Recommendations to the Executive Technology Team
From
The Distance Education Steering Board
October 11, 2005
Introduction
This document presents recommendations from the Distance Education Steering
Board (DESB) to the Executive Technology Team (ETT) with respect to
improving the University of Alaska’s distance education initiatives.
Minimum List of Student Services
Issues:
1. It is the position of the DESB that all distance students should be able
to obtain a minimum set of student support services from any
University of Alaska campus or learning center.
2. Some campuses and learning centers are unable to deliver these
minimum services because of a lack of resources.
3. Some campuses, as a matter of policy, only offer some of these
services to students who are formally enrolled at the campus where
the service is offered.
4. Many students are unaware of, or do not know how to find these
services.
Recommendation:
The following list of services for distance students be adopted as a
minimum standard across all campuses and learning centers.
1. Student Advising – Academic advising is provided to students
to help them select and enroll in the type of courses and
programs that will meet their objectives.
2. Access to Technology – All enrolled students should have
access to the following technologies at any campus or learning
center:
a. Fax (for submitting assignments).
b. Computers connected to the Internet, with recent
versions of Java (many online applications now require
it), and an office suite (MS Office, OpenOffice)
3. Library Access – All enrolled students from any campus may
borrow materials from all UA libraries according to the
circulation policies of the specific library. Proper student
identification is required to check out materials. All university
students may access licensed digital library resources or
databases using on campus internet connections. Remote
access or access from home to digital library resources requires
an authorized student username and password. Exceptions
would be use of some databases that are restricted by licensing
agreements to specific campuses
4. Email Account – All students registered for at least one credit
hour will automatically receive an email account for the duration
of the course.
5. Technical Assistance – Students enrolled in distance-learning
courses should have appropriate avenues to obtain technical
support at no extra charge for systems used to deliver their
instruction. This support should take into account the way that
the technical support needs of the distance learners differ from
those of learners co-located on a campus with tech support
personnel.
6. Proctoring Tests and Exams -- Each campus or learning
center will administer standardized tests to distance learners
needed for admissions or placement, and can proctor exams for
distance education courses if authorized by the faculty of the
providing institution. This testing service available free or at the
same cost as for the students enrolled in on-campus courses.
Hours for test proctoring will posted and advertised.
7. Marketing -- A link to the UA Gateway for distance delivered
courses will be place on each institutional website.
8. Financial Aid – All students should have access to counseling
about financial aid.
9. Tutoring – All students in distance-delivered courses should
have access to tutoring. Information about how to access it
should be provided automatically.
First Steps
1. Establish working groups empowered to achieve the following
a. Circulate the proposed standard to all UA units and
secure an agreement by all sites and by University
leadership to adopt this minimum standard
b. Create a static link to information about theses services
on all course management systems (e.g. Blackboard), on
institutional web sites, and on the My UA portal.
c. Audit all sites to identify policies or resource shortfalls
that limit the ability to meet these standards
d. Work with learning centers that cannot meet the standard
to bring them up to the standard.
e. Establish required service level agreements among
libraries specifying which materials and services would
be made available under what conditions. Establish a
system of accountability for students for who do not
return materials
f. Create funding mechanisms for additional personnel
required to deliver these services (e.g. Distance
Education Librarian, Distance Education Tech Support /
HelpDesk, Distance Education Advisor)
Equitably sharing revenues from enrollments
Issues:
1. With Distance learners, the campus that delivers a course is often
different that the campus that delivers student support services.
2. Some campuses now find their student support services strained
because under the conventional funding model, all tuition and fees
collected from the students they support go to the campus that
delivers the instruction.
Recommendation:
Divide tuition and distance fees between the campus that teaches a
course and the campus that provides support services to a distance
student.
First Steps:
1. Acknowledging that it could be difficult and costly to determine the
ratio of cost-for-instruction to cost-for-student-support services,
negotiate a ratio for dividing distance education tuition and fees that
campuses find acceptable for the present.
2. Devise a means for determining which campus is providing support
services to a distance learner.
Metrics for recognizing Faculty Productivity
Issues
1. Faculty who teach distance courses currently only receive credit
for teaching students who are enrolled through the faculty
member’s campus.
2. The work the faculty members do and the revenue generated by
teaching students who enroll through other campuses is not
taken into account for promotion and tenure, nor for determining
faculty work load.
Recommendation
In shared courses, Credit Hour Effort should replace Credit Hours
as a measure of faculty productivity.
Note that we do not recommend that this metric be used for
comparing the relative merits of one faculty member to another.
The level of effort required to teach the same number of students
can vary significantly by subject matter, by delivery mode, by
geographical location, and by resource availability. Further, faculty
members do not control the number of students enrolled in their
classes, and so Credit Hour Effort may not be a useful measure of
merit.
First Steps
1. Establish bookkeeping mechanisms to track this metric
Metric for recognizing the load of delivering student support services to
distance education students.
Issues:
1. As distance education has grown, some campuses are finding
their student services resources stretched thin by serving
people who were not enrolled locally, but are, instead, taking
classes originating elsewhere.
2. With distance learners, the campus that delivers instruction is
often different than the campus that delivers student support
services.
3. It would be useful for planning and resource allocation purposes
to know the relative student services load of each site,
independent of the number of learners enrolled at each site.
Recommendation
Student Support Services Effort should adopted as a measure of
campus or learning center productivity. Student Services Effort
means the number of students who use each student support
service.
First Steps
1. Devise a bookkeeping system to assure that campuses who are
actually providing the services are receiving the credit for it.