SWAT TEAM REPORT TO SAC ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION, October 23, 2003.
Three meetings of the Univ. SWAT team for distance education were held. The SWAT team consists of Donna Schaad, Curt Madison,
Eva Kopacz, Mike Sfraga, and Jason Ohler. Due to scheduling conflicts, Eva and Mike could not attend the first two but were present
for the last one.
Based on these meetings, the following courses of action are recommended to SAC for its consideration:
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1
Issue
How best to
distribute
distance ed
tuition; the need
to run
comparative cost
modeling
Explanation
Course of action/Costs
Because not every student and
1. For now continue to use 80/20
faculty member has an
unless campuses are reporting
academic home within
undue pain using this split. As a
BANNER (such people are
way to check, perhaps personnel
referred to unofficially as
associated with disted at small
orphans), running comparative
campuses (CRA, UAS, etc.) could
cost models does not work.
be interviewed.
Inferring campus association by 2. Institute a system in which every
zip code does not work.
enrolling student and each faculty
Therefore, assigning every
member is associated with a
student and faculty a home
campus. – Mike Sfraga will look
campus must occur before
into this as a Student Services
comparative cost modeling can
issue.
be run.
Lead: Michael Sfraga
Cost: $0
Notes
1. How would students choose
a campus association?
2. This approach gives smaller
campuses - who often can’t
compete in the realm of
academic delivery – an
opportunity to excel in
student services.
3. Does this field exist? If so,
how does it become a
standard operating procedure
to use it? If not, how does
the field get created? Does
this field exist? If so, can we
use it or what is it now being
used for?
4. Still on the table: the issue of
distance ed fee distribution
2
Part A:
1. At UAS (not sure about
Those answering 800 calls
1. Create an 800 number (1-800-
How best to
other MAUs) transcript
connect Alaskans
requests are asked to be sent
with Alaskan
to Univ. of Phoenix (online
disted resources,
university) more than any
while
other institution.
simultaneously
2. We have a “last mile”
addressing the
problem in Alaska in terms
issue of students
of student awareness of UA
going elsewhere
distance ed opportunities;
(like Phoenix) for
that is, potential students
distance ed
either don’t know what UA
resources that
offers, or can’t figure out
may exist in
how to get details easily.
Alaska.
Univ of Phoenix, and others,
are well known because of
their coverage via the
Internet, etc. Similarly, UA
needs to connect students
with programs through a
widely distributed, low-cost
media campaign.
3
Part B:
How best to
connect Alaskans
with Alaskan
disted resources,
while
The last mile problem can also
be addressed with a more
comprehensive web site.
Uaonline.Alaska.edu is a great
start but could use more menu
options which include but are
UADISTED) for those interested in
distance education at UA; it would
be widely distributed via TV
banners (at bottom of screen), other
conventional means. The objective
is make 1-800-UADISTED a
“household” number.
2. Use the experience gained from
answering 1-800-UADISTED calls
to train advisors throughout the UA
to address the needs of distance
learners, currently a problematic
area of advising.
3. One scenario: house the person at
CDE (1/4 FTE); the 800 number
system is overseen by
representatives from multiple
distance ed entities, particularly to
deal with equitable referral issues
(i.e, if a course is offered by many
campuses, to whom is the student
referred?)
Lead: Curt Madison
Cost: $25K/annually for two years
1. Determine which of the menu
options already exist somewhere
else (within the UA system,
outside the UA system)
2. Turn that information over toSaichi? Mike Sfraga?
would use a collaboratively
developed document to aid
referral; they would collect
data, (qualitative,
quantitatively) which is fed to
student services people on an
on-going basis, and be used for
training advisors to address
distance student needs.
UA needs to continually look
for new, relevant links to be
added - whose responsibility?
simultaneously
addressing the
issue of students
going elsewhere
(like Phoenix) for
distance ed
resources that
may exist in
Alaska..
not limited to the following:
Lead:
1. undecided – need someone to
research existing links
Cost: 5K
2. Posting links: Mike Sfraga
Cost: 0
1. Self assessment- are you
ready for distance
education?
2. Success steps in distance
education
3. Selecting a home campus
