A. Building Joan's LEAP

• In her early schooldays, Joan started to build her Learning Electronic Achievement Portfolio (LEAP).

• At first, her father entered the important facts about her academic and other accomplishments into the computer. Before they bought a home computer, they used the one in their local public library.

• As she grew older, Joan took over responsibility for entering the data herself. .

• Her electronic portfolio grew as the years passed by: courses, grades, athletic achievements, hobbies, special honors, schools attended etc.

• Her LEAP was created using special tools developed to work on the Worldwide Web.

• Her LEAP was stored at a Certified LEAP Repository, one chosen by her father because it met LEAP Certification Standards regarding format, security, privacy etc.

• At the beginning, she had to enter all of her courses and grades by hand. When she entered high school, however, she was pleasantly surprised to find that her school district had adopted EDI standards, and she could automatically upload her academic transcript into her LEAP.

• The picture improved even further in her high school junior year, because her school district decided to adopt LEAP standards, allowing her just to automatically maintain a link to her high school transcript, without having to upload the information itself.

• Joan's parents and Joan decided to enroll in an automatic counseling program offered by a number of LEAP Enabled universities, particularly by the local university, the University of Balonia.

• In this program, twice a year UB (for a small fee, part of which went to the Certified Repository) would automatically email a report to Joan's parents advising them as to what courses Joan should take to ensure eligibility for admission to UB when she eventually graduated from high school.

• UB was able to offer this program by automatically scanning (with parental permission) Joan's LEAP as it progressed and comparing it against its own requirements etc.

• These reports started coming when Joan was in 6th grade because decisions made at an early stage can affect eligibility years later.

A. LEAPing the Admissions Barrier

• For Joan, applying to college was a snap. The key was her LEAP that had been assembled over the years.

• To apply to any school that was LEAP Enabled, all she had to do was to connect via the Web to that school's on-line admissions system, and at the click of a button all the relevant data from her LEAP was transferred to the electronic admissions application, Indeed, some schools were prepared to accept the LEAP itself as the admission application; others required additional information as part of their on-line admissions process.

• Some schools, in fact, did not even bother to transfer the relevant portions of Joan's LEAP into their institutional admissions database, but were set up to reference her LEAP (stored in the Certified LEAP Repository) electronically every time the data was needed during the evaluation process.

• Joan's payment for applying for admission to each LEAP Enabled school was handled across the Web, using electronic cash. Unknown to Joan, part of each payment went to the Certified Repository as partial payment for its services.

• In her junior high school year, Joan had notified her repository that she and her parents consented to participate in the LEAP Anonymous Search Program (LEAPASP) .

• As a LEAPASP participant, Joan's LEAP could be anonymously searched by LEAP Enabled Schools interested in seeking pre-qualified applicants who were eligible for early acceptance. LEAP Enabled Schools paid the Repository for access to its data.

• Anonymous searching, Joan was told, meant that the only data that was searchable was those portions of her LEAP that had been stripped of personal identifying information - that is, the searching was done on qualifications and other pertinent data only.

• Through this process, the University of Sapientia automatically identified Joan as a terrific student to whom they would like to offer admission. They did not know it was Joan in person, but identified her by means of a unique identifier (LEAP ID) assigned by the Repository. US in turn electronically signaled the Certified Repository of their decision using the LEAP ID. The Repository in turn notified Joan that US would accept Joan automatically were she to notify them electronically within a specified time period using the LEAP ID.

• Once Joan was accepted for admission at UB (her school of choice), she realized that she needed to apply for financial aid and scholarships.

• Financial Aid was easy. By the time Joan applied to college, the Department of Education had recognized the value of LEAP, and had foregone its old proprietary approach to on-line financial aid application. So for Joan to submit a FAFSA to the Department of Education was as easy as electronically combining the relevant portion of her LEAP with supplementary financial data supplied by her parents. Her parents were able to do all of this electronically with a Web application provided by the Certified Repository and that met Department of Education standards.

• Joan was also surprised when one day she received notification from the Giveaway Foundation shat she was eligible for one of their scholarships and that all she had to do to receive the scholarship was to accept by electronically replying using a uniquely assigned LEAP Scholarship ID. This was another benefit of the LEAP Anonymous Search Program, in which scholarship granting agencies searched for eligible potential students just like schools searched anonymously for eligible applicants. Over the following weeks, Joan received several such notifications form different agencies.

• Joan was in her senior year and was ready to apply for a job for after her graduation.

• Throughout her academic career at UB, the University had regularly updated Joan's LEAP with her transcript information, including honors and awards. Joan herself had regularly added other pertinent information. UB also offered another electronic service: automatic electronic authentication of Joan's LEAP data whenever Joan gave her consent. This was called the LEAP Authentication Service. Of course, UB charged a fee for such a service, part of which went to the Certification Repository.

• Applying to potential employers through the UB Careers Center was as easy as linking them to her LEAP. Many employers had signed on to the LEAP ResumŽ Program. Participants in this program accepted electronic employment applications by linking the employer to pertinent information from Joan's LEAP - with her electronic consent. This made applicant selection and tracking much easier and cost effective for such employers.

• The LEAP Anonymous Search Program was, with Joan's consent, also used by potential employers searching for applicants. Joan had electronically specified the kinds of corporations that were of interest to her, including geographic locations. She was pleasantly surprised to receive electronic notification one day that a job was waiting for her at Mystique Business International (MBI) - again, all she had to do was to accept electronically using the LEAP ID that had been automatically assigned to the transaction.

• Three years later, Joan decided to take a leave of absence from MBI to pursue her MBA.

• In the intervening years, Joan had taken a number of courses using distance learning capabilities offered from a number of different schools, all of whom had participated in the LEAP programs. These schools had consistently transferred transcript data to Joan's LEAP, and participated in the LEAP Authentication Service just like UB.

• You guessed it: applying for admission to business school was just as easy as original admission to UB. LEAP made it work.

• Etc., etc.