How the University of Arizona is Delivering a Personalized, Digital Student Experience

The University of Arizona has a difficult goal of balancing their research and academic excellence with a massive access mission. They work very hard to support their students to ensure their success. 

To help meet these goals, the University of Arizona is undertaking a huge digital transformation project with a focus on digital experience and relationship management as part of their overall strategic plan. The first pillar of the strategic plan is focused on student outcomes and preparing students with the skills and mindsets to lead into the future. 

One piece of this pillar is to modernize their PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. Students today are digital natives and expect individualized, anytime-anywhere interactions powered by consumer grade technology. However, their current systems created an overwhelming digital experience that didn’t meet student expectations. 

The digital experience might be the only experience 

Even before the changes that COVID-19 brought to the world, the University of Arizona knew the importance of the digital experience for their remote learners. With an increasing population of international students, many never set foot on campus, making the digital experience their only experience by which to judge the university. And now, with all their students remote, this is true for everyone. Once students return to campus, the updates made to the digital experience will continue to serve the university well with improvements to student satisfaction and success as well as their brand and reputation. 

Learn more about how your digital student experience can impact your brand and recruitment efforts in this blog.

Mapped out the current experience

The University of Arizona’s first step was to understand and map the current student experience. They brought together technical and functional business partners from across the university and evaluated the quality and consistency of all 100+ systems that students have interacted with. They discovered inconsistencies around brand, single sign on, and overall complicated and disparate processes. Their current state overwhelmed students, which was not the image they wanted to put forward. 

The solution path

Large, core systems (PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, Salesforce, and D2L for example), have a shelf life of decades with infrequent release cycles, whereas user experience requires much more frequent updates and refinement. The University of Arizona is decoupling the user experience from the core platforms, allowing them to have more freedom to make regular, frequent updates to the user experience without having to change their underlying core systems. The overall design goals are: 

• Apply the University of Arizona brand with a modern look 
• Provide mobile access and full compliance with accessibility guidelines 
• Allow students to find and navigate directly to full range of transaction pages 
• Improve usability by reducing clicks and combining multiple functions onto a single page 

Watch this webinar where the University of Arizona shows off their new PeopleSoft campus portal.

An anytime, any device digital student experience

The updates that the University of Arizona is implementing will create mobile optimized, fully branded, and personalized digital experience for their students that truly reflects their brand across all student interactions. With all students currently being remote, having a digital experience that reflects the quality of the on-campus experience is more important than ever.  

Want to learn more?

Visit our campus portal page to learn how InFlight is helping leading higher education institutions to create mobile, branded, and personalized digital student experiences.