4. Programs offered, contacts Costs do not include creation and/or
(continually updated)
adaptation of new materials (see
5. Financial aid addressing
menu items 6, 7, 8)
inter-MAU financing
6. Student disted handbook
7. Faculty disted handbook
8. Advisers disted handbook
9. Tech readiness
10. Site readiness
11. Proctoring tests
12. Placement testing
information
13. Advanced course/faculty
evaluation, such as the
OLE system used by
Illinois. This involves
three levels: 1)
demographics, 2) campusbased questions, 3)
questions faculty could
include and which only
faculty could view. Note:
this is brought to us by Dr.
Schaad (UAA) from the
system she in which she
worked in Illinois. She
managed to bring together
47 community colleges to
share online courses; OLE
was an important part of
that effort.
14. FAQs
4
Lack of student
orientation to
disted, &
statewide
collaboration for
common
resources, look
and feel
In order for UA to act like a
single disted resource there
needs to be similarity in
resources; UAA has a good
disted student reference booklet
which could be adapted for
multi-campus use
Adapt UAA’s handbook for multicampus use; this would require campusspecific information concerning, e.g.,
library access, helpdesk use, etc. Post
handbook on website, mail & email to
students.
Lead: Donna. She will provide list of
items needed from each MAU for the
handbook. Curt (UAF), Jason (UAS)
will help gather MAU information.
Cost: 5K for this and next item
(adaptation of faculty handbook); funds
are assistance in collecting, editing, and
publishing information.
SAC okayed this, November 18, 2003.
5
Lack of faculty
In order for UA to act like a
Same as above, but for faculty
orientation to
disted
6.
7
8
Lack of advisor
orientation of
disted
single disted resource there
handbook.
needs to be similarity in
resources; UAA has a good
disted faculty reference booklet
which could be adapted for
multi-campus use
The potential exists for creating SWAT needs to explore how to create
a statewide distance education
an advisor handbook.
advisor handbook
Lead: Jason will begin talking to those
with disted student advising experience
to see what materials exist; he will
bring to SWAT, who will recommend
next course of action.
Cost: 0
Disted students
There is much anecdotal
1. Whenever a student signs up for a
do not understand evidence that students who sign
distance course or program, have
next steps to take up for distance courses “wait”
BANNER send an email to the
after enrolling in for UA to contact them.
student, directing them with next
a distance course. Because there is no automatic
steps, a website with relevant info,
Faculty do not
way for faculty or advisors to
etc.
know they have
know they are there, students
2. Also send a message to the faculty
signed up. This
are not contacted, or, faculty
teaching the course
creates a
are forced to use manual
3. Also send a message to an advisor
significant
methods to check to find them.
or advising pool
advising gap, and
gap between UA
Lead: Mike Sfraga, assisted by Jason
and disted
Cost: 0
population
The more
Much success already in this
UA needs to continue develop, adopt
Possible sources of information:
Art Petersen (UAS), Wanda
Martin (UAF advising center),
Linda Lizelle
How can the number of emails
be reduced? What filters could
be used? Perhaps filter out
students who might have active
advisors, or have already
received the information.
Advising pool idea should be
explored; allows a message to be
generated before specific
advisers have been assigned.
More need in training,
effective,
accurate ‘selfadvising’
students can do,
the better. UA
needs tools to
facilitate this.
area. Underway or already
adopted:
1. CAPP – allows students to
perform degree audit; being
used at UAA; UAF & UAS
are working on it
2. Online unofficial transcripts
3. Official transcripts – 24
hour turn around
4. Online registration – Quick
Start will resolve the issue
of BANNER not knowing
who first-time registering
students are
5. Online financial aid – needs
work for inter-MAU
application.
6. IT mapper. Allows career
pathway mapping. In use by
IT program. Allows
potential students to
determine or “map” career
and/or academic pathways;
allows them to find right
UA programs given career
objectives. Apparently,
Allied Health is the next
area to use this.
7. Student access to semester
grades
8. Online fee payment
or distribute more advanced tools that
help students determine career and
academic pathways, academic
standing, etc.
Student Service Council will address
some of the inter-MAU issues,
particularly financial aid. Applicable or
appropriate policies at the campus or
system level need to be developed or
