Improving the experience of a TAFE enrolment process
📍 Melbourne, Australia | ⏱️ 2 weeks
Challenge
I was engaged by Nomat to evaluate the enrolment process at Holmesglen, including the student portal experience.
Outcome
Usability recommendations and opportunity areas report.
Research Design
Research Goal
Evaluate the enrolment process, including the student portal.
Understand what students need from a portal.
Participants
9 participants with 2 user types (existing and new students).
A mix of courses, levels across the institution, ages (from school leavers to mature age students), and nationalities (domestic and international students).
Key Insights
#1 Students don’t expect much from the portal as long as it gets things done
Students don’t expect much from the portal as they mostly use it for “basic” processes like enrolment (payment) and timetables. However, being able to achieve those tasks efficiently without difficulty or with minimum assistance is important.
Opportunity
Ensure the enrolment can be done efficiently with minimum assistance, and make sure other important tasks (timetables & grades) can be located quickly by new students.
Also, it might be worthwhile to start off by talking to student-facing teams to understand what students have complained the most about and explore solutions to address that. E.g. Make some processes self-service: provide a way for students using loans or free TAFE to verify themselves within the system, rather than calling Holmesglen and filling out separate forms.
#2 Students infrequently open the portal; mostly used for enrolment & timetables
Students indicated that they only open the portal a few times at the beginning of the semester for the enrolment (payment) and timetables, and at the end of the semester for seeing grades. On the other hand, Brightspace is used frequently and is also considered user-friendly. Further, some students indicated that they forgot their student portal password due to the infrequency of use.
Opportunity
Ideally, students would have access to services in one location under a single login. As a fallback, students should have a single username & password across all platforms.
#3 Accessing some information from mobile will be invaluable
Despite students predominantly opening the portal from their desktop, they indicated being able to access it from the mobile would be useful, especially for information that changes or needs to be accessed ‘on the go’ (when they return to campus), like the timetables at the beginning of the semester. Further, students expect updates received via email to be mobile-friendly.
Opportunity
Consider sending email notifications for anything that students need to act on or to be aware of (e.g. deadlines, grades, timetables, class, etc.) and ensure they are mobile-friendly (SMS, mobile optimised email or app notification). Further, it would be a logical extension to connect the timetables and notifications to cloud services (Google & Apple Calendar) for convenience.
#4 Student loan & free TAFE payment issues resulted in calls for assistance
One participant using a student loan was concerned that they would have to pay off the full amount within the workflow.
Another participant using a student loan wasn’t sure whether or not they had enrolled.
Moreover, participants using free TAFE perceived a lack of appropriate options.
Opportunity
At the moment look to remove the payment steps from the portal - they appear to create confusion and are duplicated by the enrolment team.
Make it clear via email (at the end of enrolment) and on a confirmation page, that the next step is to follow up with Holmesglen on campus or that they will receive a call from Holmesglen to finalise payment.
Implement a redesigned payment step within enrolment to support students to self-serve (see figure below).
Add a tool to the website to allow students (and support staff) to pick a payment option right for them and to understand their eligibility via a Q&A.
Consider a new payment workflow that supports self-service and ensures that information about fees is upfront.
#5 CRNs and Unique Student Identifier (USI) were problematic
Overall participants appeared to struggle with the Block Selection and Register for Classes pages, often appearing to be unsure about what was expected and the implication of what they had chosen.
This was highlighted by one participant who required staff assistance experienced with the CRN on their orientation day.
Further, she had the same issue in the following semester when enrolling by herself, and ended up calling for assistance. Also, another participant didn’t feel confident to fill in the CRN without the staff around.
Moreover, the USI caused issues, even during the orientation day.
Opportunity
Inside The System
Prevent the issue/error from happening in the first place.
Include a help text link next to the USI field, ‘Don’t have a USI?’ and provide a link to the USI site (with a link indicating an external site link).
Redesign the CRN workflow to support two different tasks, adding a block and adding individual classes.
Redesign error messages to include a way to contact help and present inline.
Introduce a lower effort interaction pattern for adding CRNs such as an Add button.
Outside The System
Ensure information about the need for a USI is included in the Letter of Offer email (if not already included).
Prepare the staff (admin and teaching) on the orientation day to be ready to support students with USI and CRN.
Revisit the labelling and concept of blocks and CRNs, instead use natural language such as a ‘group of classes’.
The ‘how to guide’ content on registering a block contains an error about skipping to step 17 (should be 19) and misses information on selecting ‘next’.
#6 The last-minute timetable is problematic for busy students with jobs or children as they need to plan ahead to fit in their schedule
Further, Although checking the timetable is one of the important tasks, it's hard to locate at first.
Opportunity
Provide early timetables, or at least information when they will be available.
Create a clearer path (user flow) for accessing the timetable.
#7 Lack of clarity on the next steps
"It is expected that you know what to expect."
- Participant 7
💡 Opportunity
Impact
Coupled with talking with student-facing teams, the insights have helped the stakeholders in the decision making roles improve the enrollment experience, both within and outside the system.