|
Transcript of Technology in Academic Advising Webcast
PAT: Hello and welcome to
the WCET webcast series, Providing Student Services to Distance
Learners. I am Pat Shea, the Assistant Director for WCET. I'm coming
to you today from our east coast office in Summit, New Jersey. Also
joining us from WCET's headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, is my
colleague Sue Armitage. Welcome, Sue.
Slide: Technology in Academic Advising
SUE: Well, thanks, Pat. Hello,
I'd like to say hello to everyone in the audience. Thanks for joining
us today.
PAT: Our special guess is
Michael Leonard from Penn State University who will talk with us
today about Technology in Academic Advising. Welcome, Mike.
MIKE: Thanks, Pat. I'm happy
to be here.
PAT: Well, just so we can
get an idea of how many of you in the audience are familiar with
this environment, I'd like to get started by asking each of you
to tell us if you have participated in an HorizonLive lecture before.
Please click on the green "yes" button — so they're
above my head on the right-hand side — if you have participated
before. If you have not, please click on the "no" button.
So go ahead and do that now. And you'll see by your name in the
box next to my picture, your responses will be indicated there.
Don't be shy. Go ahead.
SUE: There are lots of people
who've not done this before, it looks like.
PAT: Okay. Well, welcome.
I'm so glad you guys are here today and I think it'll be a good
experience for you. So thanks a lot for letting us know. And we'll
try to point out some tips on using the environment as we move along
here. During today's session, we invite you to make comments related
to Mike's presentation in the chat box in the lower left half of
your screen. Many of you are experts in this field of academic advising
and this is a good opportunity to share your knowledge and experiences
with the other attendees. So since many of you are new, I want you
to know that if you experience connectivity problems during the
presentation please call HorizonLive — I'm going to give you
the phone number here: 877-825-5810 or click on the “help” button
which you see in the black navigation bar above the chat box to
send an e-mail message to tech support. If you want to send a private
message to someone participating in the session, click on the "tell"
button and only the person you have selected will see your message.
Question: Are you primarily interested in
services...
PAT: And so that we can get
a better sense of your interest today in academic advising please
respond to the question that is about to appear on your screen,
and the question is, are you primarily interested in academic advising
services for students located off campus, on campus or a combination
of the two? And while you are voting, I want to tell you that technology
and academic advising is the third in our webcast series on providing
student services to distance learners. Each month through June,
except for December, we will have a webcast on different on a different
student service. This series is part of WCET's work on its Learning
Anytime, Anywhere Partnership project, funded by the US Department
of Education. Our sincere appreciation also goes to HorizonLive
for making it possible to bring this series to you electronically.
Results of question
PAT: Sue, do we have some
results?
SUE: We sure do. Of those
people who have voted so far, we can all see from this bar chart
that a combination of the two, both off campus and on campus seem
to be the main interest of our audience today.
PAT: Okay. Well, that's good
to know.
Slide: WCET: Overview
PAT: And of those of you who
are not familiar with WCET, I just want to tell you that it is a
cooperative of higher education institutions, agencies, non-profit
organizations, and corporations involved in distance learning. Our
focus is on the advancing the effective use of technology in higher
education and you can see some information about us on the screen,
and I hope you will visit our website to learn even more.
Slide: Mike Leonard Introduction
PAT: And now it's time to
tell you a little bit more about our guest Michael Leonard. Mike
has been involved in academic advising since 1979, when he earned
a Master's degree in Educational Psychology from Penn State. He
is Chair of the Technology and Advising Commission for the National
Academic Advising Association — many of you know that as NACADA,
as well as the Commission's webmaster and co-moderator of its listserv.
He has presented technology and advising-related sessions in workshops
at national and regional conferences including NACADA, The First
Year Experience, in the Association of General and Liberal Studies.
He has provided consulting services to higher education institutions
on the topic of technology and advising and has published on the
same topic. Mike, thanks for joining us today.
MIKE: Well, thank you, Pat,
and thank you for inviting me to participate in this webcast. It's
really a very exciting opportunity for me. First, let me say that
if any of the participants in today's session had submitted questions
prior to the webcast, I hope to be answering those as we go through
the presentation today or at the very end, when you can post the
questions again. Since all of you know who I am now, I'd like to
get a quick idea about who are our participants are today, and rather
than doing this through a formal survey as we just did, I'd just
like to ask everyone to type into the chat box in the lower part
of your screen the primary job responsibility that you have. This
could be something like “academic advisor,” or “director of distance
education,” or “director of advising.” And we'll just take a quick
look at what responsibilities everybody says that they have. So
go ahead and type in in the “send a message” box the job title that
you currently hold and we'll see what we get. And still waiting
for the first response to come in.
MIKE: Director information
technology services, an advisor, online admissions advisor, academic
advising, director of advising, assistant dean, advisor and registrar,
counselor, director. Okay. Good. Well, looks as though most of you
have some direct relationship to academic advising, that you probably
have some responsibility in that area, even if that's not your job
title.
Slide: Session Overview
MIKE: What I'd like to do
to start with is to give you a brief introduction to the session
that we'll be conducting today and I want to talk about a variety
of types of technology that are used in academic advising. I'll
talk about some of the issues and innovations and resources related
to each topic and, in some cases, I'll actually be giving a demonstration
of some of those technologies.
Slide: Types of Technology
MIKE: The types of technology
— and this will be coming up on the next slide — that
I'll be covering today are e-mail, listservs, videoconferencing,
webcasts and websites. And I plan to spend most of my time talking
about websites both for students and for academic advisors, and
I'll just talk briefly about the other four types of technology,
and then provide some resources for additional information about
each one.
Slide: E-mail
MIKE: The first type of technology
that I'll mention is e-mail and I'm sure that all of you are familiar
with e-mail. The types of issues that I'm hearing advisors talk
about, first of all, are how to manage those particular form of
communication. Advisors that I've talked to everywhere are saying,
“How can I handle the volume of e-mail that I'm getting from students?”
Some of the questions are very complex ones, some are short. But
in any case, it takes time to respond to e-mail questions from advisees.
Advisors also have concerns about the ethical and legal issues
surrounding e-mail. For example, is it legal to communicate confidential
information over e-mail? If it is legal, is it even ethical to do
that? Advisors also want to know what works best in e-mail. What
kind of advising conversations can I have with an advisee over e-mail?
What types of conversations do not work very well via e-mail? And
I provided a Web address there for additional information that will
address all those particular issues in terms of e-mail.
I also want to point out that all the websites that I'll be mentioning
or highlighting or listing in the presentation today, plus some
additional related websites, are available on the WCET website,
and each one has a live link — you can just go to that site
later on and click on all the examples that I'll be highlighting
today.
PAT: Mike, one of the problems
that I hear about from colleges and universities is that students
have several e-mail addresses, and they don't necessarily use their
college address, making it very difficult for colleges to contact
them when they have something important to let the student know
about. Does that sound familiar to you? And if so, what are institutions
doing about that problem?
MIKE: Yes, I have heard of
advisors complaining about the problem with communicating with students.
At some universities, it's difficult for advisors or other university
officers to get in touch with students, not only via e-mail, but
also via paper mail, telephone calls, and other ways of trying to
contact the students. I know that at some institutions, professors
and advisors and other university offices will communicate with
students only through an official university e-mail address. So
that if a student writes to an advisor or university office and
uses a Hotmail account or AOL account, the office will simply not
respond to that individual or will respond by saying, “Please repost
your question to us via the university's e-mail account.”
Slide: Listservs
PAT: I see. Okay.
