LAAP Project Demonstration:
Online Academic Advising
with Mel Chastain |
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October 16, 2002 / Archived
webcast
Like many institutions of higher education, K-State has developed
its assortment of student services one at a time over decades, each
in response to a need, opportunity or to achieve greater efficiency.
With the advent of technology-enhanced classrooms, laboratories
and recitation facilities on campus came the development of individual
learning experiences and entire programs of study available for
the distant learner. Once in place, there no longer existed any
significant difference between its “resident” and “distant” learners.
Both had needs for services that could be more efficiently served
online (assuming the many and diverse services and data bases could
somehow be interrogated and displayed in a user-friendly online
mode).
Online academic advising is a microcosm of this situation. Both
the learner (and advisor) demand online access to data stored in
many locations but require that it be presented in a comprehensive
summary format. Further, they need ways to simultaneously share
both the data and the communications channels with each other, either
in real time or asynchronously, in order to make informed decisions
about future academic choices.
K-State has combined an online academic advising system with its
in-house online course management system to enable advisors and
learners to interact with one another regardless of the time or
space between them. In that sense, the system sees no difference
between the resident and/or distant learner. The system is new and
just now being learned by a set of academic advisors from several
colleges within the university.
This webcast will discuss the administrative, logistical, political,
security and technical issues that were confronted, resolved, circumvented
and/or ignored in order to reach a solution to its online academic
advising need. A demonstration of the system will be included in
the presentation.
Mel Chastain is the Director of the Kansas Regents Educational
Communications Center at Kansas State University, where he is also
the Interim Associate Vice Provost for Information Technology. As
the K-State coordinator for this LAAP project, he was a part of
team of administrators, technical support staff, academic advisors
and distant learners with which he was able to discuss and work
toward the solution of the many issues related to this initiative.
His background (devoid of any academic advising or computer programming
experience), includes 20-plus years of classroom teaching at the
higher education level, along with a similar tenure in the development
and operation of public radio and television facilities. This appreciation
for the academic, technical and management components of the project
helped lead to the solutions presented in the webcast.
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