Well before “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” entered our common vernacular, the college access and success field was searching for ways to serve ever more students more effectively. Programs across the country have increasingly turned to technology to find
innovative, efficient ways to support students. In Arizona, that technology first took the form of “Benji,” an automated chatbot that helps connect students and families with Free Application
for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion assistance.
Benji started out as Project Benjamin. Follow the logic here. Benji is short for Benjamin. A famous Benjamin, Benjamin Franklin, appears on the $100 bill. Completing the FAFSA can save students hundreds of dollars in postsecondary costs. It all adds up!
Chatbots like Benji have a number of key advantages:
They never have to sleep, and they are around 24/7 to answer questions.
They can simultaneously handle essentially limitless requests for information.
They triage questions by answering those in their knowledge banks (which are preloaded with hundreds of answers to frequently asked questions) and then connecting users with a human adviser for requests it can’t answer. This reduces the number of
staff needed to serve a much larger pool of students.
Adding answers to new questions is simple, which means that Benji is never stumped for long.
Responses can come in a variety of languages.
Finally, signing up with a chatbot is as easy as texting it, and this is a format with which many students and families are comfortable.
Beyond the two-way communication between users and the chatbot, Benji can also be used for one-way “nudges” to students and families about important dates, deadlines, and events. Participating school districts can send out district- and school-specific
reminders of events in a student’s area. College Success Arizona is constantly experimenting with different approaches to drive engagement (e.g., including memes, varying time of day and day of the week, changing up content).
The chatbot itself is powered by AdmitHub, a texting and chat platform used by a number of postsecondary institutions and other initiatives.
Benji is part of the Arizona FAFSA Challenge, a statewide effort to raise FAFSA completion rates. So far, 27 school districts have signed up to promote Benji to their students this
academic year.
Through the end of August, about 47% of Arizona seniors had completed a FAFSA for 2020-21 cycle, according to NCAN’s #FormYourFuture FAFSA Tracker.
New this year, Benji will incorporate student-level FAFSA completion data from the Arizona Commission for Postsecondary Education, which will allow targeted nudging messages to reflect whether or not a student has started, or completed, a FAFSA and in
general allow for a more granular level of messaging and outreach than is currently possible.
The Arizonan efforts to support students’ access and attainment outcomes don’t end at Benji.
This past spring, in response to students’ needs resulting from COVID-19, College Success Arizona and its partners stood up a free hotline students and families can call for assistance. They were inspired by the Michigan College Access Network, which did something similar. In Arizona, the technology behind the hotline is Grasshopper, which allows forwarding to staff members from
four different partner organizations on a rotating basis.
For inquiries Benji can’t handle, the hotline is a great way to get just-in-time support to a FAFSA filer.
Additionally, and on a non-FAFSA topic, Arizona State University is adding a separate technology in the form of the “me3®: Major and Career Quiz.” This tool helps high school and college students
take a major and career quiz by showing them 60 slides, each of which includes two images. Students select the image that resonates most with them, and me3 provides them with three career choices that their images sections might reflect. From there,
each of the career choices has details and potential college majors. (Your blog author received tour guide, executive assistant, and museum curator as initial selections, but students can add additional careers later). The quiz is free, though it
does collect contact information.
“me3 helps get students thinking about potential majors early on, what careers they might be interested in and the steps they can take to get prepared for those fields, including what courses to take in high school,” explains Sylvia Symonds, Arizona State
University’s associate vice president for educational outreach and student services.
All of these collaborative efforts focused on college and career readiness have snowballed across the past five years. A series of grants, including some from NCAN, brought communities and the partners within them to the table. Those grants culminated
in a $1 million investment from Schmidt Futures.
Previously, “everyone was definitely in a silo and in their own lane,” says Heidi Doxey, program manager, community initiatives for College Success Arizona. Now, with so many districts and community-based organizations involved, there is a ton of
collegiality and collaboration in Arizona.
The future is bright in Arizona (and not just because it seldom rains in the desert). With all of these partners coming together to harness the power of technology to serve students, many more students and families will be able to find the support they
need to complete the key milestones for a postsecondary pathway.
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