resistance from the services group being asked to change. Moreover, buying a pre-designed software package from a commercial vendor also negates the possibility that advisement and records staff can find more efficient ways to accomplish their tasks. The smoothest transitions occur within advisement organizations in which the end-user group is consulted and made part of the decision-making team (Stedman, 1995; Smith, 1999). Computers can analyze data and support advisement decision-making in ways not previously possible. Combining these goals may mean building systems rather than buying packages. Many business and industry technical administrators are building their own applications, particularly because today's development tools enable staff to design applications at a rapid pace (Stedman, 1995; Olsen, 2000). Until recently, buy and build seemed to be the only two viable options for academic administrators. However, shareware, software libraries, and software consortia have developed among various colleges and universities. While many institutions wish to appear unique and competitive, many manage their processes with exactly the same student information systems. Applications written at fellow institutions can be made available as shareware. The concept of sharing code is becoming more popular, as is the idea of collaboration among institutions, with the development of common standards and protocols becoming more popular (Stedman, 1995; Olsen, 2000). More and more often within higher education, people are tackling common administrative problems and adapting applications written at other institutions. Subsequently, the consenting institutions address the questions of support and documentation that inevitably come up with shareware. In order to select the best student information systems, institutions must understand what issues and problems they are trying to solve. These problems might include
Technology and Systems Project Team The community of end users must be involved in planning and must provide leadership for their part of a development project in order for useful new student information systems to emerge. A part of the system development equation that is often overlooked is the role of the end user: the advisement and related support staff for which the systems are being built. The staff must provide leadership in the project, however, because they know their services best. They can decide how to conduct their work differently and learn how to integrate new technology into their daily routines (Stedman, 1995). The end users must be “information designers” and must convey their needs clearly to technical staff members, who can in turn design the technical support for the end users' work. Ideally, the project team will include people from all of the following groups:
Impact of Technology on Advisement Units One of the many benefits of technology in advisement and student records is the effect it can have on the organizational structure. Though technology sometimes displaces people, automation can eliminate some very low-level work and free people to do more skilled tasks. Retraining qualified staff has many benefits, as they carry with them knowledge of academic services and need training only on new tasks or processes. In addition, automation and technology creates jobs: although jobs may be eliminated in one area, they will be created in another. The net result may be the same number of staff; however, the nature of the work as well as the service and production level should change for the better. Consultants are available to help assess the impact of technology and plan for the deployment of advisement and related support personnel to other jobs. Higher education, as an industry, joins many other industries going through this evolution and change. Reengineering will bring about significant changes in both the advisement and records units as well as the larger institutional organization. If successful in applying reengineering techniques, the academic organization can dramatically reorder its work, as well as change the size and nature of the staff. Subsequently, an advisement and records unit may change because fewer layers of staff will be needed for functions that are now automated. Likewise, use of particular technologies may cause radical change. Image processing will have the most long-term effect in that it is one of the first major steps toward the paperless office (Stedman, 1995). However, there is debate among technical professionals about whether to skip over imaging technology and go directly to EDIs. Although the electronic transfer of data is becoming commonplace, it will be years before paper can or should be eliminated; therefore, adding imaged documents to the electronic file so that paper is eliminated as it comes through the front door is a feasible step. It is conceivable that, for at least another decade, units such as advisement and records offices will have to contend with data coming in all forms, such as
Training and Development Changing technology has a significant impact on the initial training and development of advisement staff, and staff training is one of the most important investments that can be made. Training must be given for each new product acquired, but the objective should be to develop, manage, and integrate the product into an organization's own student information systems, with developing the expertise in-house being a long-term goal. If an institution must rely on someone outside the organization to modify, fix, or run the system, a pattern of long-term, escalating cost is established (Stedman, 1995). For example, several major hardware companies, such as IBM, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco Systems have moved from hardware as their primary product to hardware and service as their marketed products. These companies offer to do contract work with educational institutions at consultant prices, creating a significantly higher expense than long-term dedicated employee wages. Building