| 
Transcript of LAAP Learning Support Services Webcast
Slide:
WCET Presents a Webcast Series: Providing Student Services to Distance
Learners
PAT:
Welcome to the WCET webcast series “Providing
Student Services to Distance Learners.” I am Pat Shea, the Assistant
Director for WCET, and I’m coming to you today from our east coast
office in Summit, New Jersey. Also joining us from WCETs Headquarters
in Boulder, Colorado is my colleague, Sue Armitage. Welcome, Sue.
SUE:
Well, hello Pat, and everybody in the audience.
I just love looking in the chat box and seeing where everybody’s
from. I think we have almost fifty people registered for today’s
webcast. And the people who have told us where they’re from so far
are from — let’s see — Colorado, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Hawaii, South Dakota, Idaho, Ohio, California, Wyoming, New Mexico,
North Dakota. Hope I didn’t miss anybody but please let us know
in a chat box if I’ve missed anyone.
Slide:
LAAP Project Demonstration: Learning Support Services
PAT:
Great. And our special guest today is Mike
Tagawa, the Dean of Health and Legal Education, Library and Learning
Resources, and Technology Services at Kapi’olani Community College
in Hawaii. Welcome, Mike.
MIKE:
Aloha, Pat. Thanks. I’m very glad
to be here.
SUE:
All right. Let’s get started. Please tell
us about yourself in the audience. We’d like to know if you are
familiar with this webcast environment. Please look on the screen
above Mike’s here, I’m putting my picture up. Next to your name
in the participant box, just to the left of my picture, you’ll see
the results of what you’ve clicked show up.
PAT:
Okay. And while those responses are coming
in, I wanted to tell you that during today’s session we’d like to
ask you to make comments related to the presentation in the chat
box. Many of you are experts in this field of tutoring and learning
support. And this is a good opportunity to share your knowledge
and experiences with other attendees. If you experience connectivity
problems during this presentation, please click on the “help” button
to send a private e-mail message to tech support. If you would refrain
from putting those comments in the chat box and keep the chat box
focussed on the presentation, that will helpful to our presenter.
So thank you very much for that.
SUE:
All right. And let’s look at the quick tally
of the scores. Nine people have said “yes,” they have participated
in a webcast before. And seven have said “no.” So we’ll keep that
in mind as we go through and sort of point out things about using
this environment. I was pleased to see that Mel Chastain from Kansas
State is with us today. They have rain out there. How lovely. Good
for you. If you would like to send a private message to someone
participating in this session, please click on the “tell” button
that you see above the chat box. One of the little icons —
“tell.” Only the person that you select will see your message. I’d
also like to mention a quirk of Internet technology. This webcast
is not a television program where all the contents — voice
and visuals — are broadcast, excuse me, in one stream. Instead
our voice and visuals are broken into packets that travel across
the Internet’s backbone at different rates and reassemble on your
computer. So if what you see and hear don’t match up exactly, please
be patient, knowing that our intent is that all the content will
align shortly.
Slide:
LAAP Project Partners/Deliverables
PAT:
Okay. Thanks, Sue. And this webcast
series is now focussing on our LAAP Project: “Beyond the Administrative
Core: Creating Web-Based Student Services for Online Learners,”
which is funded by the US Department of Education. Last month we
heard from Burnie Blakeley, who helped tremendously with the LAAP
Project as we were beginning to define what we wanted to create
out of this project, using a scenario process.
Today we’ll talk with Mike
Tagawa, the LAAP Project leader at Kapi’olani Community College.
And over the next several months we’ll highlight the other project
partners including one coming up with Mel Chastain in October.
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; and
Regis University is a private Jesuit institution located in Denver,
Colorado. It has about ten thousand enrolments in its School for
Professional Studies, which was the target audience for this project.
And our corporate partner is SCT, the manufacturer of student information
systems. Banner and Plus are two which you are probably most familiar
with. So these schools are very different in size, admission, in
the types of students they serve. In addition, each of them has
a different student information system and at the beginning of this
project, none of them had an SCT system. So our big challenge, then,
was to find a way to work together to help one another through the
process of designing new web-based student services. 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. Then each of the campuses must produce a home-grown
solution. And then there will be a set of guidelines for other campuses
to use in developing online student services. And case studies tracking
the changes — the cultural changes that occur — at each
of the institutions as a result of implementing the new web-based
student services.
