| Student Service Category |
Academic Advising |
| Institution |
Kansas State University |
| Description of Service |
Online academic advising to resident and distant learners |
| Time to Completion1 |
|
Number & Types of
Students Served |
Potentially, all of the 22,000 + resident and more than 2,000 distant
learners enrolled at K-State |
Service Providers
(Dept. & Staff Type) |
Several offices that work with or report to the Vice Provost for
Academic Services & Technology (VPAST), Dr. Beth Unger, who is
also the Dean of Continuing Education at K-State. Those offices include:
the Division of Continuing Education; the Office of Information Services;
the Registrar; the Dean of Students; Computing and Network Services;
the Educational Communications Center |
| Technology Enabling Service |
Creation of middleware in the “K-State Online” product
which lifts the lid on the Degree Audit Reporting System (DARS) and
interrogates the system, combining data there with information from
several other systems (SIS, Student ID, Individual College records,
etc.) to provide a one-page “user-friendly” summary of
student progress through the appropriate degree program at the university.
“K-State Online” is the campus-developed course
management system (similar to Blackboard or WebCT) that enables faculty
to develop virtual learning environments for their students. This
robust management system enables many of the same kinds of interactions
between advisors and advisees. |
| Service Developers |
| |
Internal |
External |
Subject
Matter
Experts |
Various advisors in nearly every college
within the university |
Director of NACADA (National Academic Advising
Association), numerous consultants from WCET and LAAP |
Technical
Experts |
“K-State Online” content and
applications developers |
Burnett Blakeley, IBM; Norm Coombs, EASI;
designers from the University of Texas System, others |
|
Challenges in Creating/
Implementing Service |
Student academic progress data resides in 17 separate data bases
on campus. Solving technical and jurisdictional hurdles to search
and combine information from those sources was a significant challenge.
Academic advising as a process varies greatly from department to department,
and from college to college. Also, there are many different “kinds”
of academic advisors (full-time staff advisors, faculty who advise
part-time, researchers who also advise, deans and administrators who
determine policy & procedure, etc.). A major challenge was getting
all of these groups to respect the differences among and between programs,
but concentrate on the common processes. |
| Benefits |
| Students: Simplified,
“user-friendly” updates of progress toward desired
degree, available online. Chat, threaded message and secure
dialog with advisor(s) also available online. |
| Staff: Advisors have
a much faster online source of 80% of the common student progress
information they need than is provided by DARS, which is much
more comprehensive, but looks like a DOS program and is slow
to access and difficult to search for specific information. |
| Administrators/Institution:
A systemic approach to individual processes that used
to be handled by a half-dozen different offices. Greater efficiency,
fewer duplications, reduced errors, greater student satisfaction. |
|
Challenges in Providing
New Service |
| Students: Learning new
system; online version (at the present time) concentrates on
the “most common” 80% of data usually needed to
make intelligent decisions. Still must refer to DARS for unique
or infrequently needed data. |
| Staff: Learning new system;
learning which parts of the online system fit within college
or departmental culture and processes, and which parts don’t. |
| Administrators/Institution:
Developing a de-bugging online version as it becomes
used, first in test mode, then in general use campus-wide. Overcoming
resistance to anything new. |
|
| Staff Role Changes2 |
Greater understanding of the roles played by others
in the process. Less “empire-building," since everyone
has access to all data. |
| Lessons Learned |
Solutions are rarely strictly technical, but are often political
or at least jurisdictional and procedural. Getting buy-in at the very
top is critical to creating any movement at all. Once that happens
(often after a long information-providing process) thing moved very
quickly. The technical obstacles, painted as ominous by those resisting
change, were actually quite minor. |
| Future Improvements |
The addition of other services (not just academic advising), such
as student financial aid, professional and personal counseling, career
planning, etc. |
| Resources |
Very difficult to acquire sufficient resources in the current climate
of draconian budget cuts at the national, state and institutional
level. Primary resource requirements are time and commitment from
programmers and developers, once administrators agree to changes. |
| Link to Demo Site |
http://www.dce.ksu.edu/advise/advisedemo.ram |
| Contact |
Mel Chastain, Ph.D.
Director, Kansas Regents Educational Communications Center
Interim Assoc. Vice Provost for Information Technology
Bob Dole Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-6902
(785)532-3112
Chastain@ksu.edu |