MIKE: The next type of technology
that I want to mention briefly is listservs. And probably all of
you are familiar with listservs because you probably are a member
of a variety of listservs that serve you for professional development
purposes. In terms of academic advising, some of you may be familiar
with ACADV, which comes out of the National Academic Advising Association
and that's a very active listserv for advisors. So it can be used
for professional development, but listservs can also be used in
advising for broadcasting information to groups of students. For
example, if an advising center wants to send out information to
students about deadlines or changes in policies or upcoming events,
a listserv is a very quick way for that information to get out to
a large group of students. In cases of broadcasting information,
students can't physically respond to those announcements; they simply
get the information — they're the recipients of the information.
But listservs can also be used for student-to-student interaction.
Like professional listservs, a student-to-student listserv could
allow students in a particular college or a major or department
talk about common interests, talk about common concerns, ask questions,
get answers from their peers. So it's another way of looking at
a listserv other than just being a recipient or through professional
development for advisors. I also want to highlight that there have
been some new advances in using listservs that now make available
some of the actions through the Web. In the past, when people wanted
to manage their list services, for example, if they were going on
vacation and they wanted to sign off temporarily, they would have
to send, sort of, arcane commands to the listserv itself. Those
who are managing listservs also had to do the same thing to add
new members or delete members and so on. But through new software
that's available on the Web, people can manage their subscriptions
through this Web interface and they can also manage listservs through
the same type of an interface.
PAT: Mike, I like the listservs
that allow you to archive the messages on the Web, so that you can
see what type of conversation's taken place on a topic that might
have been posted previously. And they also allow you to compile
messages so they're only sent to once a day, versus, whenever they
get posted.
MIKE: Right.
PAT: I think it's much more
convenient.
MIKE: Yes. And those are some
of the services that are now being handled on the new webserv service
through listserv, that people can read the archives, can search
the archives, can set their subscriptions to digests and so forth.
So it makes it much easier to handle through the new software.
Slide: Videoconferencing
MIKE: The next type of technology
that I want to mention briefly is videoconferencing. And some of
you are probably familiar with traditional videoconferencing which
typically requires special software, hardware, cameras, perhaps
a studio that's specially equipped to do the videoconferencing.
And it also means that the students or who are at a distance would
need to go to a lab or a studio somewhere where they could received
the videoconferencing. So it doesn't work very well in terms of
a one-on-one situation.
But there's another type of videoconferencing that makes it easier
for people to see each other in a one-on-one situation if they are
at a distance, and that's through webcams. Webcams, or web cameras,
are very inexpensive pieces of equipment that mount on the top of
a monitor. They hook into a PC, and they allow two individuals to
chat across the Internet and be able to see each other as well.
Now, the video quality is not terribly good, but it does help the
advisor in terms of being able to see the student's body language,
for example, and get more information from the student in a conversation
than you would get over a telephone line or over e-mail. And again,
I have a Web resource there for those who are interested in checking
out more about the webcams and videoconferencing.
A related type of technology that I wanted to mention is something
called webphones. And although there's no video involved in this,
it does use the Internet to provide PC-to-PC calling services, so
that if a student is at a distance and wants to talk to an advisor,
rather than incurring long distance telephone call charges, special
software can be used to place the call over a PC and then the advisor
and student can chat without really spending any money on long distance
phone calls.
PAT: I suppose, Mike, that
in some distance courses where students go to learning centers,
that video conferencing solutions may be more viable at this point.
Also this could be a good technology solution for orientation programs,
either to the institution or orientation to studying at a distance
or to a specific program that the institution is offering.
MIKE: I think the videoconferencing
offers a lot of possibilities, especially in terms of orientation,
because, for example, at Penn State, we have a lot of students who
come from outside the country, who are located a distance from Penn
State and other states. And although they may be coming to campus
in, let's say August, for the beginning of fall classes, if we wanted
to present information to them prior to that time, it would be possible
to set up videoconferencing services for people, let's say, in California,
a group of students who might be in a particular country might be
able to get together and take advantage of conference orientation
videoconferencing, for example.
Slide: Webcasts
MIKE: The fourth type of technology
that I want to highlight concerns webcasts. And what you're doing
right now is participating in a webcast, so WCET and other HorizonLive
sessions are examples of this type of technology. And from my experience
or what I've read, it looks as though webcasts are being used primarily
at this point for professional development purposes. That is, webcasts
are being provided to physicians and to attorneys and businesspeople
to update them on their skills, to provide new information to them
about doing their jobs. But I can see that webcasts could easily
be used to provide services to students. Webcasts could be used
to instruct or teach students about choice of major, let's say,
or how to choose a career, to provide information about academic
policies and procedures. And what's nice about webcasts is that
the only type of hardware a student really needs — and software
— is access to a website. They don't need a special camera.
They don't need to be at a special location. They can be at their
home. And take advantage of webcasts at the distance we are today.
And we're all over the country and perhaps all over the world, as
well.
The other thing that I like about webcasts in terms of providing
programs for students, is that if the webcast is archived, as we're
doing with this webcast, then it offers an asynchronous way of students
to take advantage of that webcast. This is, they don't have to be
viewing the webcast live; they can go to the archive later on, and
whether they select live or not, they can review everything that
was in the webcast. So if a webcast was providing a lot of information
to a student about, let's say, academic policies, it gives the student
a chance to review that material and really let it sink in a little
bit better. So having the archive, I think, is a great way of providing
this information on an ongoing basis to students, as well as doing
the live webcasts.
PAT: And Mike, certainly one
of our attendees, Mark Branson, has commented in the chat box that,
you know, the problem with videoconferencing is that it is asynchronous
and the advantage, then, of the webcast is that it provides that
asynchronous opportunity to students via the archives.
MIKE: Right, and I think it's
something that all of us should be thinking more about in terms
of academic advising, distance education, higher education and so
on, that it's not just a professional development opportunity; it
really could be used in many ways for students. Let me just summarize
quickly here by reminding everybody that I deliberately did not
go into detail about each one of these technologies, but rather
simply wanted to call your attention to them and to give you some
resources for further information if you want to investigate that.
And that'll give us more time to spend on some specific websites.
Slide: Web Sites for Advisers: eLion (Penn
State) Walk through with Mike
MIKE: What I want to first
show you are some websites that are designed for academic advisors.
So this will concern, again, professional development and their
advising. And I think that the key website is, obviously, the website
for the National Academic Advising Association that was mentioned
earlier. This provides many opportunities for professional development.
The association provides conferences, both at the national and the
regional level. It includes a clearinghouse that can be searched
for information on advising and higher education issues. There is
a consultants bureau, so if institutions are looking for individuals
that they could bring to their campuses to evaluate their services
or upgrade their services, they can consult the consultants through
the bureau. And I have the website listed there as well for additional
information, and I would encourage any of you who are in the field
of academic advising, whether you're called an advisor or not, to
take a look at the National Academic Advising Association.
PAT: This is a really good
site, Mike, and there is a monograph listed on the site, and you
can purchase through NACADA. It's published by NACADA. You may have
had something to do with it. It's called The eFactor in Delivering
Advising and Student Services, which I just finished reading. And
I'd really encourage our attendees today that, if they're interested
in redesigning their student services in academic advising that
this might be a very helpful resource for them.
MIKE: Right. NACADA does publish
a variety of monographs and there have been two published so far
on technology and academic advising. I was involved in the writing
of the first one and this newest one, called the eFactor, came out
about a year ago. And it does provide a lot of sort of, in some
cases, nuts and bolts ways of looking at technology and some philosophical
ways of considering it, as well.
Slide: Web Sites for Advisers
MIKE: The next website that
I'll show you on a slide, again, this is for academic advisors,
is related to NACADA. And this is the website for NACADA's Technology
in Advising Commission and, in particular, a section of that called
Academic Advising Resources on the Internet. And this section provides
links to hundreds of different academic and advising and higher
education resources arranged by topics. Some of the topics include
advising special populations and there are links there for information
about distance learners. Another popular section is degree audits
and student information systems, and there are a variety of links
there that go to vendors that provide those particular types of
services and software. And there's also a section on electronic
publication awards. NACADA gives out awards to electronic publications
each year and I'll be actually talking about some of the award-winning
sites in this particular presentation.