Slide:
WCET: the Cooperative advancing the effective use of technology
in higher education
And, just because I see a
number of you are here who are not WCET members, I want to give
you a little background on WCET. It is 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 can see some information
about us on your screen now, and I hope you’ll visit our website
to learn more. Please note that the WCET Annual Conference will
be in Denver, Colorado in November — the 6th through the 9th.
And we’ll have a number of presentations there online student services.
And we’ll have a special pre-conference session on some of the findings
from this LAAP Project.
And now it’s time to tell
you a little bit more about our guest Mike Tagawa. I’ve been working
with Mike for the past three years on this LAAP Project. And I can
tell you that he is a very innovative thinker about what student
services should be like. Mike is the Project Leader at Kapi’olani
and he’s made a great deal of progress in creating an online learning
support program, despite just a whole number of system-wide difficulties
there. Before advancing through several positions at Kapi’olani,
Mike earned a Master’s Degree in Geography and a Bachelor’s in Horticulture.
He has worked as a pineapple harvester, an aircraft turbine engineer
mechanic in the US Army and served in the Peace Corp in Colombia.
So I think he brings to this project a whole range of experiences
that help him look at creating student services in a totally different
way. Thinking totally out of the box. So welcome, Mike.
Slide:
Online Learning Support Services: Developing a Portal Based Solution
MIKE:
Thank you, Pat, for that nice introduction.
Before we get started, I’d like to get a quick survey as to who
our participants are today. Rather than doing a formal survey, I’d
just like to ask everyone to use the chat box to type in your primary
job responsibility. For example: Instructional Designer, and Dean
of Instruction, Academic Advisor, Faculty and so forth, so that
we can take a look at all of the responses.
SUE:
And, too, if you haven’t used the
chat box before, go to the part of the screen where it says, “send
a message” and click into that text field, type, and hit enter.
And what you’ve typed will appear in the chat box.
PAT:
We see some responses starting to come in
here. Susan Brown, Regional Co-ordinator; Liz Ackerman, Co-ordinator.
MIKE:
We seem to have a nice cross-section
of people on our webcast today.
PAT:
Okay. So as those are coming in, Mike, we
can get started and refer back to them.
MIKE:
Thank you, Pat. Today, I’ll be demonstrating
progress made at our institution in the development of Online Learning
Support Services as a result of the LAAP grant. As the title suggests,
we will be exploring how the portal can be used to develop these
services.
Slide:
Student Centered Objectives
We are going to launch a new browser
for everyone now. What’s the objective of our project? Our primary
objective has been the development of online learning support services
that will increase the likelihood that a student will complete a
program successfully. Ideally, these services are integrated into
a one-stop online support center available on demand and student-driven.
Although our initial focus wasn’t providing tutoring support for
distance learners, the project has since evolved where our current
goal is now providing learning support for all students, whether
distance or traditional. Now we are going to launch a new browser
window for everyone.
Slide:
Kapi’olani Community College Web Site
I’d like to show everyone the essential
elements of the KCC or Kapi’olani Community College’s Learning Support
Portal. The website we’ll walk through is a mock-up of the portal.
We’re not actually going to go to the actual KCC website because
it would be too time consuming to get everyone set up with the correct
permission and the downloading of various plug-ins. So, instead,
we’ve created this website made up of screen captures instead.
SUE:
Mike, I just want to point out that if people
are having a hard time finding the particular browser window, they
just might want to check on their monitor. I have my little windows
across the bottom that tell me what windows are open. So, if people
are having a hard time they should check down there because I have
launched the site and it’s up on my computer. Is it up on yours
as well?
PAT:
It’s on mine.
SUE:
Okay.
MIKE:
It’s on mine.
SUE:
Okay. Good. I hope everybody is on
the page that is just the entryway it says, “Doorway to Learning:
The Health Programs Portal.” Okay. Thank you.
MIKE:
Give everyone a second to catch up with
it.
SUE:
Yeah. And people may re-size or move their
browser window around so they can handle it easily.
MIKE:
Okay, the audience will have to follow along
with me and navigate using the next button as we go through the
site. The next button is located in the lower right hand corner
of the slide.
From the perspective of student
learning, a portal can be viewed as a vehicle for bringing together
a broad range of services and information that have the potential
for increasing student success. A portal is a convenient mechanism
for integrating student services and instructional support. The
purpose of integrating learning support services is tied to the
concept of creating a community of learners who share a common educational
objective. It is hoped that this community, and the communication
and learning opportunities associated with it, will enhance the
likelihood of student success.
