Open SUNY: Frequently asked questions
1.
What IS Open SUNY?
Open SUNY is a cross-system collaboration to create initiatives and services
that support campuses and faculty in enhancing online-enabled education to
improve student access, completion and success. Open SUNY takes the power of
technology, and the power of teaching, and elevates their collective impact
through the power of SUNY.
By enhancing SUNY’s existing, and substantial, efforts in online-enabled
education, Open SUNY will expand access to higher education in New York
State, raise completion rates, prepare more students for success in their lives
and careers, and contribute to the economic and societal health of the state, the
nation, and the world.
2.
Will Open SUNY be a “new campus?”
Open SUNY will not be a new campus.
3.
Will Open SUNY try to remove faculty control of the curriculum and modify
academic standards?
No. Faculty will continue to retain full control of the curriculum and
academic standards.
Any and all changes to SUNY policy will continue to be made through the
well-established shared governance processes.
There are many intriguing developments in higher education (e.g., Prior
Learning Assessments (PLA); competency based learning) that represent both
potential opportunities and challenges to our traditional models. We would be
ill-advised to ignore them; we should explore them to better understand where
they make sense for students and campuses (e.g., PLA for returning veterans
with immense non-credentialed experience).
4.
Will there be an "Open SUNY degree"?
All degrees will continue to be offered by SUNY institutions. Neither system
administration nor any Open SUNY entity will offer any degree. Some degrees
will be “powered by Open SUNY +” which indicates that those degrees offer
students certain supports and services (e.g., 24/7 service desk; concierge;
experiential learning), but that title only represents the services and supports
wrapped around campus-based programs.
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5.
What does it mean to be powered by Open SUNY +?
Degrees powered by Open SUNY + bring an additional layer of supports for
students and faculty.
As a student in a degree program powered by Open SUNY +, students will have
access to around-the-clock high-touch support dedicated to making them
successful, including a personal concierge, help desk, and online tutoring.
Specific benefits include:
Personal Concierge: One point of contact for each student to answer
questions and facilitate the right supports who will follow the student
throughout their degree
 24/7 Help Desk and Tutoring: Support day and night for students
 Experiential Learning: Access to real-life experiences that position students
for employment
 Industry-Leading Teaching Practices: A learning experience that
incorporates world-class faculty and teaching practices, building on the deep
knowledge and research cultivated across the SUNY network

Faculty that teach in Open SUNY + programs will receive supports for online
course development and refresh with the aid of a team that includes
instructional designers, multimedia specialists and librarians.
6.
How are Seamless Transfer and Open SUNY related?
Seamless transfer and Open SUNY are very different initiatives. Open SUNY is a
cross-system effort to create initiatives and services that support campuses and
faculty in enhancing online-enabled education to improve student access,
completion, and success. Seamless transfer is focused exclusively on transfer of
credits across SUNY institutions and creating transfer pathways for dozens of
disciplines. Open SUNY can exist without seamless transfer, and seamless
transfer can exist without Open SUNY. Most students, even in the online
environment, likely will choose to take all or the vast majority of their courses
at a single institution. Of course, online education – which Open SUNY is focused
on supporting – does permit students to benefit more fully from educational
opportunities at institutions at a distance. In this way, online education could
facilitate students utilizing existing transfer policies to enable completion of the
program of their choice.
7.
Will Open SUNY force faculty to accept credits from outside the institution (e.g.,
from other SUNY institutions, MOOCs, PLAs) that they do not think provide the
level of learning or rigor demanded?
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Bottom line is that faculty will retain control over their curriculum and
the quality level required for credit.
Through a faculty-led process, we now have a policy that will provide students
with seamless transfer opportunities across the system. When it comes to
cross-registration, students are required to receive approval from their home
institution before pursuing credit elsewhere.
As with other related issues, shared governance mechanisms and the voices of
faculty will be at the heart of any decisions around credit transfer. We
understand that as technology and offerings evolve over time, there will be new
considerations related to MOOCs and other new forms of delivery that could be
impacted by seamless transfer, but SUNY will observe an inclusive governance
process as new technologies and deliveries are developed.
Currently, the Provost’s Open SUNY Advisory Committee has a sub-committee
considering the issues, implications, and recommended models for MOOCs and
PLAs. This will provide a valuable start to what will be a lengthy conversation
about these issues across the SUNY community.
8.
Is Open SUNY and online education a smokescreen for job cuts?
To meet the goal of educating another 100,000 students, SUNY will need
more, not fewer faculty. A large and growing portion of the higher education
population needs online-enabled learning due to their life situations (e.g., work,
families). These students will go to another university if we do not serve them
well—in fact, in 2012, the most popular transfer destination for SUNY students
was the University of Phoenix. This would create ever-greater pressures on
SUNY’s financial situation, which would increase (rather than decrease) the
risks to faculty and to our students.
The greatest risk to faculty job security is SUNY not responding to the fastevolving needs of students and the offerings of competitors, particularly
in the area of online-enabled learning.
9.
Will all faculty be forced to teach online?
