| 
Transcript of Orientation
to Academic Advising Webcast
Slide:
WCET Presents a Webcast Series: Providing Student Services to Distance
Learners
PAT:
I am Pat Shea, the Assistant
Director for WCET, and I'm here in our east coast office in Summit,
New Jersey, where it's a little bit overcast today. And joining
me from WCET's headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, is my colleague,
Sue Armitage.
SUE: Hello. We have folks
from Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky,
Kansas, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington DC, my former home, Virginia,
Arizona, Washington, California, South Dakota, Missouri, New Mexico.
And it's also so nice to see some of our usual webcast participants'
names show up there in the box: I want to definitely say hi to Liz
Ackerman, Gary Kleeman and Dan Volchok. And I'm glad that verybody
has joined us today.
Slide:
LAAP Project Demonstration: Orientation to Academic Advising
PAT: That's great. And
I see a number of our WCET members are here today, so a special
welcome to them. Our special guest today is Ellen Waterman, the
Director of Distance Learning for Regis University School of Professional
Studies in Denver, Colorado. Welcome, Ellen.
ELLEN: Thanks, Pat. I'm very
glad to be here.
PAT: And you see Ellen's
picture there on the right.
SUE: We'd like to know about
you in the audience and what we need to be telling you as we go
through using this HorizonLive technology.
Please let us know now if you have participated in a WCET webcast
before. Please go ahead and click on the green "yes" or
red "no" buttons right there above my photo, on the right
hand side. When you click, as I just did, and I clicked the "yes"
button, a "y" showed up right next to my name at the top
of the box. So that's how you can tell who's voted.
PAT: Okay,
and while those results are coming in, well, it looks like we have
them. Fourteen people have done this before and eight haven't. So
for the eight people who haven't, we'll give you a little bit of
background information. During today's session we invite you to
make comments related to the presentation in the chat box. Many
of you are experts in the field of student services, and this a
great opportunity to share your knowledge and experiences in the
box with others. It makes this presentation more interesting for
people attending and it makes it more interesting for us.
If you experience connectivity
problems during this presentation, please click on the help button
to send an e-mail message to tech support. We'd ask that you please
not put problems with connectivity in the chat room because it's
distracting to our speaker.
SUE: I'd like to tell you
about using the chat box for those of you who are new. In the bottom
left hand corner it says “Send a Message” and there's a text field.
If you'd like to say anything, click in that box, type it in, hit
enter, and that's how it will show up in the chat box for everybody
to see.
But if you'd like to send
a private message to someone whose name you see listed there, you
click on the "tell" button plus that person's name, type
your message, and only that person will see.
Now, I'd also like to mention a quirk of Internet technology. This
is not a television program where all the contents and visuals are
streamed to you directly. This webcast is made of separate data
packets and separate voice packets that travel the Internet and
reach your computer that at different speeds. So it may appear to
you that there is a slight disconnect between what we say and what
you hear. So please hold on and know that it will all come together.
Slide:
LAAP Project Partners/Deliverables
PAT: Okay. Thanks, Sue,
for all of that information. And I'd like to tell you that the webcast
series is now focusing on our LAAP project, which is the Learning
Anytime, Anywhere Partnership project. The project is titled “Beyond
the Administrative Core: Creating Web-based Student Services for
Online Learners,” and it's funded by the US Department of Education.
In July, we heard from
Burnie Blakely who helped us tremendously as the LAAP project partners
began creating their new student services. And his presentation
is in the archives for those of you who missed it.
In August, we heard from Mike Tagawa who is the LAAPproject director
at Kapi'olani Community College. Today we're going to hear from
Ellen Waterman, the project leader at Regis. Over the next several
months, we'll highlight the other project partners.
There are four partners in our LAAP
project: Kapi'olani Community College has about seven thousand students
and is one of seven community colleges in the University of Hawaii
system. Kansas State University is a large land grant university
with more than twenty thousand students. Regis University is a private
Jesuit institution located in Denver, Colorado and it has about
ten thousand enrolment in its School for Professional Studies, which
was the target audience for this project. And our corporate partner
is SCT, which is a manufacturer of student information systems.
So the schools were very
different in size and mission and the types of students they serve,
and in addition, each of them has a different student information
system, and none of them, at the beginning of this project, had
an SCT product.
So we had quite a challenge
in the beginning, to try to figure out how we were going to collaborate
in designing student services. And what we ended up doing was developing
methodology for the design process that we could share with one
another, since we couldn't necessarily share the same technology
solutions.