You are now looking at a
screen capture of the home page for the portal. You will notice:
1) that the portal is customized to meet the needs of students within
the health programs at our college; 2) that a range of services
are being offered. We have a calendar, orientation materials, a
section for program communities, and sections for tutoring and advising.
The portal that you are viewing is essentially a proof of concept.
A developmental model. We are using a free portal product called
Metadot, prior to more full-scale campus-wide implementation, when
we’ll be transitioning to Campus Pipeline.
The examples that we will
be demonstrating are primarily for our medical assisting program.
One of about ten associate degree health programs offered by the
college. In essence, the medical assisting program, which provides
an online certificate program, has been selected for testing the
online learning support system concept.
At this point in time, the
college is also installing a new student information system. What
we envision is, that once this is completed, the portal will also
move towards the integration of core student services such as online
admissions, registration and degree auditing. Please click the next
link in the bottom right corner.
Slide:
Opportunities
Slide two. What makes a portal
useful for development of learning support services? A portal can
be viewed as a vehicle for bringing together a wide variety of communication
systems. A rich communications environment is probably critical
for creating an online learning community. We hope that communications
will facilitate interactions among students and between students
and faculty and counselors. The model calls for learning support
to occur in an environment where multiple communication channels
exist through which learning is facilitated. For example, in this
slide, we can see the integration of a video presentation with a
PowerPoint presentation to add a more personal touch to online orientation.
Where possible, we have begun to move away from traditional text-based
web pages to the creation of more high tech, high touch orientation
sessions. The product employed in the development of this particular
presentation is called Tegrity. Tegrity is a platform for the creation
of streaming video that integrates both oral and PowerPoint presentation.
Tegrity also provides hosting services and, at this point in time,
we are using Tegrity Service to host our streaming video content.
Here, Russell Kenninghan, one of our health counselors, is providing
students with an overview of our health programs.
PAT:
And, Mike, Russ does such a wonderful job
of that, that you immediately want to enroll in one of those programs
and go to Hawaii.
MIKE:
Everyone who wants to come here and enroll
in our programs are more than welcome to.
PAT:
Except you don’t really have to go there
to enroll which is also interesting.
MIKE:
That’s right, Pat. Okay. Now we should all
be at slide three, Clinical Duties.
Slide:
Clinical Duties
Slide three. Why does the
concept of learning support include academic and non-academic services?
Well, student services have provided us with feedback that students
desire a caring and supportive environment as much as direct learning
support for instruction. When you think about the totality of a
student’s college experience, it includes not only instruction but
proper advising, orientation, counseling and learning support services.
The model being developed operates on the premise that this kind
of supportive environment is likely to occur when a rich communications
environment is provided.
Secondly, if you will recall,
this project began with a focus on the development of online tutoring
services. As we progressed through the project with Pat’s help and
Burnie’s help, it became clear to us that tutoring services were
only one type of learning support service that needed to be brought
to bear upon a student’s learning experience. A simple online learning
model can be thought of as consisting of the following pieces: some
learning content, a mechanism for delivering that content, the acquisition
of the content by the student and some mode of assessment. It suggested
that this simple model also represents, not only what happens in
tutoring for a particular course, but it also represents a similar
process when the institution attempts to provide advising and orientation
services.
So, for example, in this
slide we see Lynn, our Program Director for the Medical Assisting
Program, orienting students to the clinical duties performed by
medical assistants in the field. It has been our experience that
students often are unprepared for the rigors associated with learning
in a clinical setting. This has a significant impact on students
in terms of their time and, therefore, which has a significant impact
on their personal lives. This orientation attempts to familiarize
students with this reality early in the program. It is also hoped
that the community of learners concept, embedded within the portal,
will enable students to develop relationships with one another that
provides them with much needed emotional, psychological and social
support while enrolled in our program.
PAT:
Mike, I think that was one of the most interesting
points in this projects, when your group decided that if you could
solve the design of putting tutoring online that you might also
figure out how to do orientation and academic advising online because
they were very similar in many ways.
MIKE:
Yes. I would agree Pat. I think what we
ultimately realized was that these are all instances of learning.
And the learning experiences of students are not restricted to learning
within a particular course or sequence of courses but a whole series
of learning activities associated with the totality of the college
experience. And I think, if one looked at it carefully, all of this
can be brought together and presented utilizing a common model for
students.
PAT:
It’s very interesting.
MIKE:
Please click the next link.
PAT:
And we should have a slide now that
says “Streaming Video Advising?”
