How this practice supports access: eArmyU is a groundbreaking initiative that allows eligible servicemembers enlisted in the U.S. Army unprecedented access to all of the tools necessary to pursue higher education, regardless of location or time of day. Rotations, deployments, and nontraditional work hours have often limited the educational opportunities for this population. eArmyU enables soldiers to access a college education anytime, anywhere via the www.eArmyU.com portal. Through a seamless online integration, eArmyU helps Soldiers overcome many of the barriers they have faced in the traditional classroom-based environment. Soldiers can choose from more than 146 academic programs and nearly 1,500 courses offered online by 29 participating institutions, with established articulation agreements allowing credits to transfer among participating institutions. The eArmyU portal integrates a wide array of academic and administrative functions, including an interactive term schedule and annual catalogue, online registration utilizing tuition assistance or self-payment options, online tutoring and digital library services, links to campus points of contact and courses, student advising and online recognition programs, and a 24/7 Helpdesk. To minimize obstacles to access, eArmyU offers comprehensive student outreach, asynchronous learning platforms, online study tools, and technology support services, which are outlined below. STUDENT OUTREACH: Operation ViCTORY Operation Virtual Counselor Transforms Online Resources for You (ViCTORY) is eArmyU's comprehensive student support initiative that utilizes a comprehensive web of student support in a robust, proactive, end-to-end process. The goal of Operation ViCTORY is to monitor soldiers' learning progress through interventions that promote student success. This innovative student-success initiative involves two parallel tracks: Operation Early Academic Guidance for Learning Excellence (EAGLE) which assists soldiers who are behind pace in a course or in their program and operation Student Online Achievement Recognized (SOAR) which recognizes the successful--on pace--soldier. A special feature of Operation SOAR is a pictorial acknowledgement on the eArmyU portal of those soldiers who have risen to the challenge of balancing education and career goals. Operation EAGLE provides intervention during the soldier's academic journey. Operation SOAR parallels EAGLE to provide positive reinforcement at major milestones throughout the journey. Both proactive actions ensure that soldiers receive support and encouragement throughout their eArmyU experience. Operations Helping to Assist with Knowledge-Support (HAWKS) and With Information and Guidance to Soar (WINGS) initiate Program Mentor support at the onset of the academic journey and reach out proactively and establish a personal mentoring relationship to remind soldiers of key policies, and to resolve any issues they may have in getting started in eArmyU. If soldiers fail to enroll in a course in a timely manner, Operation HAWKS is energized. Program Mentors send an email at the 30, 60, 90 and 120-day mark to remind soldiers of program requirements and continue to keep a sharp eye out to track Soldiers and assist or motivate them toward continuing their academic progress, thereby maximizing success building opportunities. To further support learning success, soldiers are greeted when they enroll or complete their first course. They are provided "WINGS" to soar successfully! They are sent a congratulatory email and are advised regarding their next course enrollment or degree progress. For a detailed description of this initiative, please refer to the eArmyU Operation ViCTORY effective practice listed under the Learning Effectiveness pillar at http://www.sloan-c.org/effective/details3.asp?LE_ID=52. ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING: Offline Learning Application eArmyU minimizes access barriers to accessibility by utilizing an asynchronous Offline Learning Application (OLA) that permits Soldiers to download course material, announcements, and threaded discussions from the portal, and to complete assignments offline. A custom-developed application, OLA enables eArmyU students to upload their work and download any new contents at the next login--all with a few keystrokes. Approximately 70 percent of eArmyU students are able to access their courses using OLA. OLA enhances Soldiers' ability to learn anytime anywhere, especially in deployed locations where internet access is limited. STUDY TOOLS: GALILEO and SMARTHINKING eArmyU provides soldiers unlimited access to numerous online study tools. SMARTHINKING.com provides live, online, 24/7 tutoring and academic support that permits complex tutoring sessions from any internet connection for core courses such as mathematics, statistics, calculus, chemistry, economics, accounting, and Spanish. In addition, SMARTHINKING's Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers academic assistance in writing for all subjects, including English for speakers of other languages; business and technical writing; academic and creative writing; pre-writing and brainstorming; and grammar research tools. GALILEO is an award-winning digital library founded in 1995 by the University System of Georgia that provides eArmyU students with access to over 2,000 online journals, publications, full-text resources, and shipments of materials on a direct or intra-library loan basis. Soldiers also have access to online resources assembled by the instructor, resources placed in the virtual classroom, links to a wide-range of periodicals and a virtual collection of digitized books, images, manuscripts and other electronic media. HELPDESK: CRM eArmyU's one-stop 24/7 Helpdesk further facilitates Soldier's access to their education by providing a range of technical and administrative support. The backbone of the Helpdesk is an innovative, patented customer-relationship-management (CRM) tool. The CRM is a web-based application that provides centralized management of eArmyU's student support network. The CRM allows a soldier to generate a case either directly through the eArmyU portal or by calling the centralized Helpdesk center. Once a case is created, a tracking number is generated. Soldiers can log into the eArmyU portal at any time to view the status of their open cases or refer to prior cases. Incoming cases are ranked according to a tiered approach, allowing helpdesk personnel to resolve or escalate issues to appropriate eArmyU personnel. An automated email is generated at each escalation point, whether it is to a Program Mentor in Killeen, TX, a college administrator in Albany, NY, an ACES Counselor at Fort Lewis, WA, or a hardware/software support technician in Heidelberg, Germany. All eArmyU partners can view the status of any CRM case in real time and provide input, regardless of which partner owns the case. When the case is closed, the Soldier receives an email with the resolution and can view the full case history in the portal. This process allows cases to be resolved quickly and in a coordinated way. It also allows program management to use case data to track soldier support against established service-level agreements, and to perform root-cause analysis if a spike for a particular type of issue should occur. Efficiency gains created by the CRM tool have enabled eArmyU to serve a growing number of soldiers while holding support costs relatively constant. The average time to close a case has dropped from 11 business days to 1.2 business days. To date, more than 200,000 CRM cases have been resolved, with high levels of student satisfaction reported in customer surveys.