PAT: Now, Mike you're also
going to tell us about another site, I think, at Penn State University,
is that correct? This is in the publications area.
Slide: Web Sites for Advisers
MIKE: Yes. It's one last website
that I want to mention that's specifically for academic advisors
is called the Mentor and Academic Advising Journal, and this is
another professional development activity. This is an electronic
journal; it is available only on the Web. It has never been published
in the paper. And I think what's unusual about this particular publication
is that, rather than being published in discrete issues, let's say
quarterly issues or semi-annual issues, this journal is published
on a continuous basis in a current issue-in-progress. So, as articles
are received and reviewed by the editors they are published to the
Web and they remain there for three months in the current issue-in-progress,
at which point they are archived and available indefinitely through
the archives. So one article might be published let's say this week,
another one might be published next week. Another one might be published
a month later. An article might be published on a Monday, another
one might be published on a Thursday. So there's no true publication
schedule or discrete issues. And that allows issues or articles
to be published as soon as they're received and reviewed. There's
no waiting for them to come up to another issue. There's no issue
with deadlines. The articles go there as they're received, and it's
a rather interesting way of looking at a journal. It's something
that you obviously don't see in paper and even electronic journals
often tend to use the old paper format of publishing in discrete
issues.
PAT: And is this the publication
you're the managing editor for?
MIKE: Yes, so I might be biased
in this but I am the managing editor for the journal and I would
encourage everyone to take a look at that because there are some
very good articles that have been submitted to the journal. I would
encourage also everyone to consider writing for the journal as well.
PAT: Now, it's a free resource.
MIKE: Yes. It is completely
free. There are no charge there's no charge for access to either
the current issues or the archived issues or any of the other services
that are provided on the on the journal. We also have a monthly
advising forum where we provide a topic that advisors or anyone
can actually respond to and we publish those. So it's sort of like
a limited listserv activity.
PAT: Oh, that sounds great.
SUE: Mike, have been any hot
topics in the last six months or so that the Mentor has specifically
covered?
MIKE: I would say that some
of the technology issues in advising are particularly interesting
to people. One of the hottest forum topics we had concerned the
need, “Do we need theories of academic advising?” and that seemed
to get a lot of responses, as well. So it's sometimes it depends
on the time of year, but some issues are some advising forum topics
are more active than others.
MIKE: Now I'd like to switch
to some student-oriented websites that offer advising-related information.
Question: Which academic advising services...
PAT: Okay, now, as you're
preparing to do that, Mike, I'd like to ask some of our attendees
today what academic advising services their campus is providing
to students. So you should see a question on the screen now, which
says, “Which academic advising services does your campus make available
to students online, and select all that apply?” And just take a
minute to fill that out and then Sue can publish the results. We'll
get a better idea about what the current trend is.
MIKE: While you're completing
the survey and we're waiting for the results to be posted, I thought
I'd just tell you a little bit about what's coming up next in this
presentation. I'm going to be ascribing an award-winning website
from Excelsior College that integrates a variety of academic services
for students, and particularly those who are distance students.
And this, again, was one of the award-winning sites from the Electronic
Publication Awards sponsored by the National Academic Advising Association.
I'm also going to demonstrate another award-winning site. This is
from Penn State. And this site provides advising-related programs
for students and faculty and advisors, and the website is called
eLion and it's an example of what we'll be talking about in a minute
called the fourth generation of Web services. And it integrates
a variety of services into a single location for students and academic
advisors, and I hope to show you a live demonstration of that particular
website.
Results of Question
PAT: That's good to look forward
to. Looks like we've got lots of responses in.
SUE: We have. I think they've
slowed down so I'm going to go ahead and publish the results now.
PAT: Okay.
SUE: So we can see nice colorful
bar graph once again. And it looks like, Mike, the subject of “add/drop”
a class is good, in a way, and fortunately it's something you're
going to be specifically addressing.
MIKE: Right. That'll fit in
very nicely with this presentation.
PAT: That's great. So, quite
a few people have “build a class schedule,” too, and "create
the unofficial transcript."
MIKE: Right. Looks like very
few have something like “selecting a major” or “performing a graduation
check.”
PAT: Right.
MIKE: Or online. And that's
understandable I guess. Great. Okay.
PAT: We might mention that,
on the NACADA site, it links to a site that helps students pick
a major, if I remember correctly.
MIKE: Yes, I'd mentioned earlier
that all the websites that I'm highlighting today are available
as live links on the WCET website. And I have some additional links
there, as well, that we're not going to talk about in the presentation,
but one of those links concerns choosing a major, and it provides
a variety of links to other universities' attempts to help students
exploring majors and then finally selecting a major. So if you're
interested in that topic in particular, you can take a look at my
list of links on the WCET site as well.
Slide: Web Sites for Students
MIKE: Okay, the first website
for students that I'd like to mention today, which is as I said
earlier received a Certificate of Merit in the Electronic Publication
Awards and this was in 1999, is something called the Electronic
Peer Network out of Excelsior College. This is formerly the Regents
College. And this website provides a number of interactive services
to students including a book exchange and chat and discussion groups
for different groups of students, something they call a Study Buddy
Finder, which allows students to find somebody else that is interested
in studying with them on a particular course topic. They also have
an online distance course catalogue which has thousands of distance
courses listed there. It also serves as a resource for career information,
study materials. They have access to student records, so students
can look up their transcripts and degree audits through the Electronic
Peer Network. Students can register for tests online. They can take
tutorials, visit some library services. I think it's a great example
of a way of integrating a variety of services for students, especially
those who are distance students.
PAT: As you say, Mike, what's
really interesting about Excelsior's College's approach is that
it does present to the students these services in the integrated
fashion, really taking advantage of the nature of the Web, which
does that. Rather than recreating the silo approach of student services
that have been prevalent in the physical environments of most institutions.
This is a much more user-friendly type of site.
Slide: Access to the Webcast Archive for
“Trends in Electronic Student Services” with Darlene Burnett
MIKE: Right. And that really
leads into the next part of our discussion which is about the types
of websites that are available and I've just put up some information
here about a presentation that was done by Darlene Burnett. Darlene
did the October webcast for WCET on use of technology in student
services. And the slide that I'm showing you right now tells you
how you can view the archives for WCET and take a look at Darlene
Burnett's presentation later on. What I want to point out about
her presentation is that in it she talks about what she sees as
the four distinct generations in the evolution of Web services.
And in generation four, which she sees as the current top of the
line in Web services, she calls this “high tech” and “high tech,
high touch,” websites are arranged in ways that suit the user, not
the institution. And so that goes back to your comment, Pat, about
silos. In the past, institutions wanted to sort of organize their
websites by these silos, by department, by university offices and
so on. And in generation four, you arrange the website to suit the
students' needs, not the way the institution is arranged. In generation
four, the student may also be able to customize the look and feel
of the website to suit his or her own needs and preferences, and
so you'll often hear about portals — university portals we
can design this way where students can decide what they see on their
university's website. Sort of like the “My Yahoo,” or you know other
types “My PSU” or “My University” websites. Another feature of generation
four websites is that they contain personalized information that
pertains to a specific student and it's automatically displayed
for the student when they log into that personalized website. And,
in addition, generation four websites may use artificial intelligence
which can be used to learn who their student is. Know something
about that student specifically, and then to advise a student accordingly,
based on that information.
PAT: I think students have
really come to expect a personalized approach, don't you think,
Mike? I mean, they have experience with Amazon.com and so many commercial
sites before they come to college and they simply expect that they
happen at their institution as well.
MIKE: I think you're correct
that they are expecting that. And as Darlene pointed out in her
presentation, more and more institutions are upgrading their Web
services and generation four is where they're headed with this.
