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NTT DATA INCModerator: Christal SimmsSeptember 5, 20182:00 pm CTCoordinator:Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all lines have been placed in a listen-only mode for the duration of today’s conference. Today’s call is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to (Myesha Challenger). Thank you. You may begin. (Myesha Challenger):Thank you so much. Good afternoon everyone. We would like to thank you for attending today’s webinar entitled The FAFSA Form and the New Mobile App My Student Aid. Our presenter today is Misty Parkinson who is the Director of the Applicant Products and Customer Service Division here at Federal Student Aid. Misty, I will turn it over to you. Misty Parkinson:Thanks, (Myesha). Before I begin, I just want to make a few notes. The presentation that we’ll be going over today is available for download in the top left-hand corner of your screen. And also during the presentation if you have any questions, please write your questions in the Q&A chat box. We have FSA standing by to answer your questions. And if we have time at the end, then we’ll share some of the questions with the larger group. So I’m going to go ahead and get started now. As all of you know there are a number of ways that students and parents can complete the free application for federal student aid. The oldest method of completing the form is using paper and that’s something that people pretty much stopped doing many years ago when we built the website, which uses skip logic, smart logic, hide show logic in order to as much as possible reduce the number of questions that people are required to answer.Our website has been used by over 99% of our applicants for the last many years. And now we have launched a new way of completing the FAFSA which is even shinier and brighter than the website. And it is in the new mobile app called My Student Aid. So within the My Student Aid mobile app we have links to a number of different federal student aid websites.But the main function within the mobile app at this time is called My FAFSA. And it is the currently the 2018-2019 FAFSA form. We made it available in the Apple and Google Play stores I believe it was August 15th. And it will remain available until the end of September at which time we will replace it with a new version that will include the 2019-2020 FAFSA. So we encourage you to download what’s out there now, take a look at it, become familiar with it, and then starting right around the beginning of October with the launch of the 2019-2020 FAFSA students and parents will be able to sue the mobile app to complete their 19-20 FAFSA. I’m going to review some screenshots of various pages within the mobile app. I just want to make a few points before I get started. First of all, this is the FAFSA. It’s the same set of questions that students and parents will find on as well as on the paper application. So the questions are no different. The questions will never be different unless there are changes to the law. We’re asking the questions that we’re required to ask. However, we have designed the experience in a different way. We have tried to make it as engaging and friendly as possible. And I’ll point out some of the ways that we’ve done that as we go through the screenshots. So the first one is showing the landing view, which is the page that displays when you launch the app. This is pretty much a home page. It’s letting you know information that is important to know before you get into the app. You’ll see for example here before you start we’re letting people know that this is an official app from Federal Student Aid. We provide information when we have our maintenance windows. Whenever the website goes down for weekly maintenance, then the app will also be unavailable. And the current version of the mobile app provides some information alerting users that the functionality within the mobile app is not exactly the same as the website. And there are certain things that are not available. We want people to know about that before they use the app to complete a 2018-19 FAFSA in the event that they want to use a website instead.Two major functions that are not available in the 2018-19 mobile app are the ability to populate information from your prior year application -- so the renewal functionality -- as well as the IRS data retrieval tool. So people who wish to benefit from either of those functions would be better off using the website for 2018-19. However, for 2019-20 both of those functions will be available. The next screenshot is my favorite. This is where the user tells us what role they’re playing in the FAFSA process. We know that some students complete the FAFSA completely on their own and some get assistance from a parent or some other person who can help them navigate through the process.We have dependent students where the student and parent sit down together and complete the FAFSA. We have dependent students where the student and parent complete their sections of the FAFSA but they are not together. And we have some instances where the student completes the whole thing and then the parent signs or the parent completes the whole thing and the student signs. So we’re trying to create an experience that will work regardless of how people are completing the form. And what we’ve done in the app which you will not find on the website is allowed people to tell us what role they’re playing in the process so that we can customize the experience for them. For example, if I log in and say that I’m a student then any questions that are asking for information pertinent to the student will ask about me. What is your this? What is your that? If I log in as the parent, then any questions that are collecting information about the student will ask me, as the parent, what is the student’s this. What is the student’s that? So if the student is choosing to fill out the entire application when they get to the parent questions we will be asking about the student’s parent. If they are filling out their own parts separately from each other, then we will be asking about your based on the role that they’ve logged in as and who we’re trying to collect information about. So if you choose to download the app and explore a little bit, you may want to just, you know, try logging in as a student, logging in as a parent and seeing how the language will be different depending on who you are. And we hope that