There are four deliverables
for this three-year project which ends in December. The first is
a set of commercial solutions for student services, developed by
SCT; the second are home-grown solutions developed by the institutional
partners; the third is a set of guidelines for other campuses developing
student services; and the last is a set of case studies tracking
the organizational change that occurs as a result of implementing
these new web-based student services.
Slide:
WCET: the Cooperative advancing the effective use of technology
in higher education
And now, because there
were a few of you who were not familiar with WCET, you'll see a
slide on your screen now that tells you a little bit about us. We
are a cooperative of higher education institutions, agencies, non-profit
organizations and corporations involved in distance learning.
Our focus is on advancing
the effective use of technology in higher education and you'll see
that we have an annual conference coming up in November, the 6th
to the 9th, in Denver, and we'll have several presentations there
about electronic student services.
So I encourage you to
come to the website, look at the program and register for that meeting.
Slide:
Orientation to Academic Advising
And now it's time to tell
you a little bit more about our special guest Ellen Waterman. Prior
to becoming the Director of Distance Learning for Regis University
's School for Professional Studies, Ellen was the distance learning
director for the graduate program where she developed and ran Regis's
successful external MBA program.
Ellen has been involved
in distance learning through course development and production at
Jones Education Network, and through the University of Colorado,
Denver, MBA Faculty Training for Teachers in the interactive video
classroom. Ellen specializes in preparation and support for faculty
teaching with technology.
So, welcome again, Ellen.
We're delighted to have you here.
ELLEN: Thank you very much.
I'm delighted to be here and just so pleased to have all of you
with us today and really encourage your participation, questions
and comments as it is a work in progress and will always be a work
in progress as most of this whole new world of technology and teaching
and learning is.
I know that all of you
have responded to the request to say where you're from. If you wouldn't
mind, it would be nice to see also what your primary job responsibilities
are, like academic advisor, instructional designer, etcetera, so
that we know the population that we are talking with today. So if
you want to just put that into the chat box, that would be great.
Slide:
Agenda
What I thought I would
do is describe to you what we're going to do today, basically, in
this presentation. I thought I'd tell you a little bit about how
we began the project and how we determined what we would focus on,
because when we began there was just this great big sea of opportunity
and the whole idea of non-core student services, and talk to you
a little bit about our goals as we saw them and it evolved, and
how we achieved those goals. And then talk about the timelines we
were able to meet. I think it's important to understand that these
things do not happen quickly. And then, also to talk to you about
the overarching issues that surfaced from the point of view of the
whole university and its systems and how we came to urge some discussion
in those areas, as well.
Slide:
Regis University
A little bit about Regis
University — as Pat had said, we are a Jesuit University in
Denver, Colorado. The traditional undergraduate college has been
here since the late 1800s and is currently a core part of the university
where we have students living on campus and walking down the halls
with us as we're working with people who are in the non-traditional
population. So it's sort of fun that way.
We have distance students
of about four thousand per eight-week session. We do do accelerated
programs here at Regis, and online and in the classroom in the division
that I am in, which is the School for Professional Studies.
The School for Professional
Studies has about twelve thousand students studying in non-traditional
formats, in the evening, on weekends, and at a distance.
Slide:
Special Challenges
What has happened because
of that is that then this part of the school, while it's less visible
on campus, is larger in terms of its actual student population and
its needs are very different. So this caused a little bit of discord,
and as the first group of people came, the LAAP team that was doing
our initial studies, one of their observations was that these three
schools are here, and that we operate somewhat autonomously. The
third school is the School for Healthcare Professions.
PAT:
I think, Ellen, as a part of that first visiting
team, what was also interesting is that your non-traditional population
was so large and, like so many other schools, you had decided to
really create your own student services. All the student services
were not coming out of the traditional school, but coming directly
from your unit, like many schools have put their distance courses
in the continuing education unit, and, in order to serve those students
have created their own student services.
ELLEN:
This is true, but you have to because it is not
when you have an organization like ours that has been built around
the traditional undergraduate program, that is where the services
are focused. When you began to build or, all of a sudden, have a
burgeoning population of students who need different kinds of services,
the idea of getting immediate response from the university in general
is just an immediate response in universities is just not...
PAT: It's like an oxymoron...
Non-existent.
ELLEN: Right.
PAT: Could
you talk a little bit, Ellen, about those differences that you see?
ELLEN: You mean in the different...
PAT: The different kinds of
services that students need? How are non-traditional students different
in their needs?