So as more and more students become accustomed to those types of
services institutions that don't provide that level of service will
be left behind in the dust, and the students will not be happy and
the institutions will not be seeing the type of student response
that they're hoping to get.
Slide: Web Sites for Advisers and Students
MIKE: What I'd like to show
you now is a demonstration on an example of a generation four website.
And I mentioned this earlier: it's called eLion, which is the Penn
State site. Penn State's mascot is the lion, so that's where this
website got its name. It is an interactive advising website. It
does feature the use of artificial intelligence and I think it's
an example of what Darlene Burnett called generation four. This
site was developed in response to concerns from students about the
quality of advising they were receiving, particularly from faculty
members who are not easily available, who perhaps weren't able to
answer the students' questions, and it also stemmed from concerns
from advisors, again, primarily faculty advisors, who were concerned
about the increasing complexity of the university. They were unable
to stay on top of all the rules and regulations. And so they wanted
more assistance in working with students and providing good advice,
as well.
This project was started in 1994, and it hasn't stopped growing
since then. I'll mention it was also a Certificate of Merit winner
in the National Academic Advising Association's Electronic Publication
Awards competition. I'm going to demonstrate just the student section
of eLion, although I want to point out that there are similarities
between that and the advisor section of eLion, as well.
eLion includes a number of advising-related applications that allow
students to interact with the system in a number of different levels
of complexity. So, in some applications, eLion uses artificial intelligence
to simulate one-on-one advising scenarios in which the sort of electronic
advisor uses individual student data along with responses to questions
that are posed by the electronic advisor that’s provided advice
concerning specific academic procedures such as dropping a class.
So we saw that many institutions in our survey did say they provide
dropping and adding services on the Web for students.
And so I want to show you what level that has gone to in terms
of artificial intelligence. The Web address of the actual eLion
system is on the slide that you see in front of you right now. But
the demonstration version that I'm going to be showing to you is
listed on the WCET site if you wanted to go back and take a look
at the demonstration later on.
PAT: Okay. And, Mike, as you
walk us through this, it's going to be important for people to stay
with you, is that correct?
Slide: eLion Demonstration
MIKE: That's correct. Now,
those of you who are participating in this webcast, what I'm going
to do is open a new Web browser window on your PCs and it should
have the eLion demonstration on it. So we'll give a few minutes
for that site to come up for everyone. And if your Web browser is
not maximized, in other words, if it's not filling the screen, please
maximize it so you can see everything in the eLion demonstration
that we're going to be doing.
SUE: Okay. I've got it.
MIKE: Sue will keep an eye
on the chat area to see if anybody's having problems with this.
We're going to go on and assume that everybody can now see the eLion
demonstration and the Web browser on their own PC. Now, you're going
to be controlling this part of the demonstration. I won't be able
to do everything. But I'd first like to call your attention to the
sliding menu on the left, and if you just want to browse up and
down the menu, you'll see some of the kinds of things that students
can do after they've logged into eLion using their secure access
ID and password. So this is individualized information. You can
see that students can check their bursar account, they can look
at degree audits, they can drop and add classes, they can check
their placement score results. They can calculate grade point averages.
They can check printing charges. They can get refund information,
follow their semester bill. They can withdraw from the university.
So there are a lot of things that they can do this particular menu
in eLion. I will point out that the items that are in bold on your
menu in this demonstration are those items that I've sort of set
up for this demonstration.
So if you come back to this website later on, you can go through
some of the demonstration of these other types of applications.
I won't have time to show you all of them today. In fact, you may
want to bookmark this website at this point so you can come back
to it later. In Netscape you would bookmark this site; in Internet
Explorer, you would add it to your favorite places. I believe that's
what that's called. Right. Add it to your favorites.
You'll also notice in the window on the right that there is a section
called personal messages. In this example, it says “You have no
messages,” but what this allows university offices to do is to target
individual students or groups of students and then force messages
out to the system when the student logs in. For example, the registrar
may target certain individuals who look like they should be graduating
in the upcoming semester, and they may push a message to the student
saying, on this particular screen, “It looks as though you're eligible
to graduate. You should file your intent to graduate or check with
your department,” or whatever the issue might be. The bursar's office
might want to push messages to students who have not filed their
bill yet, or who have not paid for their courses for the upcoming
semester, and remind just those students that they need to do that.
Academic advisors or advising centers may want to push messages
to individual students, telling them about upcoming events or the
need to declare a major by a certain deadline and so on. So this
is another part of the generation four. The system knows who's logged
in and is able to push messages to that student without a student
actually requesting the messages.
I'd like to talk about several different levels of interaction
that can occur through eLion. The simplest level is that the student
is given the opportunity to look up their own data. So through this
operation students can check their grades, they can look at a copy
of their schedule and so on. And that's a relatively simple level
of interaction. A second level of interaction would be allowing
the student to actually update some of their own data. So, in eLion,
students can change or update their mailing address, their home
address, their local address, emergency addresses, and so on. That's
another level of interaction, because it actually does a lot of
students who get into the student records database and change the
database.
PAT: So these systems are
integrated then, Mike? The data systems.
MIKE: That's right. Once the
student logs into eLion, they have that single log-in and then they
can access all the information that's in the menu on the left. They
can check all those university records, do all the interactions
with one simple log-in.
PAT: Oh, that's great.
SUE: Okay, Mike, I have a
question from zbiggs, in our audience, he wants to know if eLion
interfaces with the university e-mail accounts.
MIKE: It does in some cases.
For example, when a student is checking his or her schedule, there's
an opportunity for the student to e-mail a copy of that to their
account. In the advising section, which I won't be showing you today,
advisors have the option of sending e-mail to their assigned advisees,
either to the entire roster of assigned advisees or they can select
certain students out of the list of advisees, and send an e-mail
to them that way. So there's not an opportunity for students or
advisors to check their e-mail through eLion - at this point, anyway,
although that's been discussed — but there is an opportunity
for advisors and students to communicate with each other or themselves
by sending copies of things to their e-mail accounts.
SUE: Thanks.
MIKE: Sure. Another level
of interaction that's possible in eLion is using specific student
data, for example, knowing who the student is, knowing about their
past academic record, and then taking student input and using that
information to calculate some sort of straightforward outcomes.
For example, a student can indicate what grades they anticipate
earning in the courses they're enrolled in in the current semester,
and then that'll calculate, based on their past academic record,
the semester average and the cumulative average they would have
if they earned those particular grades.
PAT: I bet that's a popular
tool.
MIKE: It is. It is very popular.
It’s also available in the advisor's section of eLion, so I've worked
with, we all have worked with students in our own offices who have
said “I think I'm getting a D in this course, or I'm getting a whatever
grade in this course, I want to know what impact it's going to have
on my average.” And, in some cases, students who were thinking about
dropping a course found out that the grades they were earning was
more than enough to get them the end result that they were looking
for. So it has saved some students from getting rid of courses although
they really didn't need to that because they were doing okay and
their overall average was going to be fine. Our fourth level of
using specific interaction is using specific student data, again,
knowing who the student is by accessing the student records database
behind the scenes, and then taking responses that are supplied to
the student to specific questions posed in these interactive advising
sessions, and using artificial intelligence to provide outcomes
and recommendations on certain student actions. For example, I'm
going to be demonstrating the late course drop module. And through
that module and through a series of scenarios, the electronic advisor
provides information advice to the student about, “What will happen
if I late/drop this particular course?”
As we go through this demo, as Pat mentioned earlier, it's going
to be important for you to stay with me on the various screens that
we're going to be going through. If you do get lost, don't worry.
I'd suggest that you sit back and listen to the audio portion of
it and then you can come back to this demonstration later on and
go through it on your own. What I'd like everyone to do at this
point is to scroll the menu on the left down to the section that
says "late course drop" and that is in bold. And simply
click on that particular link, and if that works for everybody,
it should bring up in the right frame a section marked "late
course drop" with a help link and below that, in red, a caution,
"Stop, important read this before continuing." And that'll
let you know that you're now in the late/drop course demonstration
area. Pat and Sue, is that working for you?