that will make this a better experience for those users who are required to provide information for both the student and a parent. Right.The next few screenshots are the log in page, the save key page, and then the what we’ll call the checklist page. So first, the log in page -- you have to have an FSA ID in order to use the mobile app. If you already have one, that is super awesome. And if you don’t, you can get one while you are in the mobile app. So you can see from this first screenshot we collect the FSA ID user name and the password. And below each of those fields we have a link to the FSA ID website. If you’ve forgotten your user name, you can retrieve it. If you’ve forgotten your password, you can retrieve it. And if you don’t have an FSA ID at all, you can see down below the log in button that you can create your FSA ID on the website. Now, the website itself is mobile responsive which means that if you choose to go to that website to apply for an FSA ID or retrieve your user name or password or make whatever changes you need to make to your FSA ID, that website will display appropriately based on the device that you’re using, whether it’s a phone or a tablet. The next screenshot is the save key page. So just like with the website, this is how we allow someone other than the student to access the FAFSA. If a student starts filling out the FAFSA and then they stop and they want their parent to go in and continue filling it out, then they need to share that save key with the parent. The parent needs that in order to be able to get into the application to continue.It’s also what allows people to start a FAFSA on the mobile app and then switch over to the website to continue it or vice versa. So the save key is attached to the student identifiers and creates basically, you know, view record that people are able to access only if they know all of the key pieces of information. And what you see on the far right is an example of the checklist page. So this is intended to give users an idea of how they’re progressing through the application. So you can see in this example we list out seven different sections within the FAFSA. So we have student information first. We have section two, school section. That’s where the user will identify the high school they attended and also the schools that they want the FAFSA sent to. Section three is where the student’s dependency status is determined. And if the student is dependent, then they would need to complete sections four and five -- parent information and parent finances. And if they’re independent and they choose not to provide parent information, then they would jump right to section six and provide student financial information. This page will display as each section is completed. And it will indicate that the section you just finished is now done. You’re moving into the next section. And if we made a determination that any of the sections are not relevant to you, then they will be cropped out. So it’s a really good gauge of how a user is progressing throughout the app. Sorry. Woman:(Unintelligible).Misty Parkinson:Okay. So before we actually get into screenshots from the FAFSA itself, I want to talk a little bit about some other features that are available within the app. And you can see in the first two screen captures this is what you will see if you access the hamburger menu, which is the three horizontal lines in the upper right of the app. So you can see - you can ignore that very first thing which says view models. That was something for testing purposes. But you’ll be able to go home at any point in the app. You can choose home to go back to that very first page. Profile takes you to the FSA ID website so that you can access your FSA ID account in the event that you need to make to make any updates or apply for an FSA ID. Next in the list you’ll see My FAFSA. Before you actually get into the app, that’s all you’ll see there is My FAFSA. You can select that and begin the process of completing the FAFSA but once you’re in, then there are additional options there which are in the second screen capture and I’ll talk about those in just a moment. Underneath My FAFSA you’ll see Federal Loans. If you select this, that takes you to the My Student Aid - sorry, to the student aid (unintelligible) website and you can log in to access your loan history. And then down in the lower section under About Us there’s Contact Us, , and Privacy. So this is where people can go to if they want to look around to get more information about federal student aid in general, reach out to us if they have any questions or whatever. And then of course there’s the privacy statement that’s available from all of our federal student aid sites. Now if you look at the second screen capture, you’ll see the difference is that the My FAFSA line now has some additional options underneath it. These become available as I said once you actually get into the FAFSA. So once you’ve started the FAFSA, this is where you go if you want to save it so that you can come back to it later. Just like with the website, our system will automatically save the FAFSA as you complete each section but if you want to save at any other point so that you don’t lose your information in the event that you want to, you know, exit it and come back later, you can save it from the hamburger menu. View progress will allow you to access that checklist page at any point in the application so you can see which sections you’ve completed and which sections you still have left to complete. Reset FAFSA will allow you to delete all of the information that you’ve entered. And log out obviously lets you log out. So the third screen capture shows you an example of what we refer to as a guiding text page. This is that you’ll see in the mobile app that you will not see on the site. Basically, you know, I think we all know there are a lot of questions on the FAFSA and it can seem very overwhelming for people who are not familiar with it -- and probably plenty of people who are familiar with it.So, you know, we tried to make it friendly and conversational and we tried to break the questions down however we could to make it seem like a more manageable process to complete the FAFSA. So this is the first guiding text page that people will see. You know, let’s get started. And then we move into the questions. But you’ll see pages like this interspersed throughout the application letting people know either how they’ve