American Disability Act (ADA) Amendments in 2011?
With Q1 of a new year comes the time for every self-respecting blog to make bold predictions on events to unfold this coming year or have a best of 2010 list, let’s go with the former today: The American Disability Act will be amended to include specific items governing web pages for institutions receiving public [...]
Project Plan to be Flexible
One of the things that you’ll run into quite commonly in larger software implementations are detailed project plans. For many, the availability of a prioritized and precedent ranked chart provides security and an organized path that is the map to your eventual go live. Often created in Microsoft Project, the plan can sometimes feature over [...]
Net Price Calculator mandate – Don’t wait!
These calculators, which are required under a provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, will allow prospective students and their families to estimate their personal out-of-pocket expenses at a particular college. Colleges have until October 29, 2011, to have their calculators up and running, but they have been encouraged to take action sooner. SimpleApply will [...]
Spotlighting Accessibility in 2011
A recent study by the coordinator of assistive communication and information-technology accessibility at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jon Gunderson reviewed 183 institutions on how their web pages treat blind students using a text-to-speech reader. In essence, he was conducting a measure of their section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act compliance. His [...]
The Vendor Consolidation Myth
One idea that always strikes me as interesting is the notion that consolidating all educational software products and services under one vendor has a benefit that outweighs using multiple specialized vendors. I find this theory shocking because it is nothing more than a rumor, spread by large vendors who are in the business of offering [...]
Introducing SimpleCampus by SimpleApply LLC
In the coming weeks SimpleApply will introduce its newest offering SimpleCampus to the Higher Education and K-12 markets. SimpleCampus is a revolutionary way of handling your institutions website. It is a fully vendor managed website solution. What exactly does that mean? SimpleApply will be responsible for building and updating your front end marketing website in [...]
Thinking Ahead About Accessibility
Mark these words, the American Disability Act will be amended to include required accessibility on websites of educational institutions that receive any government funding. The question is how much time will lapse before this happens? The Justice Department announced last week that it is considering revising ADA regulations “to establish specific requirements for state and [...]
The Trusty Axe and the Admission Toolset
Scan any coffee table quote book and you’ll usually stumble upon the famous Abraham Lincoln catch phrase about completing a job. “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe”. The fact that it is still around today reinforces that it is an excellent metaphor [...]
Blind Students Sue Law Schools Over Online Applications
As we’ve been warning Higher Education institutions for some time now, we were dismayed to see that this is coming back to bite. Please read the full article about these latest Section 508 lawsuits at:
There’s a Place For Intuition Too; Why Data Doesn’t Have to Drive Every Decision
I was recently reading the annual Noel Levitz report on incoming Freshmen Attitudes when it struck me just how reliant the Higher Education industry, as well as the Education industry as a whole is on data reports such as this. I’d like to state loud and clear that I resoundingly believe there is not only [...]
What College Can Afford Not to Have an Online Application?
Calculate how much time your admission staff is currently spending hand keying in application data. What about eyeballing paper applications for missing requirements that could be validated online instantly and done right the first time without having to play back and forth with applicants? What about all the possible applicants that are being turned away [...]
Section 508: Department of Education’s Net Price Calculator
As many of you know there is a provision in the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2009 that requires higher education institutions to have a Net Price Calculator available on the internet in 2011. The U.S. Department of Education has provided an application to help institutions generate code files to meet this baseline requirement, however [...]
Financial Aid Calculator Requirement for 2011
It’s a piece of the modern higher education website that has a lot of names (ie. The Financial Aid Calculator, Financial Needs Estimator, Net Price Calculator). The most important thing that insitutions need to be aware of is that there is an important mandate surrounding this piece of web based software. The Higher Education Opportunity [...]
Top College Application Mistakes
Do you ever get tired of dealing with mistakes students make when filling out your admission application? You’re certainly not alone, ACT performed a study listing the top ten grievances reported by counselors and admissions staff when dealing with admission applications. Many of these problems are avoidable by simply having a quality admission application available [...]
Section 508: The JavaScript Degradation Myth
I have heard many programmers claim that they can successfully use JavaScript degradation on a webpage to support users with disabilities. The theory is that code is written to handle both instances when JavaScript is on and off. While most of the rich, interactive Web 2.0 website experiences rely heavily on scripting, institutions that receive [...]
The Campus Visit Marketing Tool
We all know that today’s parents are becoming more and more important in deciding the educational path of today’s students. With the launch of its new Campus Visit Manager, SimpleApply LLC is positioning new and exisiting clients to market to both parents and prospects by way of one of the most important events in the [...]
The Future of Forms
In the future, prospects can quickly authenticate to any school system by utilizing Facebook. They’ll simply login and their basic personal data will prepopulate securely. Imagine the rewards of a two second account creation process! In the future, you won’t even need to direct people to your web presence. Your web presence will live in [...]
Make Your Admission Application Highly Viral In Just 30 Minutes
Twitter and Facebook both offer simple “share” functions that are both easy to add into your online application and can aid in garnering some truly viral results. Adding a share button to their submitted application page will allow a student to share that they’ve recently applied to your school with all of their friends on [...]
The Optimized Higher Ed Web Team
There is ongoing debate taking place in the market right now on whether or not a distributed model is effective for managing a school website. For those not familiar with the terminology, I’m referring to an arrangement where the various staff members represented on the web including academic area heads, department leaders etc. are responsible [...]
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as Admission Recruitment Tools
The rise of new social networking technologies has left many admission teams asking, “how do we use this?” Just referencing these buzzwords is not enough. Today’s higher education e-marketers need to know how to practically apply these technologies in order to best leverage the huge audiences in their target demographic that these networks have built. [...]
Eco-friendly Admission Solutions
At SimpleApply LLC we pride ourselves ourselves on being an eco-friendly business. We’re able to do so by advancing strategies in our client base that reduce the reliance on paper products. Whether you’re a current client, a prospect, or have no interest in the SimpleApply admissions tool set, I urge you to consider the following [...]
Investing in your Future
As I work daily with institutions in higher education one of the underlying themes I consistently am confronted with is bottom line thinking. By bottom line, I’m talking about a very black and white opinion of whether or not certain purchases or strategies will have an impact on the financial well being of a school. [...]
5 Benefits of Outsourcing your Technology
Each day we’re faced with important decisions on whether to pay staff to develop the business applications required to run the admissions machine, or to outsource the work to a software company for development and possibly support. Below are 5 benefits of outsourcing your technology needs. 1) Cost Savings – Take for example the development [...]
IPEDs Collection Requirements Made Easy
So are you ready for the new IPEDs reporting requirements on race ethnicity due for the 2010-2011 academic year? Your first step needs to be getting the right pieces in place to collect this data by Fall of 2010 to be able to report. The Department of Education is encouraging all institutions to collect race [...]