ELLEN: I think one of the
key things is that when you want to have an appointment in the career
counselling office and it closes at five and you don't get to campus
'til 5:30 that's a major problem. And that really applies to most
all services in a traditional university. They used to be only open
in regular office hours. That ability to have access to student
services the same way students can access their distance classes,
which is twenty-four hours, has become critical. If you want distance
students to really feel like they’re part of your institution —
which, of course, we do — their success in their programs
has a lot to do with that.
Slide:
Regis Assumptions
Going on a little bit more
about the assumptions that we had as a group in this LAAP visioning
team that we put together here at Regis, we determined that this
project should be not focused on one particular part of the university,
but the entire university, so that we would benefit all students
by our project, not just this large part over here on the other
end of campus.
We also wanted to make
sure that we performed a real service that would be integrated into
the current systems, not something that was tacked on to the outside.
And we also wanted to make sure that we, in doing this, that we
raised the awareness of the critical need to have development of
online student services. We look at that as not just services for
online students, but online services for all students. Benefits
everyone.
Slide:
Process Overview
That process at Regis basically
was to appoint the visioning team and that was strategically conceived
as being from all parts of the university and I think, for the better,
that we did that at the start. The kind of people who are on our
visioning team were the Vice-President for University Services,
the Head Librarian for Online Services, the Director of Marketing
and SPS, the Director of Career Counselling, someone from the health
services admin and management, Director of Admissions in Regis College,
academic advisors from several divisions, and later, as we evolved,
and I'll talk about this as we go, too, we had more people come
in as the need was. And certainly, one of those first ones was the
VP for Information Technology Services.
PAT: I think what was interesting
too in your vision team is that you recognized the need to include
the marketing department. I think that's often an oversight in designing
new services, and what happens is the marketing department develops
all kinds of nice brochures or statements about what's available
on campus, and then when students find that what they were promised
is not necessarily what they're experiencing they complain to the
academic advisors. And so there's a disconnect between what the
academic advisors know students are experiencing and what the marketing
department may think they're experiencing, and so it's really good
to get those two departments in one at the table, I guess.
ELLEN: You're
absolutely right. That was hugely important to have them and they
have been a very key participant in this process. Richard Boreham
has been one of the authors of many of the scenarios that we have
been building, and we'll talk about that.
I also wanted to mention
that this group, when they got together, and we said what are we
going to do? They said why should we answer that? We should ask
the students because they are the ones who can tell us best about
what they need.
So we did that and the
survey came back with an overwhelming request for academic advising
online. So because, in working with our partner schools, Kansas
State had already identified academic advising as their chief focus,
and Kapi'olani had determined that they would do some kind of a
tutoring system that would help students come into their process,
and apply in the right places for them, we sort of determined that
we would do something that would get people ready for academic advising
and help out that process as much as possible.
So we used information
technology to improve how we do advising and we'll, here's how,
basically.
Slide:
Using Information to Improve Academic Advising
We discussed this in our
group, it became evident that the first ten, twelve minutes of an
academic advising, the first academic advising appointment with
the student, is spent giving them routine information. If the students
had opportunity to learn that before they came into the advising
situation that would free up an incredible amount of time then for
advisors to spend time with students on their particular individual
needs. And so that's where we focused what we did.
PAT: Ellen,
how much time do you think you saved for academic advisors as a
result of automating that first ten minutes?
ELLEN: Well, we figure that,
and I can give you the number, sort of, how we figured this out.
If we have two thousand students coming in the course of a year
on average and that's the ones who filter down out of the application
process, etcetera — and that's sort of a low number, but it's
solid — if we look at two thousand as that number, and you
multiply it times that amount of time that we're saving, it's over
three hundred and thirty hours a year. But also we're saving because
of other parts of this project, when students can now automatically
go online and check the status of their application and determine
if pieces are still missing and, if so, what they are.
We figure that if there
are forty-eight hundred new applications per year, which is about
right, that that's at least three thousand telephone calls eliminated
to the online information.
PAT: That's
great.
ELLEN: That's
huge.
PAT: Yes.
ELLEN: It's
just wonderful.
Slide:
Regis Objectives
Now, let's see. Our objectives
then in this process, were to provide a resource for applicants
to determine the status of their application, to enable students
to receive their RegisNet accounts and access to online library
resources. This was also a huge discussion, because, as you know,
having access to your academic systems at your university are fairly
well-protected for a number of reasons. One is the library buys
licenses that are specifically licensed to matriculating students;
they're not meant for outside resources. Your academic programs
are often very openly described and have examples of them there,
too. So that's not an open access system.
