SlideRoomBlog

We are very excited to have just released the new Applicant Manager.

The SlideRoom team has been working all year to incorporate your feedback and implement new features that provide more power and flexibility. In addition to all the individual improvements, this release also represents a new foundation for future development.

The website has been updated with images and explanations of the new system, as well as added a YouTube Channel with a variety of video tutorials. While these videos are built into the system for your convenience, we also wanted to provide external access.

We launched the new system Tuesday night without 2 of the new features: The Form-builder and Letters of Reference. These will be added in the coming days. We just wanted to make sure that all of the pre-existing features translated perfectly before adding these very significant features on top.

We would love to hear your impressions. While we always love compliments, please let us know if you find any problems or if you have any suggestions for future enhancements. We look forward to hearing from you!

SlideRoom pricing is now more flexible. Please visit the new pricing page here to learn more about the details. As we have added features over the last 3 years, the system has grown from a simple portfolio manager to a complete applicant management system. Given all of these developments, our philosophy is that clients should be able to configure the system to meet their unique needs. While most organizations will choose to build their own plan, the “Portfolio Basic” and “Admissions Plus” are available as short-cuts to common configurations.

For some existing clients, the yearly renewal may reflect a price decrease; while other institutions using the new features may be see a small price increase.  Please contact us if you would like to discuss any details related to pricing.

Via Jessica Hagy

Long suffering administrators have a tendency to post too many instructions when announcing the application process. This results from desperately trying to answer all possible questions ahead of time. However, this strategy of just posting tons of information backfires. It results in confusion and applicants not reading any of the information. So what’s the solution?

We believe relevant instructions need be delivered at the pertinent moment, rather than all at once. SlideRoom was designed around this philosophy. While a brief overview of requirements is good to list on your main website announcing the process, you can leave the details for later. Here are some of the stages we have designed for:

• Welcome Page: Announce what your institution stands for and general instructions. Video Tutorial is also included.
• Program Choices: Announces program titles, deadlines and requirements. 2-3 sentence descriptions help applicants choose the correct program.
• Application Forms: Instructions for completing supplementary materials are displayed on that step (not before). This may include an application form, resume, etc.
• Add Media: Portfolio requirements are displayed when the applicant is actually choosing work to upload.
• Confirmation: Additional instructions can be displayed at the end of the process.

By timing the display of instructions for the appropiate moment, the need to display everything all at once has been replaced. This will make the whole process seem simpler to applicants and increase their likely hood of beginning the process. And having a beautifully designed structure will also be helpful in helping them complete the process without problems.

In the past, we made several incorrect assumptions about what trade show visitors want to see. We assumed that visitors wanted a test drive, to experience the live system.  Wrong.  Visitors only want a 2-3 sentence summary and literature to take with them. So, we created a new booth to help establish a quick understanding and a content-rich brochure to take home (below).

Even more important than improving our delivery strategy, the most profound lesson we have learned is that trade shows are primarily an opportunity for us to LISTEN, to hear about your unique needs. The more we know, the more we can improve. Further, this kind of interaction is more likely to grow into a real discussion, which is mutually desirable.

Our goal this year is to learn as much as possible while we have the privilege of talking with you in person. Here is a list of shows we will be attending during the first six months of 2009. We hope to see you there!

• 97th Annual College Art Association, Los Angeles, CA (February 25-29)
• NERCOMP 2009, Providence, RI (March 9-11)
• SPE National 2009, Dallas, TX (March 26 – 29)
• NAGAP 2009, New York, NY (April 22-25)

I am a big fan of David Gray, founder of XPlane.  His company is hired to translate complex ideas into clear visual pictures for larger corporations.  These pictures are typically used commercially to solve problems, increase productivity, help marketing, etc… and he speaks on this topic extensively. Here is a quote from his website that I find profound:

“In our school systems we teach our children the three R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic, because we believe them to be fundamental skills for successful integration in society. But the three R’s are no longer enough. Our world is changing fast – faster than we can keep up with our historical modes of thinking and communicating. Visual literacy – the ability to both read and write visual information; the ability to learn visually; to think and solve problems in the visual domain – will, as the information revolution evolves, become a requirement for success in business and in life.”

As education moves to this increasingly visual model, we believe admissions requirements in all fields will want to see demonstrations of an applicant’s ability to read/write visual information.  However, the normal enrollment systems used by most universities do not allow for submission and review of visual media.

I believe this ability to have visual stuff integrated into every part of the evaluation process will become essential for all fields, not just artistic ones.  Our strategic plan is to evolve into a system that can be used by universities at large (not just art departments). And of course, we hope to be ahead of the curve by understanding the importance of visualization.

Jeffery Young, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, has just posted a timely article titled “Blackboard Customers Consider Alternatives — Open-source software for course management poses market challenge.” He quotes one IT manager as saying:

“Its service is poor … its behavior toward competitors is overly aggressive, and its fast growth in recent years has distracted it from supporting the product that helped make it a giant in the usually quiet world of college software.”

The most interesting thing about the article is how damaged Blackboard’s brand is.  If a Brand is what your customers say about you, then Blackboard has some challenges ahead. At the end of the article, Adam Finkelstein at McGill University, commented about Blackboard, “Everybody loves to hate their learning system.” That is bad for Blackboard.

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