expertise in one's own student information systems staff is one of several necessary steps needed for cost containment and improved technology systems. If short-term help is needed from an outside company for installation, application development, facilities management, or consulting, transfer of knowledge should be one of the conditions of their contract and subsequent employment. At the end of the contract, the knowledge and ability to run the organization's student information system must have transferred from the contractor to the institutional staff. Timeline One of the most frustrating parts of developing student information systems is estimating the time it will take to complete the project. Accurate time estimates are often impossible to assess, since the entire combination of challenges that need to be coordinated is usually not apparent until the project is started, and often deadlines are imposed before the project is even initiated. Identifying phases of a project and giving regular progress reports or setting benchmarks will take a considerable amount of stress, conflict, and fear of failure out of project management. Advisement administrators might be reminded that it took decades to design the systems that are on the market now. Although new technology will cut future development time considerably, it is not unreasonable to expect that, when adapting to new ways of conducting advisement services, it will also take some time to develop the supporting system design. An end date should not be as important as developing the vision, both for the advisement service design and the technical design. Once time estimates are established, regular benchmarks of progress toward completion of the project should be established and monitored. It is better to keep the academic organization abreast of project progress, and adjust their expectations as progress is made, rather than announce at the expected end date the project will be late. Often, time estimates are established on good data and assumptions that everything will go smoothly. Staff changes, unexpected illness, end-user changes in requirements, and learning curves are usually not considered. Therefore, flexibility and patience are essential traits of a good technical project manager (Olsen, 2000). A major factor that affects the timeline of a project is planning, with “idea management” being the biggest challenge (Stedman, 1995). When users are involved in planning and design, the wish list of wonderful features may become very long, but some features may benefit only one or two percent of customers and slow the development of the final product. Following the planning phase, the next step is to identify the following:
Financial Analysis Even in an information economy, very few higher education administrators know the cost of conducting their individual services. Though they are aware of their budgets, few rarely break out the cost of providing the various services of the enrollment-planning unit—perhaps because higher education “is primarily a nonprofit industry, tuition does not constitute the total income of the institution, and senior administration has not asked staff to cost justify the current service” or service levels (Stedman, 1995, p. 86). Subsequently, it is not possible to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the new technology if an organization does not understand the cost of current operations. Therefore, when starting a technology project, it is important to document what goes into the financial analysis. Most technology projects are judged to be more expensive because the analysis was not comparable at the beginning and end. In addition, the value of improved services, better information, improved accountability, and improved product quality are ignored. Although it is hard to assign dollar values to these items, they should be taken into account as part of the objective for change. Likewise, it is important to be clear about costs that cannot be projected, since, when doing anything for the first time, there will be some unexpected expenses. More important is comparing the trading of one level of service for an expanded or upgraded service. Conclusion Each part of the student information service chain works on links of the automation process. Whether motivated by forces within an institution or forces in the profession generally, advisement professionals are constantly thinking about the next generation of technical assistance for students. A vision of the student information system should be discussed with the advisement community and ought to take into consideration the full chain of processes and services. This chain includes colleges networking to other colleges through
References Buffalo State SABRE. (n.d.). Retrieved February 3, 2002, from Buffalo State College, Buffalo State SABRE Web site: http://www.buffalostate.edu/offices/sabre/. Lewandowski, J. (2001). UB using IM to reach prospects. University at Buffalo Reporter, 32(32), 7. Olsen, F. (2000). As ever, computing officials ask: Build or buy? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 46(39), A45. Smith, J. M. (1999). Avoiding problems in implementing administrative-software systems. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 46, B12. Stedman, J. B. (1995). The driving force of technology in enrollment management. New Directions for Student Services, (71), 73–87. About the Author R. J. Multari is director of advisement and adjunct instructor in the School of Architecture and Planning at University at Buffalo. He can be reached at multari@ap.buffalo.edu or 716-829-3483. Published in The Mentor on May 26, 2004, by Penn State's Division of Undergraduate Studies Available online at www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/ Privacy and Legal Statements | Copyright | © The Pennsylvania State University | All rights reserved | |
Editor's Note: This article is the second in a series of three articles by R. J. Multari on the subject of technology in advising. The first article, “