done or what they can expect to be seeing on subsequent screens. All right. So now we have a few examples of some of these FAFSA entry pages. And these are from the student information section, which is section one, but for the most part the pages throughout the entire FAFSA look pretty similar. The first one is an example of a question that is prefilled. This is social security number. It is prefilled based on the FSA ID that was used to log in if it was the student that logged in. And if it was a parent or preparer that logged in, the parent or preparer would have been required to enter the student’s identifiers and this would be prefilled based on the entry of the social security number on that page. And you can see that it’s grayed out because it cannot be changed. The application is tied to the social security number that’s been entered and so if you don’t get it right at the very beginning, then there’s no hope for you. You need to go back and you need to start all over again. So this one happens to be prefilled and grayed out. But other fields are prefilled from the FSA ID like name, date of birth address -- things like that. And starting in 2019-20 when we have renewal functionality, some questions will be prefilled from the prior years 2018-19 application. We also have some questions that will be prepopulated based on answers to other questions. And so this is just an example of a screen where the answer is already there. And that’s one of the ways that we simplify the application is by answering questions with other information that we already have available to reduce the number of questions that the student and parent have to answer themselves. The second screenshot is an example of a question that has multiple response options. And I believe that this screen capture was done from an iPhone. Android is a similar concept but the way that it displays would be different. But we have a fair number of those questions with multiple response options.And I think the other main type of question is your entry question, which you see for like your financial questions and things like that. And for those you just type the answer in the box or using the keyboard which will display. And it displays appropriately based on the type of question. If it’s a numeric question, then we give you a numeric keyboard. If it’s an alpha question, we give you an alpha keyboard. If it’s a date, we give you a date picker. So we use functionality of the device itself in order to allow you to easily answer the questions. And then the third screenshot you can see again this is the checklist which you saw on a previous slide. But for this one, you can see section one is now green and it has a checkmark which indicates that it’s been completed. Section two is blue with an arrow which indicates that’s the section that you’re going to go into next. But I want to point out a few things at the top of that page as well. You can see in the blue section with the graphic it says you’ve completed a milestone. Let’s keep going to determine your eligibility for federal student aid. So we’re using these checklist pages to be encouraging. You’re moving from one section to another section so we’re basically letting you know you’re doing a great job, you know, you’re making progress in order to try to be encouraging and let people know that they’re on the right track. And you can see below the blue in the green line it indicates that the application was successfully saved. So as I mentioned just a little bit ago, just like with the website we do an automatic save as you complete each section. And so every time you encounter a checklist in the natural flow of the FAFSA, you’ll see that indication that the application has been saved because you completed a section. Okay. So we’ve moved into section two. I’m not going to be showing examples from any of the other sections because as I said they’re very similar to what we just looked at from section one. But section two is a little bit different because this is where you’re going to be indicating the high school that you attended and also where you will be indicating the schools that you want your FAFSA information sent to. And both of those include search capability. So the screenshot on the left is where you would indicate the high school that you attended. And the search works the same way that it does on the website. You put in as much information as you can and you select search and then we search against a database to see if we find a match for it. And if we don’t, that’s okay. Then you just go ahead and proceed and the information you entered will be included on the FAFSA output. The second screen is just an example of what happens if you do something incorrectly. For example, you are required to enter a state in order to do a high school search. You are required to put something in all three fields in order to move to the next page. So if you don’t do that, then you’ll get an edit. And you’ll see that at the top with the red X. That’s just, you know, an example of how we’re notifying people if they have to correct something before we will allow them to move on.And then the screenshot to the right shows you the beginning of the college search feature. So we’re basically providing some text to let you know why we’re asking you for this and then we let you choose how you want to find your school or schools. Some people -- primarily those people who have already attended a school for a year -- may know their college’s federal school code. And if they do, then they can choose to do their search by entering the federal school code. If they don’t then they can search based on city, state, and name. So they will choose whatever search option they want to use.And then they will get the search results just like you see on the screenshot to the left. So it’s a list of all of the schools that meet the criteria that were entered. And if you want to further narrow down the list, then you can refine your search using the search box at the top. You can see next to the search box on the right hand side in the green it says five of ten. This is a counter to let you know how many schools you’ve selected total. So it starts out at zero obviously and it does not go above ten because there’s a limit of ten schools that you can list on the FAFSA. But then as you add schools it will increment and as you remove the schools it will obviously be reduced. Now, let’s say that you do a search of, you