SUE: I've got it.
MIKE: Okay. Again, just to
help people catch up, on the menu on the left, choose the "late
course drop" application, just click on it once, and it should
bring up the "late course drop" in the right frame. Okay.
Now, we're going to spend a lot of time reading through the text
that's on that initial screen. But basically, it tells a student
what's going to happen in this particular application. That if they
plan to drop a course, there are time limits and so forth. By the
way, at Penn State, a late course drop is dropping a course from
the fifteen weeks semester schedule starting on the 11th day of
the semester through to the end of the 12th week of the semester.
That's considered a late/drop. And there are restrictions on how
many credits a student can late/drop before they graduate, and there
are a number of other issues that surround late course drop.
PAT: And you've put the time
zones in there.
MIKE: Right.
PAT: There's no confusion.
MIKE: Yes. That’s particularly
important for students who are at a distance, because their time
zones are obviously, in many cases, very different from what we're
operating on, and so it's important for them to know what the restrictions
are in terms of the time zone situation in processing certain actions.
What I'd like everyone to do now is to scroll to the bottom of the
screen on their right, the introductory screen for the late/drop,
and click on the button that says "continue to late/drop interactive
advising."
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: Okay? Give everybody
a few seconds for that next screen to come up. And what we are attempting
to do here is to simulate a scenario a one-on-one advising situation
between the student and an academic advisor. And so we attempted
to integrate some conversational language into this scenario so
you'll see on that screen, on the right, there's an introduction
from the advisor saying, "Hi. How are you today? I see you're
here for some advice about late/drop. Which one of your courses
are you thinking about dropping?" And the directions tell the
student to click on a course in their current schedule, and this
is a student's schedule — they have English and biology and
psychology and so forth. Click on a course they're thinking about
late/dropping and then they'll get some further advice about that.
So, in this case we’re sort of in the demo version, we've pre-plugged
in the Biology 110. We've clicked on that already. So the student
is thinking about late/dropping Biology 110 from their schedule.
And if everyone will scroll to near the bottom of that screen and
click on the “continue” button again.
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: The next screen that
will come up will have a cautionary note at the top telling the
student that they have not yet late/dropped that particular course,
Biology 110. That they must continue through the advising information
before they'll be permitted to late/drop it. And that will provide
some individual information about that student. So we know the student's
name, for example. It'll say, "Michael, I see you're thinking
about late/dropping Biology 110, which is a four-credit course."
We tell them what the late/drop period is for that course: it's
September 2 through November 17, which means if they are going to
late/drop the course it has to be done no later than November 17.
PAT: And it's important that
you give specific dates, because for distance courses, those start
and end times often vary, meaning the late/drop times will vary.
MIKE: That's right. Even at
Penn State, where we have traditional fifteen week semesters, not
all of our courses start and end at the same time. So there are
courses at Penn State that have different beginning and ending late/drop
dates and drop dates and so forth. So even for us, in a traditional
residential campus, it's important for students to know what the
deadlines are for each course on their schedule. So let's check
the biology course and then determine what the late/drop deadline
was for that specific course. Then the advisor says, "I’ll
use the following information to advise you about what would happen
if you late/drop Biology 110." And it says to the student,
“You are currently enrolled in seventeen credits, which is considered
a full-time credit load at Penn State. You've already used three
of the maximum sixteen late/drop credits you're allowed. You have
thirteen late/drop credits remaining out of sixteen. If you do late/drop
Biology 110, which is a four-credit course, you'll have only nine
late/drop credits remaining.” And then we have some other information
there, just to remind the student of what college they're enrolled
in and what campus they're enrolled at, and so forth.
If you scroll down that screen, you'll see some other general information
about late/drop that I'm not going to bother to cover at this point.
You can take a look at that later if you want to go back to the
demonstration. You'll notice that we tell students that they must
process a late/drop by November 17, but if it's too late for them
to do that they might be able to consider some other types of activities:
deferred grades or withdrawals at Penn State. Again, if everyone
will scroll to the bottom of their screen on the right, and, again,
click the “continue” button.
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: The next screen that
comes up again provides the same cautionary information.
PAT: I think that's great
you give those cautions every time.
MIKE: Right, it is important
for students to know that, because some of them — before we
had the caution on there — assumed they had dropped the course
and, in fact, had not done that.
Now, we're telling the student that, for us to provide major-specific
advice about dropping Biology 110 that we need to know what major
they want us to use when we advise them. Because, obviously, if
a student is dropping Biology 110 and they're planning to major
in English, at least at Penn State, they don't need Biology 100
in the English major. But if they're planning to major in the Biology
major, they do need Biology 100. So the consequences of dropping
that course differ from major to major. So if you scroll down to
the grade buttons on that screen, you'll see that the student is
currently enrolled in the chemistry major and they could click on
the button that says "use current major" which is chemistry,
and they would be advised about what would happen if they late/dropped
that biology course and they were in the chemistry major. Or they
can choose a different major. And this list that you see on the
screen on the pull-down menu, where it says "use major selected
below," that's a dummied up list that I created for this demonstration.
Obviously, at Penn State there are many more majors there. But
a student could say, well, I'm in the chemistry major but I'm actually
thinking about switching into — in this case we'll say —
pre-medicine. And so the student could use the pre-medicine major
for the advice instead of the major they're currently enrolled in.
The student could also click on the “undecided” button and say,
“Well, I'm not sure really what I do want to major at this point,
but just give us some general advice about dropping Biology 110,
not tied to a specific major.” So, in this example, we're going
to say the student, although they’re in the chemistry major, is
thinking about majoring in pre-medicine. So if you will click on
the "use major selected below" button, the intention is
could be that we're going to look at that pre-medicine major and
what implications that has.
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: Okay. All right, we've
moved on to the next screen. And now the question is posed by the
advisor: "And why are you thinking about late/dropping Biology
110?" And we provide a list of reasons there for the student
to select from. These reasons were derived by surveying the advising
community at Penn State. And we said, "When students come into
your office to talk about late/drop, what are their reasons that
they give you for wanting to late/drop a course?" And so we
took all those suggestions from the advisors and sort of put them
together into these particular categories.
You'll see that three's a note just above that table of reasons
for late/drop and it says "the reason that you, the student,
select will be used only to advise you and will not be shared with
anyone else." That's important, because, when we tested this
particular application, we found that some students were saying,
“Is my instructor going to find out that I'm thinking about dropping
the course and are they going to find out why I'm thinking about
dropping it?” And so that obviously was important if the student
was going to say “I'm having problems with the instructor,” they
didn't want the instructor to know that information. So we tell
them it's not used by anybody else. We also tell them that, although
they can only select one reason at this point in the process, they'll
be given a chance to come back and select other reasons if there's
more than one reason why they're thinking about late/dropping. And
then they'll be given advice about each of those reasons for late/drop.
PAT: Now, Mike, is this used
by both undergraduate and graduate students or just undergraduates?
MIKE: It's currently available
only to undergraduate students. And even then there are some restrictions
on who may use it. for example, for any of our undergraduates are
spending a semester abroad, they are not permitted to late/drop
it via this mechanism, and they're actually referred to the International
Students’ Office — or, in this case, Abroad Office, for information
on how they can late/drop it. So there's a lot of checking going
on behind the scenes that you're not necessarily seeing here that
determines who has access to it, what the outcomes are and so forth.
PAT: I see.
MIKE: Now, if everyone will
again scroll to the bottom of that screen you'll see that the student
has chosen "I have fallen too far behind in this class"
as their reason they're thinking about dropping the class. So if
everyone will click on the “continue” button again.