augmented to facilitate these new
services.
Training, awareness needs to increased
to maximize these new tools.
Lead: to be determined.
Cost: to be determined
awareness for students, faculty
about these tools.
How can the IT mapper be used
in other programs?
9. Distance ed gateway
In the future1. My UA, allows students to
manage most of their own
university related
information from a single
spot, much like the
“Amazon.com” model
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10
UA faculty,
administrators do
not know about
conflicts/potential
collaborations in
developing disted
programs/courses
There is no
statewide
structure to help
promote, support,
monitor disted
due to the desire
not create a
In the absence of a statewide
disted organization with
centralized reporting
responsibilities, maintaining
contact among all facets of UA
disted people is difficult. Disted
development efforts often are
reported only after
development when it is too late
to forge collaborate or avoid
duplication of efforts; UA
disted people need to know
about them in the planning
stage.
While a disted center does not
exist, much of the functionality
that it would provide is still
needed. A deliberative, multifaceted, multi-campus body
needs to be created and
institutionalized to oversee the
Create a statewide listserv for everyone
involved in distance education
development; encourage deans,
program heads to interact with it. Any
time a new program or course is in the
brainstorming stage it should be
posted. Other disted opportunities
should be reported.
What are the best ways to
publicize its existence,
particularly to deans and
directors?
Lead: Curt Madison
Cost: 0
Further refine and establish the
attached statewide structure as a
process for addressing distance
education; it was given preliminary,
tentative adoption by SAC in 20012002 school year. It needs to adopted
as an official body of the UA system.
See appendix, “Proposed
Distance Education Structure,
2003.”
fourth MAU
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Faculty need help
converting
existing material
or creating new
material for
distance delivery;
they need
resources for the
effective delivery
of disted
Faculty need to
become part of a
community of
learners that
share resources,
techniques,
collaborative
opportunities
process of helping disted
process and functions.
Anecdotally, CDE and UAA
could employ 3 more full time
instructional designers each;
UAS, one more. Not having
these resources seriously
impedes progress in disted
content and delivery.
There needs to be a concerted,
coordinated effort to bring
disted-related professional
development to UA.
Lead: Jason will explore this with
SAC.
Cost: Approx. $60K/year for travel
unless absorbed internally.
UA needs to hire more instructional
designers/pedagogy planners and/or
identify faculty within the system with
expertise in this area and commit
portions of their workload to helping
faculty with distance delivery creation
issues.
Lead: to be determined
Cost: 60-80K/year/position
In the absence of a statewide
organization to help with this, SWAT
would like to work with CDE and other
UA distance education entities to
provide on-going professional
development workshops addressing
technological advancements,
pedagogical and design issues, and
other issues of relevance.
Lead: Jason will report on how prof.
Development is approached at UAS;
Jason will contact UAF office of
faculty development (Joy Morrison)
for more info on what exists. Donna
will ask Loren Bruce (UAA) and report
This does not fit within the
scope of the current distance
education resources allocated
by SAC. Where would funding
come for this?
how prof. Development is currently
approached at UAA.
Cost: 0 for above; costs of professional
development experiences vary.
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A1course offering
plan needs to be
developed that
provides students
with a stable
selection of
course and
program
offerings.
SAC has declared that it will
Develop course offering plans from
support only courses that are
two vantage points:
part of programs or programs
1- The SAC level. As explained, SAC
themselves, rather than
supports programs (rather than nonindividual courses unrelated to
program related courses) at the
programs. On the other hand,
college level. A Course Offering
departments not seeking SAC
Plan will identify the courses
support are free to offer
developed and those needing
whatever they wish via
development to complete degree,
distance. However, all courses
certificate, and/or program
or programs need to owned by
requirements.
