Fanter said he worked closely with Blackboard to ensure that students would gain the best service experience possible. Blackboard promised Ivy Tech that the system would go live in less than six months to ensure that student excitement would remain high.
While the college’s Facebook page was once littered with angry comments from disgruntled students, Fanter said the page has more than 71,000 fans, a staggering upshot in a mere 12 months.
“I’m proud to say that we have reinvented their experience,” said Fanter.
Ivy Tech is now free to focus on its other priorities, such as faster follow-up during the financial aid process, following up on students with unique situations, providing help to students in academic difficulty, increasing recruitment efforts with more direct contact, and integrating Starfish for proactive advising.
The larger impact
Craig Chanoff, senior vice president and general manager of Blackboard Student Services, said campus leaders often forget just how impactful student services are, and they don’t understand that today’s students have higher expectations than perhaps any other generation before them.
“Expectations have changed; these students are much more proactive consumers,” he explained.
Chanoff said allowing a poorly-designed student services system to chug on can be hugely detrimental to colleges.
A recent Pew Research study found that 78 percent of college students cited lack of service, immediacy, personalization, and connection as reasons for dropping out.
Social media can be both a blessing and a curse to colleges. Student feedback is made more visible through Facebook, so colleges can see when students are unhappy and gain a better understanding of what students think their experience should be like. However, that feedback is entirely public, so any viewer can see when a college is failing to meet students’ expectations.
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