know, all of the colleges in California and then you select a couple of colleges and then you want to search for colleges in Wisconsin. You can select new search and that allows you to change your search criteria, get another list that meets that criteria. But it retains everything you’ve selected so far so you would be adding additional schools to your list of the ones that will be include on the FAFSA itself. The second screenshot is similar to what I showed on the prior slide. It’s just an example of what you would see if you do something that’s not quite right. We will alert you to what the problem is so that you can correct it before we let you move on. And then the screenshot on the right is the final list. So this is all of the schools that you selected in your search. And this is where you would indicate your housing plans -- whether you intend to live on campus, off campus, or with your parents. If you see a school on your final list that you didn’t intend to put there, there’s a little trash can icon to the right. You can select that in order to delete it. And if the student wants to change the order of the schools -- and some states require schools to be in a certain order for the awarding of state aid -- then they can use the up and down arrows that you see on the left hand side for that. Okay. So we’ve completed section two. Section three is where we determine dependency status and then we move into section four if the student is determined to be dependent. One thing we have heard over the last few years is that some students are confused about who they should be reporting as a parent or parents on the FAFSA. And so we’ve tried to address that concern by introducing the term FAFSA parent. So basically the student has finished answering the questions in section three. The student has been determined to be dependent and we’re letting them know it looks like parent information is required for us to calculate your (EFC) and determine your financial aid eligibility and then we tell them what a FAFSA parent is so they can determine who they should be providing information about. And they’re given the option to log out of the FAFSA and let that parent log in in order to complete the parent questions.So these screenshots are illustrating what that looks like. So the first one is the page where we’re basically telling them you’re dependent. They select next. Then we the next two that’s actually one scrolling page. It consists of text that tells them who is considered a parent. And if they are still not sure after having read through that text, there is a link to a help topic so they can get a more detailed description.And there’s no option for navigating forward until they make a decision about what they want to do. Do they want to log out and have the FAFSA parent continue, or do they want to continue and manually provide the parent’s information? So this goes back to what I said at the beginning with roles. People are doing the FAFSA in a lot of different ways and we’re trying to accommodate all the different ways that they might be doing it.Okay. The next slide is showing you what the help text looks like. So there is a question mark icon at the top of pretty much every page on which we’re asking a question. And if you select that help icon, then you will get a help topic that has page level help. So if we’re asking multiple questions on a page, you’ll get one topic that has help for all the questions on that page. If there’s just one question, then your help will be about that question specifically. For the 2018-19 FAFSA which is available now, particularly in sections five and six where we ask the financial questions, there are a fair number of pages that ask multiple questions. And so a help topic will have help related to each of those questions. And you can see the way that we have tried to make that easier to digest is by hiding text behind accordion links when the text is not something that applies to the vast majority of people. So you can see in this first screenshot this is actually an example of a help topic. This is the help topic for student’s 2016 income tax return filing status. So there’s basic information that applies to everybody who needs help related to this question. But there is a smaller population of people who meet the criteria of being a married student who didn’t file a joint tax return. If somebody meets that criteria and they may need to know how to answer the question properly, then they can select that accordion link. And then you can see in the second screenshot that there’s more information down below, that there’s a table that tells them if you did this and the spouse did that, then this is how you answer the question. Doesn’t apply to everybody. And if we made it visible to everybody, then they would very likely be overwhelmed and maybe not get the basic help that they need.So any help that is specific to a smaller population of people we’ve put behind hyperlinks. And you’ll find that as I was saying with 2018-19 we have a fair number of pages that have multiple questions. And so we’ve used the accordion links to try to simplify that too. You may not need help for every question on that page. You may only need help for one question. So you select the appropriate accordion link and the help for that will display. For 2019-20 we have split the questions out so that for the most part with very limited exceptions it’s one question per page. And we did that for navigation purposes. People find that it’s easier to select next, next, next, next, next than it is to scroll next, scroll next, scroll next. And so some of those pages got to be pretty long. And so we tried to shorten them up so they were more easily consumed.Okay. Now again we have an example of the checklist page. So you can see in this instance we’ve got sections one through five that are complete. They have the green checkmarks. You’ll see that section six is grayed out and crossed out. And that’s because based on the way the questions were answered for this particular student section six was not required. You can also see again at the top we’re trying to be very encouraging. You’re almost done. And then once the student selects next or the user selects next, we will then begin the process of making sure that the information that was entered appears to be accurate before we allow submission of the application.So you can see the second screenshot says before you sign and submit your FAFSA