University of Wyoming Outreach School
Division of Outreach Credit Programs (OCP)
University Plan 4, 2015-2021
Mission and Description
The mission of the Outreach School (OS) is to extend the University of Wyoming to
our state and the world, and bring the world to Wyoming. The Division of Outreach
Credit Programs (OCP) has a significant role in advancing this mission, for it
supports the delivery of a broad portfolio of UW academic degrees and certificates.
OCP supports program and course delivery through three basic functions: One,
front line service support informed by a knowledge of distance delivery and nontraditional distance learners; Two, administrative logistical support informed by the
needs of faculty and academic administration; Three, instructional design support
informed by the knowledge of distance educational principles and advocacy for the
needs of distance teachers and learners.
Our learners are a combination of audiences. Approximately 50% of our students
are geographically-isolated learners beyond the Laramie campus, who require
distance delivery to free them from the confines of space and time. The other 50% of
students enrolled are students in Laramie campus-based programs who increasingly
prefer distance delivery in order to better manage their traditional campus
experience and learn in ways consistent with their technology-oriented social
lifestyle.
The division collaborates intensely with the highly visible University of WyomingCasper satellite campus program (UWC), where many of its faculty teach in distance
programs, as well as the Division of Outreach Technology Services (OTS), which
provides technology support for distance delivery [i.e., audiobridge, videobridge,
and wireless access services]. Collaboration with the OS Regional Centers is
absolutely crucial in assuring faculty and student support at the distance learning
“endpoints” throughout Wyoming. Many of OCP’s administrative logistics and frontline service support functions are extended and enhanced through collaboration
with these regional offices, administered through the OS Dean’s office.
Recent developments in OS organizational structure present further opportunities
for collaboration. The addition of the International Programs Office (IPO) presents
the possibility of extending internationalized learning opportunities for more placebound non-traditional distance learners, and enhancing study abroad opportunities
for the seemingly less “tethered” traditional Laramie campus-based learners.
Beyond the OS, collaborations have grown in intensity and number with the Division
of Student Affairs (SA), the Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning (ECTL), and
the Division of Information Technology (IT).
The divisional mission to provide multidimensional support for the delivery of
academic credit programs is based on a foundational collaboration with the
University’s academic colleges, schools, and departments. OCP supports delivery of
distance programs, and the academic units and their faculties retain the
prerogatives regarding what is taught, who teaches it, and how. Assessment of
academic performance of the programs and faculty and its students is province of
these units, their administration, and their faculties. However, OCP has an active
assessment program related to delivery support for students and faculty, and
results of the assessments are monitored carefully by the division leadership, as
well as an OS associate dean [in Casper but administrative housed in the OS dean’s
office] who acts as the school’s assessment officer. Collaborations with academic
units are ultimately managed by the OCP division head and OS associate dean,
working in tandem with the OS dean.
Appendix A will include links to relevant information, including a list of academic
programs and certificates [including a projection of future degrees and certificates
to be developed], a description of the OCP student support strategy [long referred to
as “student achievement services], fast facts about OCP students, most recent faculty
and student satisfaction survey results, enrollment growth data, program growth
data, staffing declines and projections, a summary of divisional achievements in the
most recent year, and a listing of research, faculty development, and publication
activities of divisional faculty and staff. Professional association membership
activities and inter-institutional collaborations will also be noted.
SWOT Analysis
This analytical method, developed by the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960’s
and 70’s, is intended to promote internal planning that is consistent with the
demands of an organization’s external environment. We can recognize and plan for,
to some extent, our internal strengths and weaknesses, but the opportunities and
threats are often harder to see, and they are prone to change. Particularly in the
field of distance and continuing education, opportunities and threats are dynamic in
nature, and so organizational flexibility in goals is needed to adapt to rapidly
developing opportunities and threats in the external environment. In this initial
draft, goals are both mentioned with the SWOT analysis and summarized briefly in a
concluding section of the plan.
Strengths
The most notable strengths include the high satisfaction that faculty and students
have reported over the past five years with the instructional design, administrative,
and front-line service assistance offered by OCP staff and faculty instructional
designers. Over the past five years, students and faculty report at an average of
approximately 85% as “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with OCP services [10% of the
same sample groups on average report themselves as “not applicable”]. Another
strength is the strong research and development component to OCP operations.
Instigated by the TIE (Technology Instructional Enhancements) project, faculty-led
professional development networks operate, workshops and conferences are
offered, such as the Technology Bootcamp and the eVolution Conferences, with
leading contributions coming from OCP faculty instructional designers and staff.