Slide:
Streaming Video Advising
MIKE:
That’s correct. We should be at slide
four. Well, what kinds of communications features does a typical
portal possess? One of the interesting features associated with
the portal that we’re using is the “News Channel.” Here the program
director or counselor is able to communicate with all students within
a particular program via News Bulletins. The column on the right,
“Health Program News” represents news items which can be selected.
The center column, “Streaming Video Advising” has the actual news
item displayed. Providing the program director with tools to manage
students through news feeds enables her to communicate with all
of her students fairly quickly. The fact that the news items are
online also establishes an audit trail of critical communications
between director and students for the semester. This is an example
of a highly structured “one to many” communication where a faculty
member — in this case a program director — can instantly
post a news item for all students within a particular program.
SUE:
Is there a way, Mike, for students to reply?
Or is it just one-way communication?
MIKE:
For the news channels, it’s one-way communication. However,
we’ll be taking a look at the other communication channels that
provide two-ways communications.
SUE:
Okay.
MIKE:
Very shortly. A good question, Sue. Please
click the next button or the next link.
PAT:
And now everyone should be looking at “Medical
Assisting Admission Procedure STEPS.”
Slide:
Medical Assisting Admission Procedure STEPS
MIKE:
And you provide an example of non-academic
tutoring and is this preferable to traditional face-to-face services?
Slide five. In developing content for the portal, we adopted the
philosophy that both orientation and advising were instances of
non-academic tutoring. This interactive advising tutorial guides
pre-medical assisting students through the programs admissions process.
The advantage of delivering material over the web in this fashion
is that it is available on demand, to the student, 24/7 throughout
the academic year. Experience suggests that traditional orientation
sessions do not always provide students with the necessary guidance
in the admissions process judging by the number of applications
that are rejected because prerequisites have not been met. We will
still conduct intermittent, traditional face-to-face orientations,
but, we will use the web-based orientation as a means of expanding
access and convenience of these orientation sessions. When you consider
that the ratio of students to counselors in our health programs
is something on the order of five hundred students to one counselor,
the web clearly provides a scaleable solution to expanding the scope
of orientation services. We have been faced with many budget cuts
at our college. And I’m sure that’s not news to many of the members
in our audience. Okay.
SUE:
Well, I think it would be interesting, like,
you know, if you can capture the statistics of before and after,
if you talk about the rejection rate because people haven’t met
the requirements; and then, after this is all implemented, I think
that’d be an interesting statistic to follow.
MIKE:
Well, I think the preference in the long
run is to try to improve all of our internal processes associated
with advising and orientation and so forth. And I think that would
be an appropriate measure to take a look at.
SUE:
Uh huh.
MIKE:
Okay? Let’s all click the next link and
go on to the next slide.
PAT:
So we should be at “MEDAS Community Discussions.”
Slide:
MEDAS Community Discussions
MIKE:
Okay. We’re now looking at slide six. Can
you expand on the concept of scale-ability with respect to other
examples of learning support?
MIKE:
Okay. Slide six. Can you expand on the concept
of scale-ability with respect to other examples of learning support?
Traditionally faculty or counselors were the primary actors in responding
to learning support needs. For example, it is not uncommon to hear
distance learning instructors complaining about the amount of work
that it takes to respond to the volumes of student e-mail. Interestingly
enough, in our online medical assisting program, we’ve discovered
that students tended to form their own underground community of
learners. Through chat, bulletin boards and e-mail, students were
observed to have initiated communication with one another in WebCT.
This slide shows the opening
page to a plain, old discussion board reserved for medical assisting
students. Communications here will not be highly structured by the
instructor. Instead, we will encourage students to communicate with
one another through the discussion board. In essence, then, students
in the medical assisting program are being encouraged to help one
another before seeking the assistance of the instructor or counselor.
They are also being encouraged to simply socialize and communicate
with one another online. In this manner, the mode of communications
is being structured to position students to become the first responders
to a learning support need. It also attempts to establish a context
for socializing to foster a more supportive learning environment.
If this works well, counselors and faculty will be positioned to
serve as the second line of response to learning support needs.
We believe that this kind of approach is a more scaleable solution
in that we will be able to expand the scope of our learning support
services without having to add more faculty or counselors to the
program.
PAT:
And certainly in these times of budget crunches,
it’s good to be looking for those kinds of solutions.
MIKE:
Yes. We’ve been experiencing that for about
the past ten years, Pat.
PAT:
Certainly your time to reverse that.
MIKE:
I hope so. Okay. Now let’s go on to the
next slide. Please click the next link.
PAT:
Okay. And so now we’re looking at “Pronunciation
and Spelling of Medical Terms.”