form, let’s double check your information. What we’ll do is run the data through different edits and if everything looks okay then we’ll display a page that basically says everything looks great, you can proceed. And if we do find any issues, we’ll let them know we found a few things we need you to double check and then we’ll feed them through the edits one at a time so that they can resolve them. And once they have passed all the edits and we believe that the data is correct, then we will present the FAFSA summary. So this is a listing of all of the questions and the answers that were provided. For the 2018-19 FAFSA it’s just text. You can scroll through and you can see the answers to the questions. If you see that something is incorrect, then you’ll have to use the hamburger menu. Go to the I forget what it is, application status option to access that checklist page and go back to the section where the error is, find the question, and fix it. For 2019-20 each question will be hyperlinked. If you see that a question was answered incorrectly, you will just select the hyperlink for the question and it will jump you back to that particular question and you can change the answer on that page. Okay. So once they’ve had an opportunity to review the information that’s been entered and make any changes that are necessary, then they have to agree to the terms and conditions and acknowledge that they are signing the form. Logging in with the FSA ID is the actual signature but we do want them to acknowledge that they have, you know, verified that everything is correct and that they do want to apply their signature to the FAFSA and submit it. In this particular instance, you’ll see that the option down at the bottom is to submit. And we’re going to go to the next slide and you’ll see the confirmation page. But because this is a roll based solution, each individual person has to log in and provide their signature. So if it’s an independent student, all they have to do is sign, submit, get the confirmation page.But if it’s a dependent student, if the student is the one who completes the FAFSA and provides their signature, once they submit the parent then needs to log in and provide their signature in order for it to actually be submitted and for a confirmation page to display. And the opposite of that is true obviously. If it’s the parent that completed everything and then they are the ones that provided their signature first, then once they submit that signature the student has to log in so that they can sign the form. So for dependent students, both signatures have to be applied before we’ll display the confirmation page. And this shows you what the confirmation page looks like. So you can see that we are acknowledging that you’ve completed what you came here to do. Congratulations. Your FAFSA form was successfully submitted. Then we provide information about what the user can expect to happen next. If they provided an email address in the FAFSA we’ll send them a confirmation page and we let them know that we’ve done that. We let them know how long it will take for the FAFSA to be processed and what they can expect to happen after that. They can print this out if they want to but just like with we do automatically email a version of this confirmation page. We also let them know what their estimated family contribution is. And if they appear to be eligible for a Pell grant, just like with the website we let them know the maximum amount that they may qualify for. And we provide links to other places where they can get additional information. For example, you can see on that third screenshot the second bullet says to learn about tax benefits and other types of aid that may be available to you, that they select that hyperlink. Then they would go to and they would be able to get information about other ways that they might be able to help pay for their education. The confirmation page for 2018-19 does not include all of the same things that the web version includes. One of the things that is available on the web for a dependent student is the ability for the parent to take the information they provided in that student’s FAFSA and use it to prepopulate the parent questions in another child’s FAFSA. That option is not available in the mobile app for 2018-19.It will be available in 2019-20 but only if it’s the parent that submits the FAFSA. And that’s because if the student is the one who’s logged in and the students submits, the student can’t start and application for somebody else because what happens in that app is tied to the FSA ID that was used to log in. If the parent submits the FAFSA then the parent can select that option to transfer their information into another child’s FAFSA and then they would start that other child’s FAFSA and all the parent information would already be there because it was carried over -- including if they used the IRS data retrieval tool. The information that they transferred from the IRS into one FAFSA would be populated into the second FAFSA. Another thing that’s available on the web that is not available in the 2018-19 version of the mobile FAFSA is some students - students who reside in certain states are able to transfer their FAFSA information directly into their state grant’s website. There are a total of seven states that allow for that. And so starting in 2019-20 if one of those states is selected as a student’s state of legal residence, then there will be an option on the confirmation page that allows them to transfer their FAFSA information into the state website. And then another option that is available to some users on the website which is not available in 2018-19 but will be available at least at the very beginning for every user in 2019-20 is the ability to complete a survey. And that is how we, you know, primarily that is how we’re planning to receive feedback about, you know, how people think the overall FAFSA experience was. Okay. So that’s it in a nutshell. I think one thing that I forgot to mention, I mentioned the IRS data retrieval tool but I wanted to just say a little bit more about that. I mentioned that it’s not available in the 2018-19 version of the mobile app. It will be available in the 2019-20 version. The IRS data retrieval tool itself is an IRS tool. So the look and feel of it, how it looks on a mobile device it looks the same way that it does now if you view it through whether you’re on a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a