Our discussion was: when
do we give students RegisNet accounts? Well, they need them now,
because the RegisNet account is how they find out the information
about their applications. And we also want them to have access to
the library as soon as they register for their first course. So
that went way back into the early part of the application process,
which we felt was really good.
And then, of course, to
prepare students for that meeting with their advisor. Those were
our objectives.
Slide:
How to Achieve Objectives?
It soon became very clear
in the achieving of our objectives that we needed ITS input collaboration
if we were going to make these things happen. And as some of you
may know, that wasn't a great realization because sometimes it's
difficult working with ITS — the information technology people
— isn't always as smooth and the communication doesn't always
go as well as we might feel more comfortable with. So we knew immediately
that, if we were going to do this with ITS, we were going to have
to get some way of communicating with each other that worked, and
about that time is when we started talking about doing a scenario-building
and building scripts that actually examined the interactions that
students would do with the system and describing those in a way
that the IT people could say, “Okay, I understand exactly what you're
asking for.” And that's what happened, and we'll talk a little bit
more about that.
I have included in here
at this point the need for real dedication by the team members of
the LAAP group and they have been wonderful throughout, just incredible.
I mean, this is a three-year project, and to have people who have
stuck with us and, not only that but continued to renew their enthusiasm,
has been really rewarding.
And another note, is that
we are a Datatel school. We use Colleague as our interface system,
and WebAdvisor has just, in the last six months, been activated
for students to access information about themselves and to register
for class.
PAT: Ellen, it might be interesting
at this point to ask how many people have a Datatel system in the
webcast.
ELLEN: Oh,
yes. Do we have any other people who are with us today whose schools
are using the Datatel system? Because some of the things that we
actually did are activated by Datatel. We just had to design them
within the Datatel system. So hopefully this will be really helpful
to you as well.
PAT: So I
see one person popping up. Deb Shaw.
ELLEN: We say Datatel hit
yes. Anything else hit no. And then we could probably vote.
Slide:
Student Flow Chart
ELLEN:
All right. I'm going to move ahead,
though, and to look at the scenario-building process that we followed
is in the next slide, it shows what a process flow chart looks like.
And that is actually where you describe each step of the process
for, in this case, for a student submitting an application to Regis.
Now, believe me, this
one is a generic one. Actually, I think this one is the one that
goes on in the MBA Program on the Graduate side.
But there are different
ones for every program, because they have different ways that they
do their admissions process, so you all of a sudden realize that
none of this is standard. You have to create them for each particular
division or unit.
This system also shows
you something else that we had to determine while we were working
on this and that is not only to provide student services information,
which is a passive kind of thing, but rather to provide actual student
services online. So that system push that you see in that diagram
were places where we felt that we could provide those services for
students by actually having the system push information to them.
PAT: And,
Ellen, we have this flow chart and your other flow charts online.
So if people would like to see them in more detail you can click
on those various boxes and get to even more detail about these processes.
Slide: The Scenario Building Process
ELLEN: The scenario building
process was really interesting for us. It has become a real valuable
asset to have that, both within this project and in other ways as
well. What it does is it forces you to examine every step of the
process that you do, determine the actors and reactors, and define
where the branches are for decision points and how to handle those
decision points. And basically — and this is a point that
Pat made when we were talking the other day — is that this
should focus on what should happen, not necessarily what does happen.
So that you have an opportunity then to intervene and say students
don't want to do it that way; students would rather have this shortcut
over here and have it go right through so you have a real opportunity
to do your careful thought process about really serves students.
Slide:
Active Student Services
A little bit about the
activation of the system — in actuality the push technologies
are ones that actually are put forth to the student either in information
or, in this case, notice of missing documents that the system can
activate that process and let the student know when it's pertinent
for them to know — not wait for them to come in and find out
themselves.
And the pull technology
is actually where the student has to come into your system and provide
information and, for instance, filling out an application online.
Those two things were critical for us in our thinking; as you can
see from that flow chart we actually defined where we wanted to
have push capabilities built into the system.
PAT: And I think, Ellen, many
schools are using pull technologies, but not as many are using push
technologies, so I think that would be interesting to ask our audience,
too, how many schools are using push technology? If you're using
push technology, click on the green "yes" button, so we
can get an idea of who's doing it.
ELLEN: We actually had to
get a new server that did that and the server's dedicated to that,
and as I will mention further on, it has been embraced by the rest
of the university and many people are using that, now that we have
that.
PAT: Great.
So we got some people who are using it. We’ve got six who are using
it.
