How To Deliver a Strong User Experience In Higher Education

Eric Stortz, Senior Director of Information Technology, DeVry University

In today’s fast-paced, instant gratification world, higher education institutions must ensure they are delivering frictionless student experiences at every touchpoint to provide students with a digital experience that eliminates interruption and frustration.

Delivering a strong user experience in higher education is no longer a choice but a necessity.

At DeVry, our students are primarily working adults who balance the pursuit of a degree with work, family life, and other personal commitments, and they need a support system that is flexible and responsive to their specific needs. And helping them persist to graduation and have a meaningful career is our ultimate goal. Now in the digital age, we also have a responsibility to ensure positive interactions with students at every touchpoint, particularly those conducted digitally or virtually.

DeVry’s Digital Care Engine is a platform that leverages a variety of digital communications channels to connect students with the help and support they may need. It goes beyond one class; it extends across a student’s entire academic journey as we provide a variety of tools and resources to help them succeed in and beyond the classroom. That might mean tutoring ahead of a challenging assignment, a guide to managing their account, career planning, or access to a network of opportunities through our Career Services staff.

DeVry does not rest on its laurels; rather, we are consistently innovating, whether it be our curriculum, how we teach, or the tools we use to support students.

For example, DeVry’s IT department recently pursued an initiative to reduce and eliminate student friction when learners encounter technical issues and need to contact the service desk for assistance. DeVryset out to measure not only the first-call resolution rate at the service desk for student tickets but also established metrics to measure the Time to Resolve (TTR) for all student tickets. This measure identified that, on average, it was taking progressively longer to resolve students’ technical issues. There was also a likely correlation between students whose support tickets remained unresolved beyond 24 hours and those students having a higher likelihood of dropping out. Using these measures, DeVry implemented deep dashboard reporting and rigorous daily reviews of open student help desk tickets to drive faster resolution and minimum daily updates to open tickets.

"In today’s fast-paced, instant gratification world, higher education institutions must ensure they are delivering frictionless student experiences at every touchpoint to provide students with a digital experience that eliminates interruption and frustration"

Due to these actions, DeVry reduced the student ticket TTR by 2,000+ basis points from an average of 49.4 hours in the January session to an average of 23.8 hours for the July session.

Other successes included:

• Resolving 70% of student tickets within 24 hours or less for the July session

• Achieving a 400-basis point reduction in the ratio of tickets opened to students over the past 4 years

• Achieving a 90% satisfaction rate on service desk customer satisfaction

Ultimately, DeVry reduced student friction by enabling our students to more quickly return their time invested to actual learning vs. spending time on technology troubleshooting.

Technology continues to impact the way we live, learn and work, and higher education institutions must not fall behind. Colleges and universities must adapt and help learners stay in school, graduate, and succeed professionally while helping to minimize the challenges they could incur during their academic journey.

Digital Experience