The College of Education & Human Ecology has recently increased its efforts to build capacity to support distance education programming. To this end, the Learning Support area was charged with convening a team of representatives from College units that currently provide student services to examine our current ability to serve current and future fully online students. The first phase of this investigation was to undergo a self-study of how well our fully online students would be able to access the student services currently provided. In this month’s Learning Support News, we focus on the Briefing: A report of some general first impressions from the self-study.
Participants
Seven EHE units were represented in the self-study. Those were our three academic departments, Educational Studies, Human Sciences, and Teaching & Learning and the Offices of Equity, Diversity & Global Engagement, Information Technology, Undergraduate Education–Career Development, and Undergraduate Recruitment. One representative from each unit was asked to conduct the self-study of their unit.
Data Collection
For purposes of this study, “fully online student” refers to students enrolled in programs such as the Master of Learning Technologies who have been promised the ability to complete their degree without a single visit to the OSU campus. Participants were asked to use the OLC Quality Scorecard for Online Student Support (Online Learning Consortium, 2018), to rate how accessible their unit’s services are (or would be) to fully online students at EHE. The Online Student Services Scorecard was designed with a “student lifecycle” approach—examining services in 11 focus areas:
- Admissions
- Financial Aid
- Pre-enrollment Advising
- Veterans Services
- Career Counseling
- Orientation
- Post-enrollment services
- Library
- Students with Disabilities Services
- Graduate Student Services
The Scorecard is presented in an analytic rubric with ratings from 0 to 2 on specific services categorized by the focused areas. Ratings were coded as: 0 – Limited or No Service; 1 – Service is Available; and 2 – Service is Exemplary with each rating criteria detailed for each specific service (Example: For “Admissions – Unit/department provides onboarding service support for online students” the criterion for a rating of 2 is: “The unit/department has a web-based software program which walks the student through the application, admission, and enrollment processes step-by-step and provides the students notification as to which items are required next.” The criterion for a rating of 0 is: “The information for the application, admissions, and enrollment processes are provided on the website; however, the students must search those answers across multiple web pages for each of the different departments.”)
Preliminary Findings: Some General Impressions
Keeping in mind that Ohio State Online and other units at the University level provide (or are preparing to provide) many services to our fully online students, this self-study focused on the services that EHE currently provides (or would need to provide) to that population. Below are some general impressions from the in-progress analysis of the self-study data.
- There is considerable diversity across EHE units and for undergraduate versus graduate student services. For example:
- Some units report offering orientation for fully online students; some rely on OSU Central to orient certain student populations
- The OSU Graduate School owns the admissions process for graduate students and (expectedly) has some differences from the Undergraduate process, which is largely owned by the general OSU Admissions Office. EHE units report linking students to the respective websites/resources (which is also expected).
- We may need to clarify where EHE services end and OSU Central services begin (or should begin). This is especially true for admissions services, orientation, and 24-hour tech support for certain tools (based on if the tools are administered by EHE or OSU IT).
- Graduate student support may have less capacity for units who currently serve few (or no) fully online students.
- EHE units provided NO Scorecard rating for the category of Pre-enrollment Advising, but some services may fall under EHE purview, for example:
- Advising for students to set academic goals
- Enrollment planning
- For services left to individual academic programs or program faculty, it is unclear on how well fully online students’ needs would be met, for example:
- Specific academic program advising
- Participation in student life programs, student organizations, & personal development opportunities
- Tutoring (currently, EHE doesn’t provide traditional tutoring services
Moving Forward
So what’s next? A more detailed preliminary report will be shared with college leadership to help inform future planning–both within the college and in conjunction with broader university efforts for fully online student services. Look out for more on the “leveling up” of our continued commitment to excellence at EHE! Please direct any questions you may have to Dr. Tracey Stuckey, Director, Learning Support.