ELLEN: All right.
PAT: That's great.
SUE: And a question mark.
PAT: That's
reasonable.
ELLEN: Right. What I have
included in our slides today an example of the kind of communication
that we built to speak with the IT folks so that you can see what
that looks like, because once you get the hang of it, it's not difficult.
It's just understanding that you might have different ways of communicating
and different ways of problem-solving. Once you figure out each
side of it, you can do an amazing amount of accomplishment there.
Slide:
IT Communication Example
This is a scenario for
initiating degree plan appointment. Actually, it's giving the student
the impetus to go and make their actual appointment. And the SPS,
this is the scenario name — it's number three — and
our goal here was to facilitate scheduling students' degree plan.
Now, in the next part it talks about preconditions. Any time you
build a scenario, you can't build it hanging out in the air somewhere;
it has to have its prerequisites, basically, to use university language.
Slide:
Example (continued)
Preconditions, so that
in order for the student to have this happen, there are certain
preconditions that exist. And one is, it's roll the student's status
on the student information system. It had that we have the correct
e-mail for the student, that the admission file is complete and
academic services has evaluated the student transcripts.
Slide:
Example (continued)
The next page is the identifying
the actor and reactor in what each one does in the process. This
outlines what the university database system needs to do here. And
this basically is a generated, pushed e-mailed to a student that
happens when a faculty advisor or the admissions people have entered
all of the information into the system that makes that rollover
to a student status.
So applicant status —
you don't get this. Student status means that all your pieces of
your application are in, even if it hasn't been evaluated and that
you are now available — I mean, ready to go to an advisor.
PAT: So you had to think
about all this in extreme detail.
ELLEN: Yes,
we did. And that was time-consuming and that's where I thought,
oh, I'm going to lose these people. Well, I mean, they really have
been great. They really stuck with it, and it was very good for
us to look at our processes that way.
In all, I think we were
out between twenty-five and thirty scenarios, and there are more
going on because people are still creating them.
SUE: Ellen, do you think
that you would have changed your processes?
ELLEN: Yes. In the adult
programs, I don't think so. Because they have been honed over time,
and they were already pretty well-established and, of course, there's
lots of faculty input that goes into those admissions processes
and so it's not something you change easily. And basically, if we
changed anything it was in shortcutting or automating where we could.
PAT: Well,
I think one of the differences, though, might be that you pulled
information from various departments together. You sort of integrated
so the students are getting library, admissions, IT services and
advising services all in one place now.
Slide:
Results
ELLEN: Yes. That is definitely
one of the things that happened, and certainly serves students better.
I think a brief slide
here about results is that basically, now, incoming students are
eligible for academic advising before they are eligible. They have
completed an application — now, that's basic standard operating
procedure — and that students can query Datatel directly to
determine if their application is complete. This is where we skip
the phone calls, where you have to call an admissions rep and say,
well, is all my stuff in there?
Slide:
Staff View – Application Status
Let's see. I think the
next couple of slides are actually the views that students and staff
will see that they will see when they go into the system.
The staff view is pretty
straightforward, and more of a DOS interface as you will notice,
that we have the Datatel version that does not have the GUI application,
unfortunately.
But this actually is where
you can see where they fill in the transcript, whether they have
received the resume, whether they have received the letters of recommendation,
all those things are marked on there, and that's how they track
the application process.
Slide:
Student View – Application Status
The next one is the student
view, which is through WebAdvisor, and it is more of a user-friendly
application, as you will see. It gives the same information, basically,
without the coding on it, but just tells them exactly what is there,
and if not, what's missing.
PAT: Ellen,
you have a question from Jeff Ohvall in the audience, and he's asking
how do students directly query Datatel.
ELLEN: Right.
It basically is something that we built and when we built these
scenarios, we realized that for it's the application is in WebAdvisor,
but we were able to actually build it to meet the specific needs
that we had, and I'll talk a little bit more about that, Jeff, as
we go on.
We had a wonderful opportunity
through this LAAP grant to bring in some consulting opportunities
and Ian Mortimer from Datatel spent two days with us about eight
months ago. And I'll tell you, the days we spent with him, because
we had provided him with scenarios, he knew what we were trying
to do ahead of time and came in just ready to work and had loads
of solutions already prepared for us to look at. And then they spent
the next day and a half brainstorming what else we could do and
we were very, very excited about what we saw in terms of its functionality
and its ability to be customized.
Slide:
Admissions Status
The admissions status,
which is the next view, is also the same kind of information as
you can see. This is where the application has been received and
completed.