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: The next screen that
comes up and that would come up no matter what reason the student
gave is there'd be some reflection on what that means in terms of
late/dropping a course and how a student might be able to address
that particular problem that's caused them to think about late/dropping
the course. I won’t read through that text. But if you scroll down
to about the middle of that screen you'll see some words in bold
there and it says, "Since Biology 110 is required for your
selected pre-med major, I suggest that you discuss with your instructor
the possibility of successfully completing this course."
So what this has done now, it has gone against the degree audit
system that we use at Penn State to find out whether the Biology
110 course the student is thinking about dropping is required in
the pre-med major, which is what the student is thinking about majoring
in. And in fact, in this case, it is required in the pre-med major
and it's telling the student up front that this is a required course.
If they drop it, that's going to have some certain repercussions.
Again, there's some additional text there about considering dropping
other courses since this one's a required course. And that they
may want to talk to an academic advisor before they actually go
ahead with this session. We're going to assume the student does
want to go ahead with the session and so, again, if you'll scroll
to the bottom of that screen on the right and then click on the
“continue” button.
PAT: Yes.
MIKE: Okay. In the next screen
the advisor is asking the student "What grade do you think
you're earning in this course?" And we provide all the possible
grades at Penn State. We do know some students are thinking about
late/dropping courses that they're doing fairly well in. C grades
or better. So we give them the opportunity to choose any possible
grade there. In this case, the student has indicated that they think
they're earning a D in the Biology 110. So again, scroll to the
bottom and click on the “continue” button. And in every case, in
every scenario here, we ask the students whether they've checked
with their course instructor to be sure that the grade they think
they're earning is really what they're earning.
We've had a lot of experiences in person knowing that a student
will come in and say “I'm thinking about dropping this course.”
We send them to the instructor to find out if they're actually doing
what they think they're doing, and sometimes the students will keep
a course because they're doing better than they thought. Or they
find out that there are chances for extra credit and so forth. So
we always ask the student to check with the instructor first before
they make a decision about late/dropping. And in this case, we're
asking the question, "Have you talked with the instructor?"
And let's say that the student says, "Yes, I have checked with
my instructor. I'm really earning a D in Biology 110." So on
that screen, near the bottom, we'll click on the "Yes, let's
go on" button.
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: And now we're giving
the student some information about some possible outcomes if they
do drop this particular course in which they anticipate earning
a grade of D. A reminder there that this course is a requirement
for the pre-med major which is the major they selected, and that
if they’re dropping the course it means they will have to reschedule
it. There's a bit of information there about majors that have what
we call administrative enrolment controls and that there may be
time limitations for completing the course. So it links to the university's
undergraduate advising handbook that explains which majors have
the controls, and what the time limitations are.
We also remind the student that the course may or may not be offered
the following semester, and so we link to the Registrar's website
which gives a list of the courses that are going to be offered the
following semester. And there's some other general information there
as well, including if they have financial aid, they should check
with Student Aid to find out if that they might need that course
for financial aid progress.
PAT: So this system really
amasses so much information and that a student needs in order to
make that decision, and amasses it instantaneously.
MIKE: That's right. It's pulling
all this information in from the student records database, all at
one time, and then it's using the questions that are generated by
the system and the responses from the student to provide the outcomes
and the advice. Now, one thing you'll notice underneath the link
that says financial aid, there's a paragraph there that is really
a very advising-oriented kind of a scenario. It's not telling the
student about the outcome of, you know, the codes that they'll get
on their record if they late/drop or the courses offered the next
semester, it's really a philosophical discussion about what it means
to be earning a D grade — or worse — in a course that's
required in the major that they're thinking about.
What the advisor says electronically on this system is "One
thing that concerns me is that you anticipate earning a grade of
D in a course that is required by the major you selected. This might
be an appropriate time to re-examine your academic plans. What do
you think were the reasons you are not earning a better grade in
this course? Are you really interested in this major? Is the content
too difficult for you? Are you not studying enough? Are there other
majors or courses that you should consider instead?" And so
it's opening up to the student the notion that. “Does this make
sense? Does it make sense that I'm considering a major in which
I'm not getting a very good grade in a required course?” It's a
kind of a conversation we would all have in person with a particular
student who comes to us with this grading situation.
PAT: Well, and it gives a
student a chance to think about those questions before meeting with
an advisor, so they're not just responding to those questions off
the top of their head.
MIKE: Right. So it prepares
them for an advising context and we do discuss or, we do mention
in this case that we recommend the student see an academic advisor
to discuss their educational plans. We're simply planting the seed
by asking those questions, but, yes, as we point out, Pat, something
that we hope the student will discuss with an advisor. Now, you'll
notice in the four buttons at the bottom of the screen, the student
can now — we're not going to do this — but a student
can select a different major and get advice about dropping Biology
110 for a different major. They can select a different reason for
why they're thinking about late/dropping the course, and get advice
about that reason. But we're going to say the student is ready to
go on, and so we'll click on the button that says "continue
with late/drop."
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: And this is nearing
the end of the process, now, and it says, "Getting the student
reminder that the late/drop period ends on November 17th, by late-dropping
the course they accept the consequences of their actions.” If they
have any doubts at all about dropping this course on eLion, they
should consult with an advisor, check with their instructor, and
they can also read the official word on the late/drop policies and
procedures in the undergraduate advising handbook. So we'll say
the student is definitely ready to go ahead. Last question on there
is "Do you want to late/drop Biology 100 from your schedule
now?" And so we'll say the student says, "Yes, drop the
course from my schedule." So click on that button.
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: And you'll notice that
we now requires the student re-enter their password. This is going
to update their academic records. It's going to drop a course from
their schedule. It's an important decision that they're making at
this point and we want to make sure that they're the ones that are
actually updating their record by re-entering the password. At this
point, you don't need to type anything in. You can just click on
the “okay” button. But the student would actually type in their
password at this point. Click on “okay.” And in the next screen,
you see in red a confirmation message that says, "You have
successfully late/dropped Biology 110. You will receive an e-mail
verification of this transaction." And the advisor says, "Okay,
Michael, you have now officially late/dropped this from your fall
schedule. Here's your revised schedule" — which we post
at the bottom of that screen — "with your remaining courses."
And so that provides a verification the course really is gone.
And we also tell the student that the verification sent to their
e-mail address and a copy is also sent to the student's academic
advisor and there's the advisor's e-mail address on the screen as
well, should the student want to contact them directly about this.
We also encourage them to check their updated schedule on eLion
in another section. One last page before we leave this demonstration.
At the very bottom of the last screen that we're looking at there,
there's a sentence that says "This page is maintained by eLion."
If you click on the eLion link at the bottom of the page.
PAT: Yes.
MIKE: You’ll see another page
that I created specifically for this demonstration that shows you
the factors that are involved in this late course drop application.
It shows you the individual student data that we're retrieving from
the records database, the student's name, their registration status,
whether they have holds on their registration or not, their schedule,
their credit load, a number of other factors we check to see if
a student is a student athlete, whether they're an honor student,
whether they’re on education abroad. And their advice that's provided
the students is based all on that information that we know about
them, as well as on their response to the key questions, which is
what the next section shows. And we saw from the questions that
we ask in this particular advising scenario.
We have some generic student factors, in other words, we don't
check to see if they have financial aid, we don't know if they have
health insurance, but we say if this is the situation, then you
should follow up on the issue and check before you late/drop the
course. I'm not going to take a look at everything on that particular
web page, but if you have a chance later on to go back to it, I'd
encourage you to take a look at all the things that are going on
behind the scenes in this late/drop application that was programmed
for eLion.
PAT: Excellent. That's a great
demonstration, Mike.
MIKE: Okay, thanks. What we
want to do at this point is to close out the eLion demonstration
so we can get back to the webcast screen itself. So for everyone
of you who is looking at the eLion's page to this point, what I'd
like to you to do is to go up to the upper right hand corner of
your screen, there should be a an X there on your web browser, simply
you either want to close out that window or minimize it. I would
suggest you close it out. And in doing that, that should bring you
back to the HorizonLive WCET webcast panel.
