Abstract
This case study describes an evaluation of the Office of Federal Student Aid’s (FSA’s) Corrections on the Web (COTW) process to determine how well it meets users’ needs and to what extent it is usable by its intended audiences. This process is invoked when submittals of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) are detected to contain errors or omissions. The applicant receives a notice by mail or email and then must log in to the FAFSA Web site, locate and understand the error messages, and make new entries to correct the problem(s). To assess the COTW process, we recruited actual FAFSA filers whose applications had been flagged and observed them in our usability lab as they attempted to correct their online application. As a result, we delineated numerous design improvements for the COTW site involving messaging, form design, and workflow. Having participants approach the test session from the perspective of their own personal situation and entering actual data into the live FAFSA Web site provided useful insights which might otherwise not have been possible had a more traditional methodology been used in which representative users are given contrived tasks based on stakeholder objectives, use cases, and heuristic analyses.
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