Projects such as OSI (online supplemental instruction). A third but increasingly
important strength of OCP is its combination of academic advising, communitybased support from OS regional centers, and services provided in partnership with
the Division of Student Affairs that has long been referred to as “student
achievement services”. Gone are the days when most considered offering degree
opportunities sufficient. Today, concerns about retention and value require that we
provide academic and other supports that anticipate student needs relating to
retention and completion. OCP must set goals in the areas of
faculty/administrative support, such as acquisition of program development,
instructional design, and program marketing assistance, while increasing and
enhancing collaborations with the SA division to further support non-traditional
distance learners with their retention and completion interests.
Weaknesses
Perhaps one of the foundational principles of OCP, alluded to earlier, that has led to
the steady growth of the number of programs and enrollments generated through
the division is the respect for academic prerogatives, where academic partners
determine who teaches, what is taught, and how their students learn. This has
placed the division in a weaker position of distance education and distance student
advocacy than is preferable. A divisional goal that could strengthen our advocacy
position is to develop a student success metrics agenda that can include
measurements such as course completion rates, reasons for withdrawal, and timeto-degree measurements that reflect the realities of how nontraditional students
live and learn. Special attention should be placed on collaborations with the SA
division not only on development and monitoring of metrics, but on interventions
that also recognize advocacy for students from diverse backgrounds and differing
disabilities, who as distance learners, deal with a “double isolation” of geography
and an isolation due to an ability/language/culture/ethnic difference.
A grave weakness of the division is the slow but steady loss of staffing over the past
seven years, as the division has lost a marketing director, a technologist-reporting
analyst, an accounting staffer, and a student affairs liaison. OCP leadership believes
that these staffing reductions could best be addressed with a goal to create a
staffing plan [in consultation with the OS dean]that is sufficiently dynamic to allow
for addressing fast-developing trends in distance education organizational practice
but includes proposals for investments in marketing capacity, instructional design
[including instructional design capacity focusing on pedagogy and service to
isolated groups] and program development. Long-term planning is essential with
the pending retirements of the OCP manager and Coordinator of Online UW, where
the consequences on operations from these departures on a lightly-staffed, fastpaced administrative environment are extremely difficult to predict.
Opportunities
First and foremost among the opportunities presented to the division is that the
university as a whole has a very strong planning culture. Plan after plan has been
written, and with each iteration, administration checks progress on goals and helps
where it can to close gaps. OCP leadership, accordingly, will be bold in some of its
goal setting, considering the “moon shot” metaphor that calls forth the famous
speech in the early 1960’s by President Kennedy, where he predicted that by the
end of the decade, the US would send a man to the moon and return him safely to
the Earth, an engineering feat that was considered at best, a stretch of engineering
capabilities that was met through massive government investments in staffing,
administrative infrastructure, and research and development. A second area of
opportunity is presented by the unprecedented change in the LMS, or Learning
Management System. Since the inception of online learning in the 1990s, the
university has used one LMS, and it has been maintained, administered, and
troubleshooted by the OS. The new LMS, which will be instituted by the Fall of
2014, presents a incalculable number of opportunities to leverage technology for
learning at-a-distance, and additional staffing beyond the expected requests may be
called for to take advantage of the new LMS’s potential, to include requests not only
for instructional designer faculty, but possibly also for staff technologists who could
connect the world of social media with the more structured world of traditional
functional pathways of the LMS. A third area of opportunity comes from the steady
interest from a modest number of academic partners in new programs.
Administrative leadership from the College of Business, Haub School for the
Environment, the Department of Political Science, the College of Education, and the
School of Pharmacy have all informed OCP that they are planning new programs
with significant appeal. A critical goal of the division will therefore be to focus on
supporting and encouraging departments with new program ideas with money and
proposal coaching, and sustaining launched proposals with faculty positions,
incentive funding, and increases in DE support staffing. Another goal should spring
forth from particular strengths of the division in the areas of research and
development and relationships with academic partners, and that is capitalizing on
opportunities to innovate in deliveries and programmatic models. Group
designed majors, competency-based education, and continued technological and
pedagogical experimentation, in examples ranging from mobile device usage to a
reimagining of correspondence study through the implementation of learning
contracts and explore innovations and experimentations beyond the tools of the
past and near-term future where opportunities might not be foreseeable at this
time. An innovation opportunity has been presented to the OS by its merger with
the International Programs Office (IPO). An additional goal of the division should be
collaborations with the IPO on extending and enhancing international
opportunities for both traditional and nontraditional students at a distance,
who are more times less mobile and tethered to family and work commitments than
Laramie and Casper campus-based traditional learners.