Slide:
Pronunciation and Spelling of Medical Terms
MIKE:
Okay. We’re at slide seven now. We’ve seen
your interpretation of non-academic tutoring. Can you expand on
what you are doing in the area of academic tutoring? Okay. We’ve
taken three approaches in the development and design of academic
tutoring services. This particular slide represents the development
of online tutorials that address common student weaknesses as identified
by faculty within the health programs. Our health programs range
from everything from nursing programs to radiologic technology to
mobile intensive care technicians. So we have a wide variety of
health programs. But there are a lot of commonalities between these
programs. This slide shows a review of rules and pronunciation of
key medical terms. In a similar fashion, we have also developed
a tutorial for dosage calculations, and introduction to the use
of WebCT, and are in the planning stages of developing an anatomy
tutorial this fall.
Despite many course prerequisites
for entrance into the health programs, the health program faculty
commonly complain about skill deficiencies among students. As these
are identified, we hope to develop tutorials to provide students
with a review of specific program-wide competencies. In this manner,
we hope the faculty will actually spend less time reviewing basic
materials in their respective courses. In this particular instance,
what we are trying to do now is employ technology to serve as a
first responder to learning assistance needs.
PAT:
Mike, I think one of the most interesting
stories that you told during this project was about your students
doing well in the math course but then having a difficulty applying
that math in the out in the field. Could you talk a little bit about
that?
MIKE:
Sure, Pat. To be admitted to one of our
health programs, a student normally has to go through a number of
prerequisites. Well, a very common prerequisite is mathematics.
What we’ve observed, though, is that despite having completed all
the course prerequisites, and even with a very successful performance
in a math course, students often demonstrate difficulties with mathematics
in an applied setting. And one of the very common problems that
seems to be rampant among our students in health programs are doing
simple dosage calculations. And, if you’re familiar with dosage
calculations, they’re very simple algebraic kinds of problems. Nevertheless,
students have found it very difficult and in some of our programs,
if a student cannot perform at a hundred percent on these dosage
calculations they will not be permitted to pass the program. That’s
a quality control measure on our part. We don’t like to turn out
nurses who can’t perform adequate dosages. So there seems to be
some inconsistency between student performance in a math course
that was a prerequisite and the ability of a student to perform
the math calculations in an applied setting. Rather than going back
and increasing the level of math required, what we’ve discovered
was that the level of math needed was very simple and what the student
actually needed was perhaps more practice in doing word problems
in an applied kind of setting and that was the intent of developing
the dosage calculations problem. There was just a recurring problem
that sort of had us mystified for a long time until we recognized
that a student’s performance in a math course did not necessarily
correlate with their ability to perform a dosage calculation in
a clinical setting.
PAT:
And so that dosage calculations tutorial
then, is one that students in a variety of the medical programs
might find helpful. Is that right, Mike?
MIKE:
That’s correct, Pat.
PAT:
Okay. I just wanted to make sure
we talked about that. I thought that was a very interesting story.
So are we ready to move on to slide eight?
MIKE:
Okay. So if everyone would click
to the next link.
PAT:
And that would bring us to the “Online Tutor
Discussions.”
Slide:
Online Tutor Discussions
MIKE:
Okay. Slide eight. The second approach
to online tutoring services involves the use of second year students
as peer mentors to first year students. The approach is a relatively
simple one. We are, again, using the discussion board for online
student interaction. We hope to accomplish two things here. We hope
that second year students will engage in a self-review of first
year materials by serving as a mentor and tutor to the first year
student. It’s hoped that the second year students will learn through
the process of teaching and mentoring. In turn, we hope that first
year students will be able to access the knowledge and experience
of second year students for learning support. Second year students
also serve as role models for the first year student. In this manner,
advanced students are being positioned, again, to be the first responder
to a learning assistance need rather than an instructor for a particular
course or the program. Please click the next link.
PAT:
And now we’re at the “Lab Tutorials.”
Slide:
Lab Tutorials
MIKE:
Okay. Slide nine. The third type of academic
tutoring made available involves the development of soft skills
among our students. This is in part a response to feedback from
industry that cites weaknesses among graduates in foundation skill
areas such as communications and team work. For example, it is not
uncommon for us to hear from industry concerns about the writing
skills of our graduates. This occurs, despite the fact that students
generally are required to complete freshman English as a general
education requirement before entering the health programs. But it’s
thought that this is attributable to the fact that a passing grade
in English represents some average level of student competence in
a course rather than specific ability for specific competency. It
is also related to the fact that a freshman level English composition
course does not necessarily address the kinds of applied writing
skills required in health care settings.