departments or programs rather 2- Each college within the university
than individuals; this increases
as well as each community campus
the likelihood of those courses
will need to work at the department
being offered and supported on
level to develop course offering
a regular basis because courses
plans. Inventories of projected or
owned by individuals tend to
desired course offerings need to
come and go as the individual
come from departmental level
does.
assessments within campuses,
colleges. Presumably, departments
who are financially responsible for
maintaining such programs would
only offer or continue to offer
programs which were financially
viable.
What should drive this
assessment for SAC?
Initiatives? BANNER statistics?
What should drive departmental
offerings?
The distance education gateway
needs to be updated with new
programs on an on-going basis.
Lead: to be determined; needs more
discussion at SAC level.
Cost: 0 for now
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A1more complete
picture of campus
efforts in
supporting
distance
education needs
to be regularly
reported and
given to UA
policy makers
and planners
Example: If a student takes a
course in Nome that is being
delivered by Juneau faculty for
an Anchorage program,
typically the only statistic that
gets reported is headcount from
Juneau. There needs to be
reporting to show, in this
example, Nome’s support, as
well Anchorage’s program.
BANNER
1
needs
to be made more
accessible for
disted planning
and reporting
Disted planning is desperately
in need of data, much of which
can be supplied by BANNER.
Unfortunately, BANNER
searching is reserved for the
very few. We wouldn’t dream
of tolerating a Google search or
library database search that
took 2 weeks, yet this is
commonplace when using
UA needs to use a system that reports
these three aspects of the disted
experience (delivering, receiving, and
program); it should be a primary
source of information for policy and
planning. Apparently, such reporting
used to occur. If so, it needs to be
reinstated. Apparently, BANNER
collects all of the information to create
such reports. If not, then BANNER
needs to be expanded to do this. In the
absence of BANNER being able to do
this, a “soft ledgering system” needs to
be created to capture it.
Lead: Mike
Cost: 0
Create a menu of “frequent disted
related BANNER queries.” There
already exist “frequent BANNER
query” menus for some functions of
BANNER, allowing the relative novice
to be able to extract meaningful data
from BANNER. The same thing needs
to be created for disted.
Questions that are commonly asked by
This is a student services issue;
Mike will look into it.
Is it SWAT’s responsibility to
go to those in disted who
depend on BANNER to gather
relevant searches?
BANNER. This is not a
criticism of those who work for
BANNER – there are not
enough of them. But it is an
observation that the current
system of querying BANNER
is one of the most significant
chokeholds for realistic,
responsible disted planning
Exacerbating this situation is
the fact that when support staff
turn over occurs, the institution
returns to “square one” with a
long recovery time.
those involved in disted need to be
compiled and turned over to student
services.
Lead: Jason will ask Art Petersen,
Shirley Grubb, Patyy Itchock and
others for relevant queries and present
to SWAT. When list is fleshed out,
Mike will take to Student Services
Committee.
Cost: 0
Appendix- Proposed distance education structure
SAC
Distance Education Council (new)
Purpose: Articulate distance education issues to SAC and vice versa; Assume leadership in executing distance education related initiatives.
Members:

SWAT members. As of 9/2003 that consists of Dr. Donna Schaad, Dr. Michael Sfraga, Dr. Curt Madison, Dr. Eva Kopacz, and Dr. Jason Ohler.

Steve Smith, representing the DEIC and IT perspectives
SSC
Purpose: Lead student services and
enrollment management.
Distance Education Implementation
Committee
Purpose:

Help with IT-related distance
education and issues of delivery
mechanics and facilitation

IT capacity, future plans,
troubleshooting.

administration

scheduling, etc.
CPT (Curriculum Planning
Team)
Purpose:

Help determine distance ed
needs for UA

Advise SAC
Address faculty-related issues
(quality, copyright, etc.)
Administration?
At a recent faculty alliance
meeting, it was suggested that
“administration” was the 4th leg
for the Distance Education
Council.
Membership:

Dr. Sfraga

Deans of Students at each MAU
Membership:

CTO

CIO’s

Distance Education Coordinators

CDE
Membership:

3 chosen by Provosts

3 chosen, 1 by each MAU

Faculty Academic liaison
