By Bill DeBaun, Senior Director of Data and Strategic Services
Reading time: Seven minutes
Technologies like chatbots and texting platforms have the power to inform, serve, and support students at scale — both for completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and improving other student success outcomes. This was the big takeaway
from “FAFSA and Beyond: Policies and Programming that Use Technology to Support Students at Scale,” a webinar held August 3, 2023. With the rollout of the Better FAFSA this fall amid ongoing college affordability challenges, states, school systems,
and college access organizations can learn from the panelists' success leveraging these technologies.
The webinar was hosted by Mainstay, who partners with more than 200 organizations across the country — like the Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC) and Georgia State University. The recording
is available here on demand.
Corey Edwards, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Mainstay
All three organizations are National College Attainment Network (NCAN) members.
Both WSAC and CAC offer interesting use cases about supporting students with technology.
Washington Student Achievement Council
Sarah Weiss, Director of College Access Initiatives at WSAC, set some context by explaining that Washington State has one of the largest and most generous state financial aid programs in the country with the
Washington College Grant. The grant is an entitlement program for eligible students that covers public tuition for many learners from low and middle incomes and is prorated for students at higher
levels of median income. Washington also has the
College Bound Scholarship, which increases early awareness and sets students on a path to college. All students eligible for free- and reduced-price meals in 7th or 8th grade, or who
are newly-eligible for 9th grade, are automatically enrolled in the College Bound Commitment program.
“It's a very generous financial aid program amongst Pell at the federal level and other state financial aid programs,” explained Weiss. “But we were seeing this paradox in that we have this fantastic opportunity for students in Washington State…that those
of us in my team get so excited about [but] we were seeing FAFSA completion rates not be where we want them to be.” As of July 28, Washington’s class of 2023 seniors has a 42.4% FAFSA completion rate, good for 47th nationally, according
to NCAN's FAFSA Tracker.
“We wanted to really focus on how we can support students accessing the aid that they're eligible for. There are 40,000 college-bound students every year, and we're seeing these low financial aid completion rates,” noted Weiss. Because of the College
Bound enrollment, WSAC has access to students’ information information and can get contact information from their schools. Putting that data to work is where OtterBot came in.
OtterBot is a free texting service that supports all Washington high school students and their parents/guardians. It is designed for seniors and juniors who are enrolled with College Bound. WSAC partnered with Mainstay to launch OtterBot in 2019. According
to Weiss, OtterBot communicates with roughly 50% of College Bound Scholarship students, and a recently-launched parent bot expanded communication to parents of high school juniors and seniors. OtterBot currently has an engagement rate over 80%, with
86% of students and parents finding the bot helpful.
“...OtterBot [is] part of a larger strategy that we’re continuing to work on,” added Weiss.
WSAC has seen promising initial success with OtterBot. Students who engage with the bot have FAFSA completion rates 5% higher than those who didn’t respond, and 7% higher than those who didn’t receive OtterBot messages at all.
A generous grant from the Capital One Foundation in 2022 allowed WSAC, in partnership with MDRC, to expand, evaluate, and optimize OtterBot. “We're right in the heart of that work now, looking at how we can better understand: ‘Is OtterBot supporting students
equitably? Are we supporting students furthest from educational opportunities? Are we missing out on supporting certain students and families? How does different language come into things?’ ”
Through this evaluation, WSAC learned that its regional partnerships are foundational to increasing financial aid completion and postsecondary enrollment. Washington also recently initiated “Regional Challenge Grants,” which the legislature added more
than $16 million over the next two years in the 2023 legislative session. WSAC administers this grant and supports the regional partners in their work. There are two types of Regional Challenge Grants. One supports the implementation of existing work,
and the other forms partnerships in areas where this work is just beginning. WSAC is considering how to integrate OtterBot into these regional partnerships in a way that best supports individual communities.
College Advising Corps
Since 2005, College Advising Corps has been transforming the college-going culture in high schools nationwide. Through partnerships with 31 universities across 15 states, CAC deploys teams of recent college grads to provide hands-on guidance to high school
students on their higher education journeys. With a force of around 800 near-peer advisors, CAC now reaches approximately 200,000 students annually.
“We're doing a lot of work at scale, and our model historically has been one that placed in-school advisors in schools to work with students, but over the last eight to ten years we've been piloting different virtual advising and hybrid advising programs,
and in 2020 started working in artificial intelligence,” explained Kinsell.
In 2020, when the pandemic hit, CAC partnered with Mainstay and the Common App to launch an AI-powered chatbot to support students through their college enrollment journey. “Being a part of that
pilot, which was a unique model, we began to see the value that artificial intelligence and chatbots can bring to college advising,” adds Kinsell.
In 2021, CAC began to think about how they could use chatbots to support in-school advisors. CAC launched a very small pilot program in North Carolina in the spring of 2021 focused on FAFSA completion. They continued that pilot for the entire 2021-22
academic year in North Carolina and in Atlanta, GA. The results were impressive: After a year, CAC found that students who received chatbot messages completed the FAFSA at a rate of almost 70% versus 50% for students who did not receive any chatbot
messages.
“We were really excited to see those numbers after our first year,” recalled Kinsell. “We wondered this year if we would see the same impact or if it was an anomaly, but very recently we conducted the analysis and found that in the second academic year
of implementation, 74% of students who received messages from the chatbot completed the FAFSA versus 41% of students who did not receive messages. These were students from the same schools…so we feel that we're seeing a really positive trend around
the impact of chatbots and their use.”
FAFSA completion isn’t the only area where students who used chatbots outperformed those who did not. CAC also examined their other organizational key performance indicators (KPIs) for both groups of students and found that those who received chatbot
messages also scheduled more one-on-one meetings with advisors and submitted college applications at a higher rate.
“We are seeing higher KPIs for all students who receive those chatbot messages,” explained Kinsell, who added, “We would attribute that very closely to the impact of reminders because one of the value-adds we see from the chatbot is that it is constantly
reminding students about those key steps they need to complete to get to college or postsecondary enrollment.”
Beyond chatbots, CAC conducted a longitudinal study in partnership with UNC-Chapel Hill that examined the impact of in-school advising on FAFSA completion from 2017 to 2021. They found that having an in-school advisor resulted in higher FAFSA submission
rates, increased FAFSA completion, and earlier submissions. “We are really excited. The synergy we have between in-school advisors and artificial intelligence is one that we definitely want to continue,” concluded Kinsell.
If you’re interested in exploring this topic in-depth, Mainstay has more information about the research behind its platform, the
evidence of its efficacy, and its partnerships with organizations like WSAC and CAC.
Human advising paired with scalable technology offers immense potential to expand college access and attainment. The approach harnesses their respective strengths — with advisors providing personalized guidance and human connection and technology offering
real-time support at scale.
With more students needing assistance than advisors available, this collaborative model bridges the gap. Advisors empower individuals. Technology democratizes help. Both are essential to meet all students where they are and guide them to and through college.
It's important to remember that FAFSA isn’t the only time students need support. Chatbots can provide guidance across the entire student journey. Before FAFSA, they can be used to build college knowledge and increase self-efficacy. Post-FAFSA, chatbots
can help prevent summer melt and provide student support that increases the likelihood of them persisting in their higher education journey.
NCAN will continue to seek out and share successful strategies for supporting students at-scale. Thank you again to Mainstay, the Washington Student Achievement Council, and the College Advising Corps for their membership and knowledge sharing in this
important webinar!
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