Therefore, to address these
soft skills, we have adopted ACT’s WorkKeys assessment tool to evaluate
incoming students along a variety of foundation skills. What the
WorkKeys assessment tool does is to evaluate students in skill areas
against a nationally established occupational profile. After the
assessment is performed, we’re able to identify skill gaps for each
individual student. And where these skill gaps have been identified,
students are provided with remediation software that will enable
them to practice their observation, listening, writing, mathematics
and locating information skills until it reaches the standards for
their particular occupational goal. The remediation software that
we are using currently is Keytrain. And, although this is only currently
available in the lab as of today, we expect to bring this online,
on the web before the year is out. So it’ll be a natural component
of our portal where we will have these online skill tutorials provided
by Keytrain.
PAT:
And Keytrain is also an SCT or an ACT product.
MIKE:
It’s a separate company from ACT but I believe
ACT has recommended the Keytrain product.
PAT:
I see. Okay.
MIKE:
Okay? Please click the next link.
PAT:
Okay. So now you’re going to show
us what some other communication systems are available through the
portal. Is that right, Mike?
Slide:
The Counselor is In
MIKE:
Yes. That’s correct. The Counselor Is In.
Learning support also includes online advising via chat or e-mail.
Although we are attempting to use students and technology as the
first responders to any learning student learning need, counselors
will always be available to respond to student needs online via
chat rooms and e-mail. Next.
PAT:
Okay do you have any idea how many hours
a week the counselors will be available online in the chat room?
MIKE:
Initially, because we’re primarily concentrating
on the medical assisting program for this first semester, it’ll
be a limited number of hours. So synchronous chat capabilities may
be on the order of an hour or two for each counselor. But e-mail
will be available 24/7.
SUE:
Okay. And what about instructors? The class
instructors. Do they have time or is it just counselors?
MIKE:
I think the instructors will be able to
communicate with students via the discussion boards for the program.
Although designed primarily for student communications, I think
they will also be a vehicle for instructors to share their thoughts
and ideas with students.
SUE:
Okay.
PAT:
Okay. So if we click to the next slide,
we are now on a page that says, “Welcome, Mike.” It shows “My Projects”
at the top. “Home” and “My Projects.” Is that right?
MIKE:
That’s correct. One o f the challenging
things about a portal is that it brings together a wide variety
of information resources. What many portals do — for example
Yahoo! — is provide a means for a user to design their own
particular home page. After logging into our portal, students may
access their own page where they may customize the content that’s
available. Here is my page where I have selected certain news and
bulletin board channels for monitoring. For example, I’m monitoring
the KCC Health Sciences news, the PreHealth Fast Track news, the
Medical Assisting Program news and also monitoring the discussion
board for medical assisting tutors. Additional features provided
by Metadot’s portal are also available. Such as a search engine,
weather reports, street maps and a calculator.
PAT:
Okay. And to find out more information
about Metadot, I think our attendees should go to Metadot.net for
information about the free portal, if I remember correctly.
MIKE:
Metadot.net or Metadot.com.
PAT:
Okay.
MIKE:
I forget which.
PAT:
I think it’s Metadot.net that had
the free one.
MIKE:
Okay.
PAT:
Metadot.com I understand has one with many
more features. People may be interested in that as well.
MIKE:
Let’s go to the next slide.
PAT:
And now we’re looking at your projects page.
Slide:
Mike Projects Items
MIKE:
That’s correct. In addition to a “My Home
Page” capability, the portal enables every user to establish a projects
page. And, in this case, what we’re looking at are my project items.
Once our student information
system has been upgraded, it will be possible for students to track
their academic performance for various courses online. With this
particular “My Projects” page it will also be possible for faculty
and students to track their performance within a program with an
online portfolio. One of the medical assisting program’s requirements
is the compilation of student work over the entire length of the
program. In the old days, this was accomplished through the submission
of increasingly massive folders of student work. With the portal,
students may now upload documents on their own projects page. So,
for example, on my projects page I have two documents uploaded.
One PowerPoint presentation and a Word document.
SUE:
Who would have access to someone’s project
page?
MIKE:
The user or the owner of each project page
will be able to designate who will be able to access their particular
document. So it can be sort of restricted to various populations
that the portal will define.
PAT:
Uh huh. And you can restrict access to just
a particular document within that portfolio?
MIKE:
I’m not quite sure. I believe that the level
of access applies to the entire projects page rather than individual
documents at this point in time.