Threats
…One of the most serious threats is the static levels of support for public
education. University leaders such as former A&S Dean Oliver Walter have
frequently noted that although the state government coffers have run surpluses,
increases in the funding of the University’s block grant have not occurred. This not
only restricts the capacity of UW to grow distance programs and courses supported
its faculty and staff, but the funding environment also dampens faculty and staff
morale, which could lead to faculty and staff losses, and in turn, a reduction in
student enrollment and administrative, faculty, staff, and student satisfaction. The
financial problem is particularly acute within the College of Arts & Sciences, where
a ~ $750,000 budget deficit has eliminated interest in new programs and
encouraged, counterintuitively, calls to eliminate some popular programs and
reduce course offerings. Goals or tactics that might address this threat include
aggressive resource requests of the “moon shot” variety, to highlight faculty/staff
capacity issues [perhaps stemming from university statewide “strategic
partnerships” efforts], and a continued effort, in collaboration with the OS dean’s
office staff, to consider modifications to the new outreach revenue model that might
include percentage share alterations, tuition policy changes, and stabilizations of
departmental management through section one money outreach base budgets. A
joint OS-OCP-UWC fiscal communications and analysis subcommittee, chaired by the
OS dean or her designate, could possibly be helpful. Another threat is the significant
churning in higher education of organizational models, triggered by reduced public
support for higher education and increased costs to students, technologicallydelivered content possibilities that changes faculty roles, and a shift in the
perception of policymakers and citizens that tuition paid must now result in degrees
that result directly in jobs. The organizational shift, often called “unbundling”,
allows for combinations of services that can leave out key functions, or eliminate
seeming “redundancies” that are in reality core to the effective functioning of
distance learning programs. Just as veteran’s services offices deal with financial aid
issues, but are separate from financial aid office operations, there are IT offices,
student service, and teaching/learning centers that perform similar, yet different
technology and instructional design functions from those found in distance
education units. The key difference in distance education units, is similar to the
difference in veteran’s services approaches, in that there is a special advocacy
function in distance learning offices that is easy to overlook, and that is the advocacy
for non-traditional learners who are geographically isolated from a campus. This
advocacy requires, just as the case of veterans and disabled students, subtle
logicstical differences in the ways students are served. A foundational goal of the
division must be to retain a capacity as well as an agenda to act affirmatively in and
advocate for the interests of non-traditional learners at-a-distance.
Summary of Divisional Goals
From “Strengths”:
*Assess needs for additional staffing, consistent with staffing at commonlyrecognized comparator institutions and the expectations of the university for the
division. Program development, instructional design [including a position
emphasizing accessibility], and marketing assistance within the division are all
strong possibilities.
*Continuously explore collaborations with the Division of Student Affairs and the
Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning.
From “Weaknesses”:
*Develop a student success metrics agenda.
*Collaborations with the Division of Student Affairs on services and internventions
that can promote student achievement/success.
*From assessments regarding additional staffing needs, develop a staffing plan for
marketing capacity, instructional design, and program development, keeping in
mind staffing patterns at comparator institutions.
From “Opportunities”:
*Develop a clear agenda on new program development, and add agendas for existing
program revision and course development incentives. Consider the strategic
partnerships agenda in fashioning a divisional agenda-setting effort.
*Develop an innovation agenda that includes collaborative [with Academic Affairs or
with academic partners] examinations of learner-centered models such as
Compentency-based Education, Group-designed Majors, and Prior Learning
Assessment, all of which have been considered unlikely or unwelcome measures
before.
*With staffing plans involving instructional design capacity, consider the needs for
technologists who can assist in unlocking the potential of the new LMS.
From “Threats”:
*Examine staffing levels at comparator institutions to inform aggressive staffing
plans. Colorado State, Boise State, Utah State, and Oregon State are all public Land
Grant or service institutions with a distance education emphasis.
*Consider modifications to the outreach financial system, where each significant
change represents a “Moon Shot” in terms of administrative organization.
*Look at a fiscal communications subcommittee possibility that might extend from
an OS advisory board.
*Lead in collaboration with academic partners in new tuition policies that would
include capacity building and incentives for academic departments.
*Continuously find ways to preserve identity as an advocate for geographicallyisolated nontraditional learners at-a-distance.
---“sandbox” of deleted content follows--A significant threat nation and worldwide is the confusion between service/access
motivations for distance learning and revenue growth motivations. A recent article
in the academic journal Creative Education cited the tendency for university
governance leaders to consider distance education units as “cash cows” that can
yield revenue sufficient to make up sizeable revenue shortfalls. Universities such as
Missouri and Florida have made sizeable multimillion dollar investments in distance
education programs and partnered with for-profit firms in some cases, with the
hopes of generating quick revenue increases. Concerns from distance education
leaders are that Land Grant mission-related educational access is costly, and thus
top leadership could set goals that make Land Grant-related service to underserved
audiences of teachers, agricultural workers, and community-based social service
professionals difficult.