Slide:
Missing Document Notification
The next one is actual
document that has been prepared for a push situation, where the
person is being notified that their application has been received.
Slide:
Pushed Missing Document
And actually, in the second
part of this e-mail, on the next slide, is the part that tells how
a student can go and get their RegisNet account and their library
access. So that's in a push document to students when they have
gotten to this point in the process.
PAT: So that happens automatically,
when the system recognizes they either have all their documents
or they're missing documents?
ELLEN: Right.
And then how to find out more information about it.
PAT: You know what I'm wondering?
Is you have a nice interface with the students to view this information,
but the interface for the staff is more difficult to read —
it looks like DOS. Why aren't they the same?
ELLEN: Well, I believe that
it is a cost issue. That in fact, to get the interface for staff
is a more expensive version of Datatel that we intend to do before
too long, but have not done it so far.
SUE: I see that people in
the audience, Ellen and Pat, are talking about this. Can you use
PowerView to customize WebAdvisor?
ELLEN:
Well, I don't believe that we bought an extra
package in Datatel to do this. I think that once we had WebAdvisor,
that we were able to actually use WebAdvisor and customize what
that was able to do. The extra money that we need to get together
to give to Datatel is to have a better interface for the staff to
use.
Good question about SCT. What was SCT's role in this? SCT —
and because we all had different systems, it was very interesting
for us to talk — but SCT came up with some really interesting
proposals for message translators that I thought were fascinating,
that would allow other systems besides SCT to use some of their
interfaces. There is one of their products that we will talk about
in a little bit that actually will work in the Datatel and that
we're very interested in.
PAT: And Peggi Munkittrick,
who's been representing SCT in their work with our project, will
be doing a webcast in November to talk about some of the new products
that they are bringing to the market as a result of this project.
Slide:
Student View – Documents Received
ELLEN: Right. Now, let's see.
I believe the last slide that has the screen shots in it is basically
what WebAdvisor then shows. It's actually one of the other scenarios
for another degree program that has basically the status is very
clearly stated and the dates and it's a good information resource
for students.
PAT: So
twenty-four hours a day they can find out where they stand with
Regis.
ELLEN: They
can. And they can go into the library and study twenty-four hours
a day, too. That's the good part. Along with their good student
services.
Slide: ADA Compliance
Another great thing that
happens along with the LAAP project was we had the opportunity to
work with Norm Coombs who is a wonderful person and a fine expert
in the whole area of accessibility. As you probably are —
as we are — and that is striving to meet and to plan to meet
the ADA compliance deadlines that are in several years, so that
everything we build now tries to meet those expectations for ADA
compliance. So Norm reviewed all of our web pages that we had built
within the Datatel system to do these things for students and he
gave us a very good report back. We were very heartened by it. He
felt that it was largely accessible.
Had two comments, basically.
One is that the back function does not work in these systems but
that was a Datatel function. Not really anything we could do something
about. And then, to avoid using functions keys, which I think is
interesting: if you use function keys, then some of the technology
that the students use to get information fed to them in different
ways won't work because you've already used the functioning keys
and they are already built into their system. So screen reader,
for instance, might not be totally functional because of that.
I can't have a conversation
about our project here without mentioning the fact that there were
many enablers that helped this happen here at Regis. First and foremost,
of course, the LAAP team members who wrote the specific scripts
and brought in their own staff who learned the process and also
wrote scripts, and continue to write the scripts. But they have
been enthusiastic and stuck with us the whole time. I think the
first year was the hardest because it was so ambivalent. And then,
once we got going on it, it was a lot of hard work and we all feel
like we've accomplished something worthwhile.
Slide:
Enablers
I also need to mention the Datatel consultant, Ian Mortimer, was
a great help to us and also helped us imagine what else we could
do.
And then I can't leave
out our good people in the ITS Department here at Regis, led by
Peter Greco who is the VP for Information Technology. He has been
a great supporter and while often frowning at us and saying, “How
on Earth do you want to do that?” Or, “Why on Earth was that something
important?” has been extremely accommodating and has actually made
it all work in the end, given us the systems and the capacity that
we needed to make it work.
I also should mention
Erin Zimmer, who built the LAAP website here at Regis that is accessible
by anyone that's from the outside, and it just simply tells in detail
what has gone on from year one and has all the minutes of the meetings
and the notes of major accomplishments. So it's all there if you
want to look at the sweat and agony along with the triumph.
SUE: Right.
And we have that URL in a couple more slides.