PAT:
Okay.
MIKE:
Okay
PAT:
And so if we go to the next slide
we’re looking at Garrett, a second year student, in the radiology
technology program.
Slide:
Garrett, second-year student, Radiologic Technology Program
MIKE:
Okay. This kind of wraps it up. Perhaps
the final feature that we have decided to add is this are these
student testimonials. We’re hoping to use students as online role
models for incoming students. And in this slide, Garrett, a graduate
from the Radiologic Technology Program, shares a few words of advice
about surviving the rigors of the health programs with his fellow
students.
PAT:
And I’m sure that’s more convincing than
anything they could read or hear from the faculty.
MIKE:
I think so. I think the word of mouth between
students carries a lot of weight sometimes. Okay. Let’s close this
window and return to the original HorizonLive window. So please
click the “close this window” link.
Slide:
Student Centered Objectives
Okay. We should be back
at the HorizonLive board “Student Centred Objectives.”
Slide:
Summary of Features
So, in summary, an online
learning support system provides a very rich communications environment
that forms a foundation for a program-based learning community.
The communications tools include such things as calendars, news
channels, chat rooms, discussion boards and e-mail. Learning support
includes both academic and non-academic services such as advising
and orientation. We are trying to position the learning support
system so that students serve as first responders to the learning
needs of other students. We believe that this will be a more scaleable
strategy unlike the approaches taken by more traditional tutoring
services. As a result we hope to position faculty and counselors
to be able to respond to more complex and unique problems.
Finally, the technology is
also being employed as the first responder to student learning needs.
Online learning assistance can be very assessment-oriented and approach
individual student learning needs with a very high degree of specificity.
PAT:
Mike, can you tell us a little bit about
the lessons learned in this project?
Slide:
Lessons Learned
MIKE:
This has been a very challenging project.
I think when we all entered this we thought this would be a very
simple project but it has mushroomed into something much more complex
than I think I had ever anticipated. I think there’s perhaps three
major lessons that I’d like to share.
The first is that in approaching
learning support services I think our initial emphasis was to focus
upon the design of learning requirements for students rather than
the technology. I know it’s very seductive to focus in on technology
requirements at the outset, but I think we have found it more useful
to have developed a some kind of a concept as to what we wanted
with respect to learning support services to meet specific student
learning needs.
The second lesson, I think,
is that I would recommend that an institution take a functional
approach rather than an organizational approach to the delivery
of these services. Begin with a student’s needs and construct of
what it will take to enhance student success rather than simply
replicating an institution’s existing organizational structure to
deliver services.
The final lesson that I think
I need to share with all of you is that the development of online
learning support services represents a catalyst for organizational
and cultural change within an institution. As can be expected, change
is never easy — particularly for tradition-bound educational
systems.
In retrospect, the struggle
with technology has been relatively easy. The major challenges that
we faced over the past two-and-a-half years has been the following:
1) The challenge of moving the health programs towards an acceptance
of a more assessment-based culture; 2) obtaining buy-in from counselors
and faculty on the merits of online services. I think when I first
began this project and mentioned the concept of delivering tutoring
services online, it created quite a hue and cry among the counseling
staff at our institution. And today there’s almost a universal buy-in
that this is a direction that we have to take given the kinds of
changes that are taking place with our student information system.
So, it’s been a long two-and-a-half years but I think the outcomes
are there in terms of buy-in to this particular approach.
And, I think the final challenge
has been the ability to integrate services for students and breaking
them out of organizational silos out of traditional organizational
silos. And these are really the most difficult challenges that I’ve
had to face over the past two-and-a-half years.
Slide:
Web Address
Here’s the URL for our website
if you wish to visit the site later: Keep in mind that our portal
is still a project in development. But you’re welcome to peruse
the site and take a look at whatever we’ve put together. And if
any of you have questions you may feel free to e-mail me.
SUE:
And is there guest access or is it okay
for people to go and poke around?
MIKE:
They can poke around and if they want to
log in they’ll be able to log in and they’ll have to specify an
e-mail address and a password.
PAT:
Mike, thank you for this wonderful
presentation today. I think we have learned so much. And it’s certainly
been a pleasure working with you during this three-year project
and to just watch your team of people there at Kapi’olani. They
are so dedicated and have such wonderful ideas and you work together
so well as a team. It’s been a real pleasure to be involved with
you.
