September 15, 2015 Minutes
Those in attendance: Hoyet Hemphill, Julie O’Brien, Kristi Mindrup, Lea Monahan,
Lloyd Kilmer, David Towers, Sue Martinelli-Fernadez, Roger Runquist
 Introduction of new member and committee make-up
o David Towers (CITR) and Sue Martinelli-Fernandez (CAS) have been
added to the Distance group. Additionally, some members were
removed based on retirements, leaving the university, or a desire to
no longer be part of the group.
o Hoyet Hemphill agreed to serve as a co-chair on the committee.
 Steering Team Request #1: “Tips” about student persistence and completion
for the new web site.
o The team provided a variety of tips:
 Interaction among online students help build the learning
community. This can be done by providing good, thoughtprovoking responses with guidelines for appropriate online
etiquette. Also, repetition is key and students should be
prompted to interact with one another often. Allow students to
respond to each other, but require in-depth responses, not just
superficial agreement or social acknowledgement.
 Avoid cognitive overload by “chunking” content into
manageable sizes. It may be helpful to ask those outside of
your discipline to see if pages of content seem reasonable.
 Frequently monitor participation and follow-up with students
if they haven’t made their online presence known in some time.
 Consider adding an instructor question area for students
where they can ask questions. Ask if it is “okay” to share
submitted questions with the rest of the group.
 Strive to make students feel connect to the University and each
other. Consider inviting distance students to events happening
in student organizations and the department.
 Layout expectations for deadlines and time management. Make
these readily accessible.
 Be mindful of the age, outside commitments, and technology
skills of the of individual students.
 Steering Team Request #2: Provide a list of events and actions that are
happening across campus the HLC Persistence and Completion group may be
unaware of.
o Student Nursing Association invites online students to attend oncampus meetings and activities. Nursing’s Honor Society also gets
them involved.
o In Nursing, students are invited to faculty meetings and can appoint
representatives to attend.
o CITR has developed an online orientation for students new to Western
Online.
o WIU has an Americans with Disabilities Act group who helps with
accessibility issues that the online offerings may have
o Arts and Sciences have an Essential Skills Committee that works with
best practices over a 6-week period to help faculty better understand
how to help students.
 Survey (as time permits)
o The survey was reviewed again and some changes were suggested by
David Towers. He has implemented the changes mentioned and those
items are quoted below:
For convenience, here's the preview link again:
https://az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/preview/SV_9EnM0MfVz58ED3v
Changes (not that ones marked ** are questions about further changes that may need
to be made):
Q3 now asks for age with a validated textbox. To help with validation, there is a
"please enter the number using digits" addendum to the question
Q8 now allows multiple selection for multiple race/ethnicities, and "more than two
races" has been removed; Asian and Pacific Islander are separate
Q25 added"within a reasonable commuting distance but chose to take an online class"
and "available / required courses only only available online"**
** I think there is probably a better way to phrase 'available / required' here - any
suggestions?
Q29: added this question, "were all of your *required* courses available on campus?"**
** not sure if "required" should be in here - some possible confusion about core
requirements vs. courses that count as electives that help meet credit hour minimums
Q5: added display logic so that percentage online question only appears if they answer
"yes" to Q29 (i.e. they would not see this question if all required courses were online
only); changed bin sizes to 20% incremenets
Q26: added post-baccalaureate certificate option to question
** this question has "was your online degree a ..." - should "online" be removed since
this will (I assume) be going to people who took some classes on-ground
 Attempts will be made to better connect with the QC next meeting, using a
service such as Google Hangouts or Skype. However, we have limits on the
wireless in the room on the Macomb end. We are planning on connecting to a
minimal number of remote sources to ensure adequate bandwidth for the
conversation.
Upcoming Meeting Dates:
October 20
November 17
December 15