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Higher Ed

Olivet Nazarene University Triples Enrollment by Modernizing Student Admissions and Coursework Management with FormAssembly

Kathy Lueckeman

Chief Strategy Officer, Olivet Nazarene University

Case Study Snapshot

Olivet Nazarene University (ONU), a 114-year-old institution, had been suffering from the recently threatening trend in higher education institutions: a drastic decrease in their senior class size. Having to reallocate funds and resources to recruiting, staff knew it was time for a change, and that’s where the simplicity and streamlined service that FormAssembly provides comes into play. We were recently able to discuss the situation and gain insight on how it was remedied with ONU’s Chief Strategy Officer, Kathy Lueckeman.

Throughout our conversation, Kathy shared that ONU partnered with ElevateActual (a longtime FormAssembly partner) to design a groundbreaking solution. Powered by Salesforce and FormAssembly, Your Way was built as a resource to offer students tuition-free general education courses. Your Way not only provided a community where students could focus on their education journey, but it also provided solutions for frustrated staff members who were exhausted of the multistep processes for inserting assignment grades, calculating students overall course grades, and turning in assignments. With the support of FormAssembly, Salesforce, and other beneficial partners, ONU was able to find relief from several pain points and most importantly, increase numbers in their senior class size.

About Olivet Nazarene University

  • Olivet Nazarene University is a Christian university that was established in 1907 and is nestled in Bourbonnais, Illinois, about 45 miles outside of Chicago.
  • The 3,500 students in attendance annually enjoy small, quaint classes with a world class education experience.
  • ONU offers 140 degree programs and has 40,000+ alumni members worldwide.

The numbers

850%

to date increase in new student enrollment

50%

decrease in manual work

80

hours a week saved in processing time

2,080

hours processing time saved annually

The Need

Modern, Streamlined Processes for Staff and Students

“The faculty had the desire to shift their focus from paperwork and outdated processes to provide a better education experience for students.”

Olivet Nazarene University (ONU) was perpetually covered up in paperwork, having to jump through hoops to manually accomplish a task, and their senior class numbers were dwindling. For this small, Christian university, these facts were bleak, they knew that they had to make a change. With all of those factors in mind, they set out to find modern ways to streamline their processes, alleviate unnecessary stressors from staff, and actively maintain their student population.

To keep their students, ONU knew that they needed something engaging and innovative to remind them of the ultimate goal—to embrace and nurture their education journey. They also knew that retaining staff and students meant they had to find ways to make their lives easier to ensure they remained at ONU through graduation.

At ONU, the faculty had the desire to shift their focus from paperwork and outdated processes to provide a better education experience for students. In order to do this, they recognized the need to automate their processes and reimagine the higher education experience as a whole.

The Solution

Flawless, Scalable System

New processes give students the bandwidth to focus on their educational journey.

By joining forces with ElevateActual, the ONU Global academic team was able to create a new program called Your Way. Built with Salesforce and FormAssembly, this new software offered complimentary general education courses for students.

By partnering FormAssembly with Experience Cloud and myTrailhead via a Salesforce connection, ONU was able to eliminate an outdated portal and in turn deliver a flawless and scalable system. This portal provides students with classes that not only encourage community and open discussions, but that also shift the focus away from achievement and give students the bandwidth to focus on their educational journey.

To alleviate the stressors that students and staff also experienced with admissions, assignments, and grading, ONU used FormAssembly and Salesforce to build out specific features of Your Way that ease the processes.

Use Cases

Automated Application

Automated Application Process and Coursework Management

The automated application process was pivotal in removing obstacles that potential students faced while applying at ONU. This automation gave them instant access to see how their credits would transfer, and it used FormAssembly forms to create transfer course records instantly. This also gave ONU a way to collect demographic information and build students’ education history, making it possible for students to access an immediate transcript.

Additionally, coursework management gave students the ability to submit all assignments through Experience Cloud-authenticated FormAssembly forms. With this, faculty also gained the ability to grade and provide feedback on assignments through FormAssembly forms.

Coursework Scheduler

Coursework Scheduling and Prefill Connector

Through self-service course rescheduling, students are able to swiftly swap out courses and adjust their schedules via FormAssembly forms.

With the prefill connector and form workflows, ONU and ElevateActual were able to leverage the form as a user-experience builder. This gave staff the potential to transition between pages while writing data to & reading records from Salesforce to customize the experience.

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What’s Next?

“Faculty actually cheered when they heard we would be providing a single interface for grading and modernizing the grade-book process,” Kathy said. Since implementing Your Way and working with partners like ElevateActual, Salesforce, myTrailhead, and of course FormAssembly, ONU has revolutionized their processes to the point of a triple digit increase in new student enrollment, and they have also seen a 50% decrease in manual work—goals that felt nearly impossible with their old system in place. Going forward, ONU plans to continue improving processes that will allow their staff to focus on the university’s most important goal, which is to provide an impactful, educational experience for students.

Don’t just collect data

— leverage it.