Open Letter to Dr. Philip Day on NASFAA Expense Reduction

Dr. Day and the NASFAA community,

In your recent letter to NASFAA members, you spoke of reducing costs while maintaining or expanding services in a tight economy. I wanted to make you aware of a near-literal buffet of options available to NASFAA and its members that carry a very small financial footprint. These services are ideal for NASFAA to communicate with its members and also for financial aid administrators to communicate with students as well.

For training over distances:

I’m a fan of UStream.tv and Blogtv.com. Both are great services free to broadcasters and audiences for doing live video training. Each allows not only a live video broadcast to be seen by many viewers, but also has an interactive chat room alongside the video for audience members to interact with the broadcasters. Both services also record your videos so that your training sessions can remain available for those who can’t be there at a specific time.

Think of these as having your own live TV station.

For group audio broadcasts:

I’m a fan of Blog Talk Radio. NASFAA’s own Justin Draeger recently participated in a roundtable discussion about financial aid in a questionable economy using the Blog Talk Radio service, to much success. Setting it up requires a little bit of preparation but for NASFAA members in the audience, participating is as easy as dialing a phone number. Blog Talk Radio is currently free with advertising options, or paid upgrades.

Example:

Think of this as having your own talk radio show.

For conferences:

NASFAA was kind enough to allow me to record some sessions from last year’s annual conference, one of which I hosted with Blip.tv, a great video sharing service. Another service, mDialog video sharing, does the same thing with HD quality videos; both are free to viewers and broadcasters, though Blip.tv will allow you to earn some incremental revenue from advertising. Both services allow you to put your videos on your own web site as well.

Example:

Think of this as having your own video on demand service.

To simplify sharing of slides from presentations, I also use a free service called Slideshare, which lets me not only share my presentation slides, but put them on my own web site. This lets those folks who couldn’t attend, or maybe were in the back and couldn’t see, to view the slides with the greatest clarity, perhaps even listening in sync to an audio recording of the session.

Example:

| View | Upload your own

A service like this not only reduces paper waste, but allows you a lot more flexibility with the materials you already have.

I would love to see NASFAA increase its usage of these interactive tools to provide truly cutting-edge, 21st century options for members to learn, share, and grow their financial aid skills, regardless of how near or far they are to NASFAA’s headquarters.

As always, I and my colleagues at the Student Loan Network remain committed to helping NASFAA and all financial aid administrators be as effective and powerful as possible in our shared goal to increase access and affordability of higher education. I hope these new media tools, free of charge but rich in benefits, prove useful to you.

See you in Orlando!

Christopher S. Penn
CTO, The Student Loan Network
Founder, The Financial Aid Podcast

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