There is absolutely no system effort or intention to require online teaching
from all faculty. Faculty should expect to see incentives and supports to
develop online courses / degrees and to enhance their online teaching
capabilities.
Open SUNY aims to help faculty and campuses excited about online-enabled
learning to pursue the opportunity. It also hopes to create networks to connect
faculty who are exploring online-enabled education to peers of theirs that are
farther along the journey.
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10. What's the business model for Open SUNY? How will Open SUNY be paid for?
The Academic Affairs Committee of the SUNY Board of Trustees has charged the
Open SUNY team with creating a cross-system working group to develop an
overall business model and funding plan for the Open SUNY effort. This group
will be kicking off in early 2014. Early Open SUNY efforts have been supported
through existing system administration funds combined with investments by
partner campus. While we are still exploring the business models, we are
confident that Open SUNY will lead to higher enrollments achieved through a
lower cost delivery model than traditional residential education.
11. How is Open SUNY different from SLN? Will SLN go away?
The SUNY Learning Network (SLN) is a partnership with SUNY Campuses to
provide support in the areas of pedagogy, technology, student and faculty
support and marketing services. While Open SUNY will retain the rich services
of SLN, it will also build on them and engage and support all campuses, not just
those that are part of SLN. Organizational and operational changes are still in
design, but currently we do expect that SLN will transform into Open SUNY.
12. How Open SUNY different than / related to Empire State College?
Open SUNY is a cross-system collaboration to create initiatives and services
that support campuses and faculty in enhancing online-enabled education to
improve student access, completion and success. Empire State College is one of
the 64 SUNY institutions. It has a particular rich history and intensive focus on
online-enabled education, as well as important innovations to support certain
student needs (e.g., offering students Prior Learning Assessment that allows
them the ability to receive credit for knowledge gained outside the classroom).
There are many other campuses across the system, however, with existing or
potential offerings in online education. The power of Open SUNY is leveraging
for students the capabilities and contributions of all campuses that, together,
can provide the nation’s leading online experience for students.
13. How does Open SUNY relate to MOOCs? Will SUNY offer MOOCs or become
members of MOOC groups such as edX or Coursera?
Open SUNY is not primarily focused on MOOCs – massively open online courses.
MOOCs are just one element of the evolving world of online-enabled education.
Open SUNY’s efforts, however, include elements related to the exploration of
MOOCs. The Provost’s Open SUNY Advisory Committee, for example, has a
subcommittee that is considering how MOOCs inter-relate with existing policies
and what additional dialogues should occur among faculty. Additionally, the
Open SUNY Scale Up lab may support testing MOOCs and considering the
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variety of issues that would be involved in any broader expansion of these
throughout the system.
SUNY campuses are already offering MOOCs. For example, Empire State College
has offered several Constructivists MOOCs, and Buffalo State College received
an Innovative Instruction Technology Grant to develop an Open Course to teach
faculty how to create open content.
SUNY and Coursera currently have a non-binding non-exclusive contract that
was put in place at the request of Stony Brook University. Stony Brook
launched its first MOOC on the Coursera platform on August 29, 2013. The
contract also provides mechanisms for SUNY campuses to utilize Coursera
course content as part of a SUNY course.
The Contract requires that the SUNY System provide procedures to ensure the
quality of courses being offered on the Coursera platform. We are in the
process of establishing procedures for that activity.
14. Will Open SUNY turn teaching into a cookie-cutter process, forcing
standardization?
Online-enabled education, like all education, is best facilitated by high-quality
pedagogy and skilled, knowledgeable faculty using methods that have been
proven successful through research. These tenets will help set standards of
quality, but will not be used to standardize online offerings. SUNY faculty are
models for high-quality education, and Open SUNY will aim to build upon that
level of quality; it will never seek to diminish or restrict the immense talent that
our faculty bring to the classroom.
15. Will Open SUNY and efforts to expand online-enabled learning risk faculty
intellectual property?
There are good models for protecting faculty intellectual property (IP) in
the digital world, and Open SUNY will support their broader adoption.
First, there are campuses that have clear, specific policies and methods for
protecting faculty IP. The Open SUNY team will help ensure these IP models are
more widely available and ease implementation through creation of “model
policies.” Second, the Open SUNY team will engage with campuses and the
General Counsel staff to identify major IP questions and develop overarching
responses and solutions that address faculty concerns.
16. What happens to online students who are not in degrees powered by Open SUNY +
degrees / courses?
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These students will continue to receive the high-quality education in their
existing online programs / courses. Over time, we hope that supports, services
and tools being introduced to degrees powered by Open SUNY + will be made
available to more students through a broader set of degrees and courses.
17. Will Open SUNY’s support for expanding numbers of students taking onlineenabled degrees reduce the number of residential students?
The objective of Open SUNY is to expand access for students across New York
State and beyond to a quality SUNY education. The objective is to both reach
more students as well as use online-enabled delivery to reach existing students
in new ways (e.g., flipping the classroom; providing international experience
through online technologies). As always, each individual campus will develop
their own enrollment plans, but we believe that online-enabled education has
very strong potential to expand the total number of students we serve across
the system.