Slide:
Challenges and Issues Raised
ELLEN: I thought I would mention
to you as well the issues that were raised in this process that
have to do with the university is set up and the way it works. You
can't avoid hitting these issues when you are trying to do something
that radically changes or quietly changes internal systems. We had
long, heated discussions about when applicants should be able to
access RegisNet. Again, it's a capacity issue here at Regis, which
is a smaller university and is not an Internet node, but we had
to push that envelope and say students need to get on before they
are actually accepted, you know, because they need to be able to
do these things. So push that a little bit.
We had great discussions
about e-mail communication by ability which basically, when you
send out a group e-mail to non-traditional students, you'll get
back 30% to 40% with incorrect e-mail addresses. And the way we
thought you could address this would be to require students to have
a Regis e-mail account and to use that e-mail account as your official
communications with them. That that would greatly assist us in making
sure students got the information they needed.
We also talked about how
important it is to plan for growth of systems. It's just that if
you don't see now what's coming down two years from now, when two
years come, you won't be ready. It's just critical to do that forecasting
of growth and building systems to meet them.
Communications management,
which I see that Jeff has also mentioned here, the communications
management issue was big for us and still is because, in fact, now
we can communicate with this push technology, we can go to town
communicating with students, but we all realize that that's not
necessarily the best thing to do, that we need to be a little bit
intentional about that and perhaps combine things so that they're
not getting tons of e-mail so that doesn't get to be unwanted communication.
That's fairly controversial
here. People don't want to have any regulations on their communication
with students from everything from financial aid to library fines,
that kind of thing. You need to be able to talk to them. So there
is a need there for some kind of coordination, but I certainly wouldn't
call it regulation.
Library services are also
critical here. And we feel very strongly that that was one of the
key things we did, was early access to the library. Now, a student
does not begin a class without having that library service set up
and activated, so that's good.
PAT: So students
can take courses before they're admitted?
ELLEN: They
can in the undergraduate program.
PAT: So you
must have had a number of conversations then about when is a student
a student, in order to decide when to let them have a RegisNet access.
ELLEN: It's a great way to
describe it. Yes we did.
PAT: It seems
like such a simple question to answer until you try to.
ELLEN: We had another issue
that I could put in this group, too, and that is the issue of multiple
log-ins. I don't know whether that's just us or whether that's other
Datatel people as well. The multiple log-ins is a problem and still
is. We're still trying to work on it. We have our WebCT courses
on another system that's actually off campus and so they have another
log-in for that, and that's not good. We're working on that.
Slide:
What We Learned
I believe there are a couple
of lessons learned here. Basically, I think learning that language
with which to communicate with ITS was great for all of us. We think
that scenario building is a skill that fits in many, many ways in
university thinking. It's a way of imagining the future and then
figuring out which one looks the best, and then building towards
that, instead of not knowing where you're building, just looking
at the individual indicators and saying, “Well, we need to do this,
we need to do this.” With scenario building, you actually have a
picture of what it is and I think that's a very strong thing.
We know that Datatel functionality
is there to be user-defined and customized, and we like that.
And we also, I believe,
reinforced something we already believe here, and that is ADA compliance
is not something you build in on the backside. You build it in from
the start, and then it truly is simply good universal access guidelines.
PAT: It's the way to prevent
the million dollar fix for the one dollar planning error.
ELLEN: Right. And that can
happen easier than you can think.
Slide:
What We Continue to Explore
We see that, as we continue,
that because this has already been integrated into a lot of people's
functions and they like the way it works, it already has been adapted
by many departments here.
We think that there is
broad application for system-triggered push technology and iWebfolio
is the product that I was talking about that SCT is bringing to
market. They actually found a small company that had put this together
and use of portfolios in academic systems is growing, and Regis
already does a lot in this. We found strong application in teacher
education, strong application in undergraduate testing out of classes
kind of thing. And this Webfolio is great, is this product we're
looking at, even though it’s not an SCT product, it will work. It
doesn't matter.
Slide:
Further Information
ELLEN: I believe that I have
included here where to go if you would like to see our web page
for the LAAP project. It has the URL there. And you are welcome.
It is not password protected.
Slide:
Impacts
A couple of last things
were impacts, I believe, on the whole university. For obvious reasons,
we've saved a lot by doing this automation in terms of time, in
terms of mail costs, but the best thing is we provided better services
to students in the whole academic arena.
And I think we've learned
a lot about the benefits of holistic applications. Instead of just
looking at SPS, even though we were the biggest part of the system,
to look at things that had application in all the parts of the university
was hugely impactful.
