Public Accounts: This would allow prospective students to set up a personal account using their email address as their userID. Goshen College has done this in our GC Online portal and stores the resulting ID in LDAP in a public accounts tree of the schema. Is that an approach that would translate into other environments? If not we'd have to have some abstraction layer where you could sub in different back-ends.
Personalization: Once a student has a public account and you've verified the connection between that person and someone you have in your database, you can create a members-only tab with personalized information, or even an entire site for that person if you wish.
How might this work?
Prospective student logs in successfully
UniqueID for that person put into the session variable
MyGC (MyEMU, MyBluffton, MySchool, etc.) tab appears
User clicks on MyGC (or whatever) tab
UniqueID is passed to CBA's in the MyGC tab that query your ERP system to get the student's admissions status, financial aid award, notes from the counselor, upcoming deadlines, gaps in paperwork, etc.
Other ideas:
An RSS Channel aggregator. Student takes a short interest survey, which effectively signs them up for RSS channels for each interest area. These channels are aggregated into a single feed, which appears in their MySchool tab. Student can also elect to receive this info via email. This assumes that someone is feeding these channels relevant press releases and short articles.
Threaded discussion area for applicants. Use phpBB for this, keying off the public accounts tree. Topics and management strategy would be up to the individual school.
MyVisit tab. If a student hasn't visited, this tab has a signup form for scheduling a visit along with any relevant information and incentives. After a student visits, you put digital camera shots from their visit, a thank you note from the counselor, a feedback form, a 'show my friends' CBA that mails the URL with an embedded sessionID to email addresses the student enters and either a default comment, or one the student writes. Put a button at the bottom of the message that allows the friends to contact the school's admissions dept. or visit the school's website.
Prospective Students Newsletter or General College Newsletter. Encourage Mennonite.net-using congregations to subscribe to these so they appear in their websites and are automatically automatically updated whenever you update the main newsletter. This functionality is already in Caravel, so this is just a logistical/web design task.
Listserv Signup Application. From the MySchool tab or the main admissions site, allow prospectives to sign up for relevant listservs, ie.
Financial Aid and Scholarship Listserv.
Get notified about available scholarships, financial aid updates, and other news that can lower your costs for attending college.