mobile device it looks the same. It’s also going to look the same if you’re accessing it from the mobile app. However, the way that you access it is going to be different. And I don’t mean the way that you’re, you know, authenticating with the IRS or anything like that. I mean what the text looks like in the FAFSA that’s helping you to understand that it’s a good thing to use, how we push people towards it rather than making it optional. It’s still technically optional but got to work harder to choose not to use it. And also because people are choosing their roles when the log into the app if somebody is logged in as the parent and they’re eligible to use the IRS data retrieval tool as the parent, we will allow then to do that. But if they continue through the FAFSA and start answering the student financial questions, we will not allow them to access the IRS data retrieval tool as the student because obviously they’re not the student. We would encourage them to log out and have the student log in themselves so that the student can access the IRS data retrieval tool. So that’s different from the website. On the website we make it if the student is available - sorry. If the student is eligible, the parent is eligible, we provide them with the option and we assume the student is using the student version, the parent is using the parent version because that is appropriate. But in the mobile app, we don’t even make an option that’s not relevant for your role. We don’t even make it available. But we do communicate that we are encouraging you to log out and let the other person come in so that they can use it.So I think I’m glancing quickly at my notes, just making sure that I mentioned all the highlights I wanted to. I see one other thing I forgot to mention. And that was with the options that are available in the hamburger menu. There is a difference there between 2018-19 and 2019-20. And that’s related to that FAFSA summary that I showed you a couple slides ago.You will be able to access the summary at any time throughout the application process from the hamburger menu. And you will see those hyperlinks for the questions as long as you have completed a section. That is similar to how it works on the website. You can currently access that summary from any page in the FAFSA on the website. So you’ll be able to do that starting 2019-20. In the app you’ll just be accessing it from the hamburger menu instead from each individual page. I think that’s everything, (Myesha). So I’m going to turn this back over to you. (Myesha Challenger):Thank you so much, Misty. We have been answering your questions. You all have a lot of great questions. So what I’m going to do very quickly is just highlight and advertise a couple of webinars we have coming up in the next couple of weeks and then actually share out some common questions that have been coming in that Misty hopefully will address just to kind of clarify some of the wonderful information she has shared. We are going to actually have a webinar tomorrow September 6th from 2:00 to 3:00 entitled The New Look and Feel of . If you click on the link provided on this PowerPoint you can register for that webinar. We’re going to actually talk about the responsive web experience and what the new page looks like. Again, it will have the same - it’s just a new look and feel which we’re excited about. And then for in that webinar is the intended audience are students, parents, and college (exit) professionals. And on September 25th Tuesday September 25th from 4:00 to 5:00 PM Eastern Time, the FAFSA process -- filling out the FAFSA form. We’re going to give you some quick guides and tools to help you fill out the FAFSA form because October 1 is the new 2019-2020 FAFSA is right around the corner starting October 1. So again if you would like to register for those upcoming webinars in September and as a side note we will have a couple of other webinars. In October we’re going to do a demo regarding the new FAFSA what the new FAFSA 2019-2020 will look like. Some of you have asked questions about new screenshots and so we’ll touch base with Misty about that. But again we have a lot of great webinars coming up. But tomorrow we have one and later on in September. So please click on the link to register. Also, some of you have asked where you can find this recording after today because Misty gave a lot of great information and some of you may want to go back and hear some of the information. If you go to we have I’ve provided the link on the resource page we have a section for webinars. That’s where you will find the recording of the webinar today which will be there probably in about two weeks. And then on the financial aid toolkit website if you go to our resources page, if you go to the search engine and search for webinars, you’ll be able to find this particular webinar like I said in about two weeks. Misty, I want to ask you a couple of questions because there were a couple of common questions that came up regarding the app. One big question that we got and would love some clarity is can two people be in the app at the same time? For example, if I’m on my phone and you’re on your phone, can both people be in the app at the same time? Misty Parkinson:No. Same thing currently with the website. There’s one active application. You can one person can, you know, access it, go partway, save it, you know, leave and then the other person can come in and they can pick it up at that exact same spot. The app is the same way. If two people are trying to complete it simultaneously, they’re overwriting each other’s data. (Myesha Challenger):They would be. Okay. Misty Parkinson:Overwriting it. Yes. (Myesha Challenger):Okay. Misty Parkinson:Because the last point where a save occurs is the last point where a save occurs. So if somebody has done something else past that, that will all be lost. (Myesha Challenger):Got it. So is there an indicator to the student that you need to log out and have your parent log in? We talked about how you enter into the mobile app. So is there an indicator letting the student know that now a parent needs to log in? Misty Parkinson:So the only time when a parent needs to log in is to sign. So at the very end we do let them know that they will the parent will have to log in in order to provide their signature. Other places where the parent would be encouraged to log in is where I showed the FAFSA parent -- the page that describes who a FAFSA parent