And we realized, too,
the Datatel users group is a very good thing to be a part of, that
we can learn from each other as we go.
Slide:
LAAP at Regis
And I believe I also included
there my e-mail address. I would welcome conversation with you all,
or answering questions. Are there any here that we can do, Sue?
I believe you were reviewing those.
SUE: I have been watching
the chat box, and Jeff Ohvall’s been very helpful in helping people
understand more about the accessibility issues, especially the back
button and the function key issue.
Slide:
This series is brought to you as part of WCET’s work on its Learning
Anytime Anywhere Partnership Project
PAT: So we have a few more
minutes and people could ask some additional questions. While they're
thinking of those questions, Ellen, I want to thank you so much
for joining us today, for doing this presentation and telling us
all about what you've accomplished in the three years of the LAAP
project. It's been really fun to watch and your leadership there
has been terrific, and I've just really enjoyed working with you.
ELLEN: Oh, I have too, immensely.
When you look at the day-to-day thing you think oh, my God, there's
one more thing I have to do, but when you look at it in a whole,
you think this is a great thing to have been a part of.
Slide:
Providing Student Services to Distance Learners Webcast Series
PAT: Our next webcast will
be on Wednesday, October 16th at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, when Mel
Chestain from Kansas State University will join us, and he'll be
showing you the academic advising system that they've developed
at K-State. It's very impressive. So I hope you will join us for
that and I know Mel's in the audience today, so we'll be looking
forward to his presentation.
SUE:
I have just put up in the chat box a sort of lengthy URL
for the whole LAAP project here at our WCET website. You can look
on the screen and see that our basic website is www.wcet.info.
You can follow the links to student services, or LAAP project, or
you could just go straight to it through this URL that I put in
the chat box. You may access all the archived webcasts — Pat,
how many have we done now? About eleven or twelve?
PAT: We've done twelve, at
least.
SUE: There's lots of them.
Now I wanted everybody to know that we're in the process of posting
transcripts from them so you can see exactly what the content was.
We’re also trying to improve our accessibility to the information
so people who have difficulty hearing can read the transcript, you
can look at the PowerPoints themselves, or you can just watch the
whole archived webcast.
This webcast was recorded
and will probably be available to everyone at our website in a day
or two.
Slide:
WCET Evaluation
PAT: Okay. And now I'd like
to ask that you just take a few minutes to provide us with some
feedback about today's presentation. That'll help us shape other
presentations in the future, and as soon as you are finished with
that, if you want to enter a question or two in the chat box for
Ellen, we'd be happy to answer those. We have a couple more minutes
here.
ELLEN: Now, I'm going back
to see if there's other questions that people asked. This is great
that we had so many people in the Datatel group. I couldn't read
these, of course, while I was talking. So I will go back and read
— it's neat.
SUE: Okay, I’ll repeat a question
now about the function key.
ELLEN: Norm Coombs, the person
who reviewed our new service for accessibility guidelines, brought
the issue to our attention. If I understood correctly, he said that
if you use function keys in an application that a person who's disabled
might use, then that application might get pre-empted by your use
of the function key. So that if, for instance, a screen reader application
uses function keys, your application won't work if it uses the same
function keys. I believe that is the case, but I can ask the person
in ITS who actually worked with Norm on this to respond to you if
you would like, as well.
PAT: So should Lea send you
an e-mail message that you can respond to her?
ELLEN:
Yes, that would be fine. I would certainly do that, and I'm
sure Val would be glad to talk to her.
PAT: Great.
Is Val your ITS specialist?
ELLEN: She is one of the people
in ITS who worked with us. They have really been a very lively part
of this process.
SUE: There's another issue
about requiring e-mail addresses. Would you like to talk more about
the conversation your LAAP team had had?
ELLEN: Yes. I don't know about
Stout e-mail accounts. Oh, I see what you mean. Directly in the
university system, right? I agree. I absolutely agree. I think it
is going to be something that we need to implement. It's just getting
everybody on the same page.
People seem to have a problem with what they call having one more
e-mail address. But our point is that you can easily forward an
e-mail address into the one that you mainly use. So it's not a burden.
But also, I think it covers a lot of FERPA issues, because the e-mail
address that a school has on its system is protected. And if they
want to give other people access to it, that's them, but nobody
else can do that. That's a good thing about it.
PAT: Oh, a number of institutions
are moving to requiring that students use the institution's e-mail
address for official correspondence.
Slide:
Thank you for joining us
PAT: Thank you.
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