18. What role will Empire State College play?
Empire State College has two degrees included in the first wave of degrees
powered by Open SUNY +. Additionally, members of the Empire State College
community are playing critical roles on a variety of Open SUNY design and
implementation, as well as advisory, teams. Empire State College’s innovative
efforts on Prior Learning Assessments (PLAs), serving stopped out students,
and massively open online courses (MOOCs) will play important roles as Open
SUNY evolves.
19. What does Open SUNY mean for our campus if we do not have a degree that was
selected to be powered by Open SUNY + at the January introduction?
Open SUNY will benefit all SUNY campuses.
First, Open SUNY should help more prospective students find SUNY onlineenabled programs. The new OpenSUNY.edu and Open SUNY Navigator will
allow prospective students to easily discover all SUNY online-enabled degrees
and courses. Additionally, the attention from the introduction, including press
and marketing, should raise awareness for all SUNY online-enabled programs
by prospective students.
Additionally, all SUNY faculty can become members of the new center that
promotes online teaching excellence at SUNY and the supports it offers.
Furthermore, campuses will benefit from the exploration and investment in
new tools and services to support online-enabled education (e.g., Learning
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Management System add-ons at attractive pricing from contracts that leverage
SUNY’s scale).
Finally, there will be another wave of Open SUNY + degrees launched for Fall
2014, so campuses will have an opportunity to nominate degrees to participate
in that wave.
19. Is participation in Open SUNY required for all campuses?
Open SUNY will have multiple elements that will have a broad impact and
improve online-enabled learning including fully online, hybrid, and even faceto-face. All campuses will be required to list their online degrees and courses
on the Open SUNY website and report their data to institutional research in an
accurate and timely manner. Details regarding services and systems are being
developed and will eventually be overseen by appropriate advisory structures
for Open SUNY. We anticipate that Open SUNY will involve a combination of nocost/mandatory elements as well as optional fee-based services.
20. Will Open SUNY impact residency requirements/policies?
No. Open SUNY will not impact residency requirements.
21. Will Open SUNY assist my campus with cross-registration and associated financial
aid?
The SUNY Office of the Provost is working with System Administration IT
Services on an initiative to better integrate the SUNY Student Information
Systems (SIS) environment. Plans are being developed to create applications to
streamline the student and faculty components of cross registration, and allow
staff from the student’s home campus to monitor student activities at the host
campus.
22. Who are we trying to serve with Open SUNY?
As the public University for New York State, we seek first to serve the citizens
and workforce development needs of New York. Open SUNY is particularly
interested in serving the more than six million New Yorkers without a postsecondary degree.
However, student experiences are always enhanced by the diversity that
international and out-of-state students bring to the classroom. Where
appropriate, we will utilize our online learning environments to extend SUNY’s
highly valued learning opportunities to the nation and the world.
23. Are we trying to reduce costs for students through Open SUNY?
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Yes, we are looking to reduce costs for students. These savings can come in
various forms such as reduction in textbook costs to students through the
adoption and creation of open education resources. If we can save each of our
469,000 plus students $30 in textbook costs, we will generate over $14,000,000
in savings. Online courses also allow students to save on costs associated with
commuting and childcare. During the Open SUNY development process costs
and cost sharing will be reviewed with the goal of creating a rich, rewarding,
and affordable experience for all students.
Additionally, we will provide technical platforms and services so that campuses
and faculty can openly share the materials and courses they create with
learners throughout the world. These open environments will provide free
learning opportunities for anyone in the world.
24. Who is going to help train faculty on my campus in online-enabled instruction?
Faculty support services will be a key element of the Open SUNY
initiative. Many campuses have organizations that provide such
services. University-wide programs such as the SUNY Learning Network and
the SUNY Center for Professional Development also provide professional
development for online-enabled instruction to many campuses within the SUNY
system. Open SUNY will launch a new center for online learning excellence
which will improve, extend and enhance faculty supports to create and deliver
online-enabled courses.
25. Are we offering courses or content for free?
Yes. Open SUNY will work with faculty and campuses to develop and utilize a
variety of Open Education offerings including: Open Education Resources, Open
Courseware, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Open Textbooks and Open
Journals.
26. Will our campus Learning Management System be compatible with Open SUNY?
Yes, however, over the course of the next several years we hope to reduce the
variety of Learning Management Systems in use by SUNY campuses. This will
allow greater efficiencies in development and provision of support services,
ease campus collaborations, and provide a more seamless experience for
students who are taking courses from multiple SUNY institutions.
27. Will the growth in online courses and programs be part of approved funded
enrollment?
When identified through strategic enrollment management, online growth may
be considered approvable funded enrollment. Campuses may also want to
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consider offering online programs on tuition alone recognizing that
appropriately managed online programs can be delivered at lower costs than
traditional programs. Movement into online environments also allows a campus
to diversify their instructional delivery methods, which opens new
opportunities to reach non-traditional learners across the education pipeline.
28. How do I make sure that my voice is heard in the development process?
Visit http://commons.suny.edu/opensuny and tell us what you think!
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