MIKE:
Well thanks, Pat, and to everyone associated
with this project. I think that this technology has great potential
in a variety of areas in higher education. And I’m very pleased
that you’ve asked me to be a part of this project. I would like
to take this time to thank Pat and Sue and WCET for their leadership
and incredible effort in managing this LAAP grant. I know that trying
to coordinate activities between three very distinct educational
institutions and a private business has been very much like herding
cats. Nevertheless, thanks to their efforts this project has grown
from a very simple vision of generation one online tutoring to a
much more complex vision of a learning support system. Little did
I know that what began as a relatively small project would grow
into one that has campus and system-wide implications for the University
of Hawaii. Pat and WCET have also provided us with excellent resources
that we have used to transform our traditional face-to-face student
services. So, on behalf of Kapi’olani Community College, I would
like to thank Pat and her colleagues at WCET. And I hope that the
participants in today’s webcast have benefited from this information
and discussion.
PAT:
Well thank you, Mike, for the very nice
comments. And I’ve asked people to enter any questions they might
have in the chat box. And we have one from Mel Chastain and Raul
Sanchez has also indicated an interest in that and you may see it
there in the chat box now.
MIKE:
Yeah, I got it. Hi, Mel. Let’s see. At this
point in time we don’t really have those capabilities but I think
in the long run the answer to your question will be yes. It is my
desire for us to maintain a lifelong relationship with our students.
So I’m very much interested in developing a relationship with students
even before they attend our college, throughout their experience
at Kapi’olani Community College, and once they enter the work force
I’m very much interested in maintaining an ongoing relationship
with those students out in the work place. I think once we have
our new student information system in place and a more robust portal,
I think that will be the general direction that we will take at
our college. Good question, Mel.
Slide:
Next Webcast
PAT:
Thanks, Mike. And so, now I’d like to tell
you that our next webcast, which will be on Wednesday, September
18 th at 2 o’clock Eastern Time with Ellen Waterman of Regis University.
And she’ll discuss the orientation to academic advising modules
that they have developed at Regis using the Datatel system. So you
can look forward to that presentation.
SUE:
I’d like to tell you all a little bit more
about our website where we have information regarding that project.
I put a little circle around our general WCET website. It’s wcet.info
and follow the links to the project section. Or go straight to our
LAAP Project. You’ll see all kinds of information about our project
from the participants to the activities. We have overviews written
by leaders in the field regarding all kinds of student services.
And our webcast section tells you how to access. All of our webcasts
have been archived and they’re available 24/7 whenever it’s convenient
for anybody to watch. We have, of course, recorded this webcast
and will be available probably in a day or two. You can find all
the information we’ve got at the moment about this particular LAAP
Project right there on the wcet.info site.
Slide:
WCET Evaluation
PAT:
Okay. And now I would like to take
just a few minutes to ask for some feedback from our audience about
today’s presentation. If you could respond to the questions that
you see appearing on your screen. They’re very helpful to us in
helping us to formulate other presentations. So we’ll give you just
a couple of minutes for doing that. And, Mike, perhaps you could
give us your e-mail address so that people could send you some questions
should they have some that they’d like to send to you after this
broadcast.
MIKE:
Just click on the chat.
SUE:
Yeah.
PAT:
Oh, that’d be great.
SUE:
And I have a question for you, Mike. Considering
that the next step in our LAAP Project is finishing officially at
the end of the year, what are your plans for next step? And how
long do you think, now that you’re moving from your Metadot portal
to the larger University of Hawaii Banner system, how much time
do you think it’s going to take to implement what you’ve got planned
at the moment?
MIKE:
I think I’m still viewing this as a multiple
year kind of a project. I think there are several directions that
we need to take. Currently, the other programs at our college now
have developed an interest in what we’re doing here. So we’re actually
getting more departments and programs on board with the development
of online learning support services. So there’s a matter of diffusing
what we’ve done within the health programs to other program areas
at our college. I think, also, another significant step for us involves
the integration of some of these learning support services with
the core administrative kinds of services associated with the student
information system. And in that fashion our students will have a
full package of services and information once that is online. And
we’re anticipating SCT to be completely online within the next eighteen
to twenty-four months. And the development of a new portal —
a more robust portal, Campus Pipeline — probably will be occurring
within the next year. So once we get familiar with the new portal
and the new student information system, I think we’ll be slowly
migrating off of Metadot onto Campus Pipeline and SCT.
PAT:
Okay. Well thanks again, Mike. Thanks, Sue, for
all of your help in getting all of this put together online for
everyone to participate in. And thanks to all of our attendees.
We look forward to meeting you again, online, on September 18th.
|