is -- and we give the option there for the student to either continue and provide the information or the student to log out so that the parent can log in. And then we do something similar at the point where starting in 2019-20 at the point that we make a determination if the parent is eligible to use the IRS data retrieval tool then we would have the student tell us, you know, do you want to log out so that the person can log in and use the IRS data retrieval tool? Or do you want to continue and manually provide the parent’s information? So and then everything I just said applies if it’s the other way around -- if the parents logged in for the student to, you know, to log in and do their thing. So we are very clear that you have to do that at the end with the signature process. And then we put it out there as an option and people have to actively tell us I don’t want to log out so that the other person can log in here. I want to continue. Or I do want to log out and then the other person can log in right then on the same device or on their own device or they can go to the website if they’re more comfortable using the website. So lots of options. (Myesha Challenger):I hear that there’s something that the audio is cutting out. So hopefully you all caught some of that. There’s also another question about the app timing out. Will the app time out after a certain out or will the app log you out after a certain time?Misty Parkinson:So again this is very similar to the website. What’s happening is not really happening on the app. It’s happening - I don’t know how to explain it without getting all technical, but you know, what you’re doing on a website and what you’re doing on an app it’s being stored behind the scenes in our big mainframe system, right? So there is a rule for timing out. If you are inactive for a certain amount of time, we will alert you that you’ve been inactive and you can continue. If you don’t do something within I believe it’s 15 minutes, then we will automatically log you out. And that’s exactly the same as on the website. (Myesha Challenger):Perfect. So can you say that again how many minutes?Misty Parkinson:Ten minutes we let you know that you’ve been idle and we’re going to log you out if you don’t, you know, reengage. And at 15 minutes we log you out. (Myesha Challenger):And then another common question is that people have been saying they can find the app. So what is the actual name of the app? Misty Parkinson:It’s called the My Student Aid app. And you can easily find it by just searching on FAFSA. I know that’s how I keep - yes. Look for, yes you can just type in FAFSA F-A-F-S-A. I know that that will work on the app store. I’m not an Android user so I can’t tell you for sure it works the same way for Android, but I would assume that it does. (Myesha Challenger):So we are going to try to answer some of the questions or just expand upon some of the questions that some of our colleagues have been asking you all. And so Misty’s going to maybe look at some of those questions. Like I said, the biggest question that we saw - there was actually another question, Misty. How do you go back in the app? On the screenshots you see next but is there a button that will allow you to go back? Sorry. Misty Parkinson:Yes, as long as you have not submitted. Sorry. Yes, you can see it. So the screenshot that I have up now if you look up at the top in that black section up above where it says parent financials, you’ll see that there’s a back. Thank you. I’m just pointing at it. Is that you? (Myesha Challenger):No. Misty Parkinson:It’s not me. Somebody is pointing. Thank you for pointing. So that’s how you navigate backwards. If you just want to go back like a question or two and for 2018-19 basically that’s how you get back. For 2019-20 if you want to go back really far you would want to access that summary like I mentioned and select the link for the particular question so that you can get there faster. All right. So we have one question which is asking will the two features IRS data retrieval tool and renewal information be available for the 2019-20 FAFSA. The answer to that is yes. I think I did describe how the IRS data retrieval tool process will work. I do want to mention just a little bit more about how renewals will work. That’s one area where things are different between the mobile app and the website. just a little bit. Parents will not be able to do a renewal because it is the student’s application. Only the student can access their own data just like on the website, just like all of the system.However, a student could start the renewal and then share their save key with the parent if they want the parent to the continue -- exactly like the website. What’s different is that we have found interestingly enough that there a not insignificant number of people who are eligible to complete a renewal application. And on the website we tell them you’re eligible to complete a renewal application. Do you want to do that? Or do you want to complete a new FAFSA? And people will choose new FAFSA which I think, you know, we wondered why that is. And I do not know the answer. But they’re doing themselves a disservice because we do prepopulate a very large chunk of the data in sections one, some of section two, and section three. We believe that if somebody is eligible to prepopulate their information, that they should do that. And so what’s different between the website and the mobile app is that in the mobile app, if we determine that you are renewal eligible, we’re going to just take your residency application and we’re just going to prefill the information. We’re not going to make it a choice for you.But again, you have to be logged in as a student in order for that to happen. If you’re logged in as the parent, then you’re not eligible to prefill the application because it’s not considered to be your application, your information. So you would be completing it as (unintelligible) FAFSA from scratch. Maybe more than you wanted to know but that’s what you get from me. Okay. So I’m going to look for some other questions. Let’s see. In the current screenshot there are only next processes are - okay. I already covered that with the back. I’m not as technologically savvy here as others. Did that one.Okay. Do students submit their income information before or after their parent’s income information? The order of the questions is pretty much the same as the website. So first is the student