Question: What other institutions have good
models...
MIKE: Okay. And before I take
some questions from our attendees, I'd like to ask those of you
who are participating in the webcast to recommend some institutions
with good models for web-based academic advising and talk about
what types of services they are providing. So Sue has posted that
question in the webcast window and if you would just type in other
types of institutions that you know that have good advising modules,
and we'll take a look at the results of that in a second.
PAT: And while people are
filling that out, Mike, could you tell me a little bit about how
the academic advisors at Penn State view this system? I mean, how
long did it take you, for example, to develop this system, just
for the late/drop module?
MIKE: The late/drop module
itself took probably about nine months of development time in terms
of figuring out what we wanted to do with it from an advising perspective.
The eLion team consisted of academic advisors, representatives from
the Registrar's Office, representatives from the technology community.
We had a faculty member on the team. We had representatives from
different colleges at Penn State and from different campuses at
Penn State that were involved in developing a number of eLion applications,
including the late/drop application.
Initially, we went out to the advising community and talked about
what we were planning to do in eLion and one of the demonstrations
we did was possible scenarios in allowing the student to late/drop
on eLion. And as you might imagine this caused some consternation
among some people because prior to that time, a student could not
late/drop unless they went to an advisor's office, got a signature
on a late/drop form and then took it to the Registrar's Office or
processed it in their own department. And of course, what was happening
is that, in many cases, students weren't really being advised anyway
when they went in to get a signature. All they got was the signature
and, you know, that was processed by the Registrar's Office and
no questions were asked. So when we told advisors and other members
of the university community that we were going to give students
the opportunity to late/drop on their own, without talking to an
advisor, again, there was a lot of concern about that. However,
later on, when we demonstrated the actual late/drop applications
for folks, we had people coming up and saying I was wrong.
I had concerns about how this was going to work. I am very impressed
by the end result of this process. And many advisors were willing
to admit that when they talked to student about the late/drop process,
they were not always aware of all the ins and outs of that particular
policy. They might not think to ask a student, "Do you have
financial aid?" "Do you have medical insurance that might
be affected if you become a part-time student?" "Are you
a student athlete and what impact will that have if you drop this
course?" So it provides consistent advice and information for
all students, whether they ask the right questions or not, they're
being asked the right questions through the system. So I think,
at this point, advisors are very accepting of the process of the
application.
The Registrar's Office tells us that since we instituted the late/drop
application, fewer students are actually late-dropping courses.
And we think the reason is that we're providing alternatives to
them, as well as providing outcomes to them that may cause them
to question whether it's in their best interest to actually late/drop
a course or not.
PAT: Though I bet many of
them are using that system in the middle of the night and spending
the time to go through it step by step, when otherwise they might
call or see an advisor and handle all this in five minutes.
MIKE: That's right. Many of
the students do decide to late/drop at the very last minute. We
see many of them the last three days of late/drop, or at least we
used to see them the last three days on a walk-in basis. And now
they're really doing it online and, as you pointed out, this system
is available much longer during the day and during the weekend than
advisors are. Typical office hours at Penn State are 8:00 to 5:00
and this system is available from 7:30 in the morning until three
o'clock in the next morning. So, that was another feature that we
saw for eLion, is that it made advising and information available
on a much more broad basis than what a student would have access
to through an academic advisor.
PAT: Okay. Well, can we maybe
stop there and ask Sue to let us know what we've got in terms of
results?
Slide: Response to Question
SUE: Well, I have two pieces
of feedback. I think we might have had a problem with people entering
their content because I only had four people respond to this question
and only Janet Kendall's comments got through to me.
PAT: Okay.
SUE: So maybe something else
we can talk about, Mike, then are the comments in the chat box.
MIKE: Sure. let's just do
that, yeah.
Slide: Questions? Mike Leonard: 814-865-7576,
www.personal.psu.edu/mjl3
SUE: Specifically, what software
are you using? How do you make this all possible?
MIKE: Okay.
SUE: Once you go through that
extensive decision tree analysis, how do you make it work?
MIKE: As somebody mentioned
in the survey that you just did, Penn State is a big place. But
I want you to know that we started out with nothing. The web team
was formed out of existing people on campus. We weren't given any
release time for our responsibilities for this new application.
We really just sort of dug in and started working on it. We didn't
have an office, we didn't have any programmers, we didn't have any
money. This is something that we just started doing at the request
of some of the administrators.
The software that we used to write this is called SmallTalk. And
actually I think many other universities could accomplish the same
thing in a much simpler way. Penn State student records database
is not a typical database. It's called Adabase, which has been a
software product; we've had it for years. It's not any of the standard
types of databases that people might have, like Sequel or Oracle,
there are many more programmers who are familiar with those types
of databases, and so could probably develop something like this
much more easily than we did with our, sort of, specialized software
needs.
The decision tree, I think, is something that would depend on the
individual institution — each institution is going to have
a slightly different set of policies and procedures. But I think
the process that we went through is the same kind of a process that
any institution might go through in developing a module like this.
PAT: Okay, Mike, I think what
we need to do right now is thank you for doing a wonderful presentation.
MIKE: You're welcome.
PAT: I think the demo in particular
shows the potential for many institutions out there. And I'd like
to ask if you would be willing to stay on for a little bit longer
and answer some other questions from the chat box.
MIKE: Absolutely. No problem.
PAT: Okay, thanks great. What
we'd like to do now, though, is just ask folks to participate in
our evaluation so that we can collect some information that'll help
us as we prepare future webcasts. And I also want to tell you that
our next one will be on January 16, at noon Mountain Time, when
Donna Ford — and I see she was attending this session today
— she's the former counselor with Clackamas Community College
in Oregon, and also President of the American Counseling Association.
And she will be our guest to discuss Cyber-Counseling: Best Practices
for Student Services.
Slide: Evaluation Survey
SUE: I've posted the evaluation
because we are over time.
PAT: We are.
SUE: And people are dropping
from the participants list. I know that people need to get going,
but if they could take a few moments to fill out our evaluation
we'd really appreciate it. We've tried to do better each time and
try to respond to our participants' concerns and needs. We've mentioned
our website a couple of times during the webcast today. Please go
to it and check out more information about our project — this
webcast series, our speakers — and I'll just verbally say
what our URL is. It is www.wiche.edu/wcet. This webcast has been
recorded and archived. It will probably be available in a couple
of days, and it will be available for approximately a year on our
website.
PAT: Okay, thanks, Sue, very
much for your help today in getting all the questions up and watching
the chat box for us. Do you think that we could possibly put that
website address up in maybe another minute or so? So folks can find
it. And we will return to the chat box. Mike, there's a question
there about, “Does your software interface with PeopleSoft?”
MIKE: As far as I know, it
does not. We basically have our own version of PeopleSoft that was
developed at Penn State probably in the early '80s, and Penn State
hired an outside institution to come in and develop its own student
information system, which included record-keeping, student systems,
bursar, business, human resources, degree audit and so forth. And
we went through many of the same kinds of problems that PeopleSoft
institutions are finding right now, in terms of implementing the
software and so on. So we don't use PeopleSoft anywhere on our campuses.
We have our own version of it. And so, essentially, eLion is interfacing
with our version of PeopleSoft.
PAT: Excellent. I also see
there's a question there from Janet Kendall about could she get
an answer to the question regarding the need for human contact,
of distance learners, at other places? My understanding of eLion
is not that it is to replace the human academic advisor; it is merely
to take some of the routine tasks that an academic advisor might
have to perform and automate those tasks. So that, sort of, a higher
touch could happen because there is more quality time for an academic
advisor and a student. Is that the way this was designed?
