About the “Guide to Developing Online Student Services”

The Guide is designed to help higher education institutions develop effective online approaches to providing student support services. Based on reviews of hundreds of institutional Web sites undertaken for a Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications project on student services for distance learners, the Guide provides:

General tips for designing effective online student services
Brief discussions on a range of student support services, especially the needs of online and distant learners; and
Guidelines for basic good practice in delivering these services via the Internet.

This Guide, like the project from which it has emerged, expands the traditional definition of student services to include other support services that directly affect the student's learning experience, such as the library, bookstore, and support for using instructional technologies.

Over the past several years there has been a growing use of Internet technologies to serve students both off and on campus. While institutions previously had tended to neglect student services in their rush to develop and deliver instruction online, they have recently begun to pay attention to the need to provide services, as well as courses and programs, in this form. Colleges and universities are increasingly recognizing the need to develop Web-based, anywhere, anytime, access to traditional student services, but they often need help in envisioning what services to provide and how to design them. For this reason, this Guide focuses specifically on how to provide student services via the Internet..

The Guide will remain on the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications’ Web page for one year only—from October, 2000 to September, 2001. This decision was made because of the impossibility of ensuring that the selected examples will remain current over a longer period of time.

Are Online Services Only for Distance Learners?

No, the online services addressed here are not limited to use by distance learners. However, the Guide is based on the assumption that an institution should design its online services to be available to a student for whom a trip to campus is not feasible. If a student has sought the anywhere, anytime convenience offered by online courses and programs, he or she should not have to travel to campus for administrative or other support services. In many instances, colleges and universities have found that online services developed specifically to serve distance learners have been requested and widely used by on-campus learners as well. In today’s technology-infused learning environment, delivering student services via the Internet benefits both on- and off-campus students.

The Western Cooperative's Student Services Project

This Guide is the final product of a three-year project of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications entitled “Putting Principles into Practice: Promoting Effective Support Services for Students in Distance Education Programs.” The project has focused on improving student services (defined broadly) for distance learners. Supported by the U. S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), project activities have included:

1) Surveying colleges and universities that are accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges, and the two divisions of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges to determine how they provide student services at a distance;

2) Identifying, through results of the written survey, follow-up phone interviews, and reviews of Web sites, some exemplary practices in serving students at a distance;

3) Disseminating information on providing student services at a distance; and

4) Brokering consulting services and technical assistance from those at institutions that have developed a strong approach to serving students at a distance to administrators at other colleges and universities who would like assistance in improving their own services.

The project identified a number of institutions that have developed successful approaches to providing some services at a distance. Successful methods vary from site-based approaches to the use of a variety of technologies, including automated phone information systems, the Internet, toll-free phone lines, CD-ROMs, desktop video, and streaming video.

The "Putting Principles into Practice" project, which created this document, has ended. However, there is a successor project, "Beyond the Administrative Core: Creating Web-based Student Services for Online Learners." This project continues to examine institutional implementations of online student services. For more information, contact Pat Shea (pshea@wiche.edu) or Erica Henningsen (ehenningsen@wiche.edu).

How Example Web Pages Were Selected

The example Web pages in this Guide were chosen from among institutions in the West and Midwest that responded to a 1997 Western Cooperative survey on services for distance learners. (The survey was co-sponsored by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges, and the senior and junior divisions of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.) Limiting the examples based on this criterion has made it possible to highlight a variety of good practices identified through the Western Cooperative's student services project. It has also meant, on the other hand, that some institutions that are currently leaders in providing effective services via the Internet are not included among the good practice exemplars.

Featured here are good practices. It is important to recognize that they are not necessarily the best practices in the country designed to deliver student services via the Internet. Good practice exemplars presented here range from the provision of basic, necessary information to highly interactive web-enabled processes. The latter approach is clearly preferable in terms of serving students, but this Guide is also intended to assist the many institutions that are just beginning to put services online and in need of basic guidance.

Examples have been selected from large and small, public and private, two- and four-year colleges, and comprehensive universities. The effort has been to highlight good practices of as many institutions as possible among those included in our original study. Some examples are from colleges and universities that exhibit highly sophisticated approaches to online services, and others are from schools that were selected only to demonstrate basic elements of good practice in the specific service aspect under discussion. Some have developed their Internet-based services themselves, while others have relied on products marketed by for-profit companies.

The student support services addressed here include the most common student services provided for on-campus students as well as some additional services likely to be useful to those studying online or off-campus. There is no attempt to ensure that the Guide covers all services that might be available on campus. The following services are covered in the Guide:

Information for Prospective Students
Admissions
Financial Aid
Registration
Orientation Services
Academic Advising
Technical Support
Career Services
Library Services
Services for Students with Disabilities
Personal Counseling
Instructional Support and Tutoring
Bookstore
Services to Promote a Sense of Community

What this Document Is Designed To Do

Colleges and universities are at such different points in their development of such services that it is difficult to provide general guidance on designing online student services. While some schools are just beginning to put static information about available services on the Web, others now provide flexible, self-service options to their students, and still other schools are now moving toward a complete software model of the institution. This Guide is intended to help institutions that are at any stage of this continuum, but it may be especially useful to those that are just beginning to deliver services online.

The final section, “Two Comprehensive Web-Based Student Services Systems,” highlights examples of institutions that are making an important shift from a “provider” perspective to a "customer-centered" orientation in online service provision. The institutions featured in this section are also moving beyond the basic, but necessary, stage of using the Web only to provide student services information and electronic forms. Instead, these schools are creating decision support systems that offer students a variety of opportunities for self-help and customize services for individual students.

A number of software companies are now developing products that assist institutions in making this significant transition. In fact, new commercial ventures are springing up almost weekly. This Guide makes no attempt to identify the packages available commercially nor does it imply an endorsement of any specific products. Each institution should research carefully whether it makes more sense to contract with a vendor to develop any or all of its online services or to do so on its own.

Each bulleted point under every student service category is illustrated by a single Web page. Note that this is not a live link to the site, but a link to cached version of the Web page at a point in time. This was done to preserve the page as an example. To get a better idea of how the Web page actually functions and a better sense of the services provided on the site, readers should go to the Internet and view the page in its original format. You can link to the original pages by going to the "Sites Selected as Examples" section of this document and selecting the "Alphabetical List with URL's."

Although services are addressed one by one in separate sections in this Guide, the goal of Internet-based, student-centered service provision should be to create cross-process design that automatically links related functions. The traditional silos that tend to separate services from one another should be no more the ruling organizational structure on the Web than in models for the effective provision of student-centered services on campus.

In summary:

This Guide emphasizes basic good practice guidelines. It points to what an institution's Web page should, at a minimum, provide for each specific support service.
The heading "Features to Consider" under most individual service discussions highlights either interesting options or recommended elements for institutions to consider as they move to improve their provision of student services in an online environment.
The section on "Two Comprehensive Web-Based Student Services Systems " points to examples of a range of online services provided by two institutions--one in the West and the other in the Midwest.

It is also important to note that this document addresses only the front-end Web or Internet user interface; it does not discuss database design or structure or other behind- the-scenes technology. In addition, the Guide does not endorse any specific software vendor's products. Technical solutions are up to individual institutions or to any commercial vendor with which the institution might choose to contract. This Guide simply describes the desired end result from a student's--or prospective student's--perspective.

Continue to 'Tips for Designing Web-Based Student Services'