demographic information. Second is school information. Third is where we determine dependency status. If the student is dependent, they provide their basic information about their parent and then the parent’s financial information and then last is the student information. And I know there are a lot of people who don’t understand why that is, because it does seem very disjointed to jump from student information to parent information and then to student information. There is a very good reason for it. It is actually one of the ways that we have made the application as simple as we can. And that is because some students based on how their parents answer the parent financial questions may be eligible to skip all of section six, which is all of the student financial information. If we do not collect the information from the parents first, we don’t know if they’re eligible to skip or not.If we lump all of the student information together and ask that first, then we are potentially having people answer questions that are just not necessary which then makes it a much longer form and people are - then we’re making it harder for people and that just doesn’t have to be that way. You know, conversely we can’t ask the parent questions first because we have to first of all figure out is the student even required to provide parent information and who is the student, by the way. So it is broken down the way it is broken down for a reason. I know for somebody who doesn’t live and breathe it like I do, it does seem a little weird and I understand that it can be confusing. And we have explored, you know, ways that we might be able to change that. But at this time the order is the same as what’s on the web. Okay. Looking for some other questions to answer. Let’s see. Will they have access to download their SAR on the app? So for 2018-19 it is the basic FAFSA. We’re referring to it as a beta version because it doesn’t include all of the functionality of the website.And I mentioned, you know, generally speaking I mentioned the things that will be there in 2019-20 that are not there in 2018-19. It’s the IRS data retrieval tool. It’s renewals. It’s the hyperlinks and that summary report. It’s the things on the confirmation page. For 2019-20 the FAFSA itself will be much more robust. It will only be available in English. That is a difference that will remain for 2019-20 between the mobile app and the website. And when we launch it in October it will still be limited to the FAFSA itself -- original FAFSAs and renewal FAFSAs. It does not include viewing the SAR. It does not include making corrections. However, we are looking at adding some additional functionality at some point after we launch the 2019-20 FAFSA. I’m not going to commit to a timeframe but I would say it won’t be a month later. But it hopefully won’t be a year later. It will be, you know, sometime after launch. And what we’re expecting to do at that point is making the student aid report available within the mobile app and also allowing for limited corrections. We’re defining limited as adding school codes, removing school codes, changing the order of schools. Any other corrections would need to be done on the website. And then we will continue to improve this as time goes by. So you will see those things added, those additional functions added, you know, as we go on. But one thing that I wanted to point out is that, you know, this is intended to be a very well-rounded app and we have to start somewhere. Where we’re staring is with the FAFSA. Where we plan to make improvements in the near term is with the FAFSA. But we also want to add additional functionality, more things related to federal student aid but less focused on the FAFSA.And so you will continue to see some FAFSA improvements but you also will start to see at some point additional features that students and parents will be able to use that will have them using the mobile app on a more regular basis. Because as we know, the FAFSA is primarily a once a year thing. We want people to be using the app more than that. So we’re looking for other features that we’ll be able to include. (Myesha Challenger):And Misty just to confirm -- I’m sure you said it -- the IRS (DRT) tool will be available for the 19-20…((Crosstalk))Misty Parkinson:Nineteen twenty, correct. (Myesha Challenger):Correct. I think we have time for one more question. Misty Parkinson:Okay. So this question is so to be clear, a student cannot enter the mobile app as a student and complete parent income info on behalf of their parents. That’s incorrect. A student can complete the entire application. The parent would need to sign. A parent could complete the entire application. The student would need to sign. The student and parent could complete it together while they’re together or while they’re apart. So who’s answering the questions we don’t have any restrictions on who’s answering the questions. The restrictions are a parent is the only person who can use the IRS data retrieval tool for the parent. A student is the only person who can use the IRS data retrieval tool as a student. A student is the only person who can start a renewal application. And people have to sign under the appropriate roles. Otherwise, entering the information it can be done under any role. (Myesha Challenger):Got it. Well, Misty, that was a lot of good information. There were tons of questions and we’re hoping that we were able to answer most of them. I think some people’s concern or at least one clarity as who can fill out the mobile app and how you go in and being in it simultaneously. So I think there are some really great takeaways from here. What I would really want everyone to understand and as I mentioned, we will be having a webinar tomorrow and then this recording will be available on the financial aid toolkit under the search engine and then at under resources for webinars. So again, you all had some great questions. We’re excited about the mobile app. And we appreciate Misty taking the time out to share out how it will look, providing us with some wonderful screenshots. And so with that, we are going to conclude today’s recording. Please stay on for a brief survey that will come up once we conclude the webinar today. But Misty, thank you so much for your time and giving us some great resources and we appreciate you all joining our webinar today. Have a good day everyone. END ................
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