MIKE: That's very well put,
Pat. Because that is exactly what we were attempting to do and that
is to sort of strip off the top layers of information-giving and
some of the basic information and service that an advisor might
provide to a student. I'll give you another example that a number
of years ago — this was probably, again, back in the early
'80s — Penn State when to a telephone registration system.
And prior to that, students had to come in and see an advisor early
in the semester, again obtain a signature so they could submit a
registration form. And when we heard about telephone registration,
the advisors said, “Well, what's going to happen now, the students
won't come in to see us because they won't need our signature to
register. They'll register on their own, they'll make inappropriate
choices, we'll never see them: it'll be a mess.”
And actually, what we found out, and this is true of other institutions
as well, is that when we provided this service to students, we still
saw the students coming in to talk about other issues, not just
schedule planning. And it really took some of the, sort of, the
burden of us in dealing with some of the details of advising, and
it really allowed us more in the way of mentoring, helping students
explore on a much deeper level, helping them analyze and synthesize
information that they were gathering and making a variety of decisions.
And so actually, what we had happen was we saw more students and
we saw them more frequently after the telephone registration went
into effect because they did those things on their own, sort of,
you know, the mechanics of it, but they still came in to see us
to talk about issues, to talk about schedule planning, yes, that
was part of it as well, but really they got more into issues than
they had in the past when they came in just to quickly grab a signature
to register.
MIKE: So eLion does many of
those same things as well. It provides a way of getting some information,
of processing some decisions, but we still see students for those
issues, but we're often dealing with them on a much deeper level.
Slide: Website: http://www.wiche.edu/wcet/
SUE: Excellent. What I would
like to do now is to launch another window. It's our wiche.edu/wcet
website. People can minimize it or resize or anything that is helpful.
If people are unfamiliar with WCET you're welcome to add it to your
favorites list or bookmark it. But what I'd like to do is point
out information about our webcast series. It's the first column
of text, Student Services Webcast Series, and you can see the links
there to Mike's online resources, and also there's a link for the
archive, for the previous webcasts. And that's how people can access
the two main things that we've been talking about today.
PAT: That's great, Sue.
SUE: Okay. I'd also like to
let you know that Donna Ford has asked twice about the number of
website hits. I think she's interested, Mike, in eLion, but she
also asked it earlier regarding I think it was the Excelsior site.
Are there are any statistics that you have regarding the number
of hits?
MIKE: I don't know what the
usage would be on the Excelsior site. I guess you'd have to contact
Excelsior College to find out if they know how many students are
using those services and what parts they're using mostly. eLion
gets hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hits all the time, every
year. Not only from students, but from advisors and faculty, as
well. Students register on eLion, they drop and add courses on eLion,
they file their bill on eLion, they get their grades on eLion. So,
for a lot of different reasons, students are using this centralized
service to assist them in their educational planning. And we do
track the statistics there. I haven't seen any recently, but I do
know that it is in the hundreds of thousands of hits. On all the
applications that we offer, students are using all of them.
PAT: Mike, we now have another
more sort of technical question which is, "Would Penn State
be interested in selling this application or code to other institutions
who could customize it to their own needs?"
MIKE: We have definitely looked
into that possibility, but I think that our system is so specific
that the application itself is specific, the code is specific, I
don't think it would be of much use to other institutions. I think
the best we could probably do is offer consulting to other institutions
in the development of a program of a system like this. But, again,
because Penn State's student records databases is rather unusual,
everything we've built around that is also unusual. And unfortunately,
although I'm sure administrators would love to be able to sell this
application, I just don't think it would export to other institutions
at all very well. Not so much the details of, you know, when your
late/drop period is and what the dates are and things like that.
It's really the software itself that's behind all of that, I just
don't think would work well with other software.
PAT: And while that might
not work well with other institution's software, I think what this
demonstrates is a great deal of thinking that went on among academic
advisors of just about the process. And I would venture to guess
that he processes are very similar at other institutions. The dates
might be different and some of the details may be different. But
to a great extent, I imagine it's a similar process and that kind
of thinking could be very helpful to other institutions. I mean,
it's a good model I would think, to help other institutions sort
of jump start their own process.
MIKE: Right, I think that's
the key: it's the thinking that goes on behind the system. I think
once you have programmers that can do what you want them to do,
anybody could attempt a project like this. But it's really knowing
what are the philosophical issues in advising the student, how much
do you tell them, how much do you let them do on their own? What
are the points that you need to cover? Have you covered everything
with the student in a particular advising scenario? We did a similar
application with withdrawal. So, actually, students can officially
withdraw from the university using an eLion application which with
a similar type of scenario, why do students withdraw, what are their
reasons they say that they are planning to withdraw? What are the
alternatives? What can we offer them in a way of keeping them at
the university? If they decide to withdraw, what outcomes can they
expect? How will they get back into the university? So yes, it's
the process. It's the thinking process behind it, that's really
the hard part.
PAT: Another issue that folks
are raising that I've heard at other institutions is a concern about
job security. Was that a problem at Penn State, when you began to
automate this kind of system; were academic advisors that concerned
that their positions might be phased out?
MIKE: I think some advisors
might have had that concern. I think some administrators might have
been hoping that that would be the case, that they could save some
money by having an electronic system like this. Those of us who
are on the development team never considered that as a possibility.
We knew that that was not going to happen. But, as I said before,
no matter how much information you provide to a student or how much
programming you put behind it, that students are going to want to
have an individual contact with an advisor, they're going to want
to have the personal contact, the one-on-one or the group situation
or whatever it might be. And so we never thought, by any stretch
of the imagination, that this was going to replace advisors, no
matter how comprehensive it might become.
We've added more applications to the eLion system since we've started,
and, again, it hasn't replaced advisors, it hasn't cut down on the
contacts. It simply has changed the nature of the contacts that
we have with students. In a way, it's made it more difficult for
some people because students are asking better educated questions
and expecting more in-depth analysis of what they're doing.
PAT: Well, that's interesting.
And then you have another question that asks if there are plans
to add even more features to eLion.
MIKE: Yes. We're currently
working on an application for students that will help them prepare
for an advising appointment. And so they'll select from a list of
different items, the reasons why they might be planning to see an
advisor and then will ask them questions about that. And it will
save the student's responses in an e-mail that they can send to
the advisor in preparation for the actual interview. And so the
student might say, “I'm thinking about dropping a course, so I'm
thinking about changing my major.” And so questions will be posed
to the student online, they'll type in their responses to those
questions, and the advisor will receive those. So it helps the student
prepare for the interview, to think about things before they go
to the interview, and it also helps the advisor because the advisor
will know why the student is coming in and what issues they're thinking
about.
The advisor can prepare for that contact as well. We have another
application being developed for academic advisors that will allow
advisors to review on screen the progress that their students are
making in terms of courses that they've taken, the grades that they've
earned, and then allow them to evaluate students’ progress and to
send a progress report to individual students, recommending, for
example, changes in their upcoming semester schedule, perhaps issues
having to do with grades, how much time they have to meet the requirements
to enter a major. And we've been doing this on paper for about fifteen
years or more in our office and we are now making this available
on eLion for any advisor who would like to provide progress reports
to their advisees.
PAT: That sounds great. Well,
it looks like we've answer most of the questions that have been
coming in.
MIKE: Okay, great.
PAT: Mike, again, I appreciate
so much your willingness to do this today. I know you put the demo
together so that we could see what happens behind the scenes and
I really appreciate that. And I hope that people copied down your
e-mail address so that they can contact you with additional questions.
MIKE: Sure.
PAT: And certainly they can
contact the WCET and we will help them or refer them to you as well.
MIKE: Sure, that would be
fine. I'd be happy to answer questions from anybody.
PAT: Okay.
MIKE: I thank you again for
inviting me to provide this webcast. I think, again, it's a very
exciting technology on a lot of different levels and it's been exciting
to be a part of it from the start, as they say.
|
