Critical New Findings from the ‘Managing Online Education’ Study

To date most data-gathering around online education programs has focused largely on documenting the rising enrollments in online courses. And make no mistake, online education is booming. But what’s been missing is reliable, comprehensive data to help distance education administrators with the planning and management of their programs. That’s about to change.

The groundbreaking 2009 National Survey of Online Education Programs provides the first-ever, national data on critical issues facing schools involved with eLearning. Sponsored by The Campus Computing Project and WCET, this survey is focused on the instructional, organizational, and technological operations of online programs across all levels of post-secondary institutions.

In Critical New Findings from the “Managing Online Education” Study, Dr. Kenneth C. Green from The Campus Computing Project and Russell Poulin from WCET explain the freshly-compiled data in this audio seminar format.

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You will receive the latest survey results on:

• Critical planning and policy issues
• Faculty training
• Assessment practices in online versus on-campus programs
• Outsourcing methods
• Preferred Learning Management Systems
• Class sizes and enrollment caps
• Marketing and recruitment strategies
• Factors most likely to impede your online expansion efforts
• ADA compliance in online courses and programs
• And more

Who will benefit from this seminar:
This seminar is an absolute must for anyone involved in online learning:

• Campus officials in charge of online education
• Faculty teaching online courses
• Information technology staff
• Providers serving the distance education market
• Anyone interested in learning what the competition in online learning is doing

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It’s an age-old question that continues to stump online instructors as well as the managers of distance education programs trying to solve the attrition problem that continues to drag down this otherwise thriving segment of higher education.

Perhaps one reason for poor online retention rates, says Dr. Curt Bonk, professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University, is that instructors are not engaging students with the technologies they love nor are they taking full advantage of the online tools and applications that have become so readily available.

During the recent online seminar Creatively Engaging Online Students: Models and Activities, Bonk explained how instructors can use “low-risk, low-cost, low-time activities” that are relatively easy to incorporate into a lesson, but make a big impact on student engagement and learning.

Using his TEC-VARIETY Model, which is an acronym that stands for Tone, Encouragement, Curiosity, Variety, Autonomy, Relevance, Interactive, Engagement, Tension, and Yields products, Bonk outlined a wide range of web technologies and resources that address each of the TEC-VARIETY components to make a difference in the online learning experience. Some of the tools he discussed include: Jing, Screenr, Slideshare, Animoto, Google Docs, and YackPack.

Bonk also showed how different learning styles can be addressed using what he calls the R2D2 Method, which thankfully has nothing to do with Star Wars and actually stands for Read (auditory and visual learners), Reflect (reflective learners), Display (visual learners) and Do (tactile, kinesthetic, and exploratory learners).

Resources that address the R2D2 Method range from blogs and video blogs (or vlogs as they’re sometimes called), to wikis, podcasts, concept maps, online timelines, Flash, 3-D visualization, surveys, and map mash-ups.

Although it’s easy to get overwhelmed, and at times intimidated, by all the new resources available today, Bonk encourages experimentation. He also recommends enlisting the help of students to be “the cool resource provider” by finding and presenting that day’s relevant online video clip.

Michael Offerman, president of Capella University, who led the working group that shaped the initiative, said that “To meet the education needs of adult students, we must provide them with trustworthy and transparent ways to choose among many available options and to gauge the potential of each one to further their careers.” The goal of the program is “to lead universities and colleges toward greater accountability and transparency.”

Transparency by Design institutions began issuing annual reports that include comprehensive data for each course of study, including student demographics, completion rates, costs, student engagement, and knowledge and skills learned. Most important, Transparency by Design reports include outcomes at the program specialization level, allowing prospective students to assess how well a program will prepare them for their professional pursuits.

One of the requirements for implementing Transparency by Design is the development of a new set of best practices for participating institutions. “You want to make sure things are in place at the institutional level,” says Merle Harris, president of Charter Oaks State College, who has been instrumental in developing just such standards. “Collectively we went back and we looked at best practices that have been put out by other organizations for online learning and then we developed our set based on those,” she says.

Harris and her associates concluded that there were a few basic principles for institutions that really want to be transparent.

#1 Make distance education a central element of your mission: Distance learning really has to be central to what the institution is doing. If it is viewed as an add-on and not part of the central mission then very often it doesn’t get the resources that are needed to carry out a quality program.

#2 Accountability to stakeholders: Who are the primary stakeholders in a transparent institution? The prospective student and the enrolled student. “One of the reasons we feel it’s important to have accountability measures and to report on those regularly is because prospective students who are making a decision about where they want to go to school, where they want to take courses should have information,” Harris says.

Accountability to prospective students includes providing adequate information about the program, what it contains, and who’s teaching it. But it also includes measuring what happens to students who go through the program. Harris’ group looks at things like graduation rates, retention rates, what alumni say about the program, and measures of student engagement, with the aim of making this information readily available to prospective students.

#3 Responsiveness: In practice this means nothing more or less than good customer service, so that when there are issues and questions students can get quick answers. Responsiveness in the academic process means that faculty respond quickly to a student, so that a student who’s learning online can get an answer to a question or feedback on an assignment within 24 to 48 hours, depending on the institution’s policy. Administratively, responsiveness means that if there are questions about grades going out, about registration, about fees being paid the student will get very quick response either by email or by telephone.

Click here for Part II of this article.

Excerpted from Transparency is Good Practice for Online Administration, Distance Education Report, April 1, 2008.

In the absence of frequent and relevant instructor feedback, these students can get discouraged and may even become reluctant to submit assignments. Soon satisfaction and retention issues may crop up.

Acknowledging this concern, Columbia Southern University’s College of Business developed the PICM feedback model, which has provided our faculty an easy method to measure their responses to assignments. Personal, Informative, Corrective and Motivational are the four points of the model.

Personal begins with the students’ name. When their names are utilized in feedback, students know the comments are being directed to them personally. It also adds a “touch factor” that indicates the students are important to the instructor.

Informative shares with the student what they did right and gives the student information on how to respond in a manner that meets the expectations of the instructor. Our faculty is instructed to find an aspect of the student’s response where positive comments can be shared.

Corrective gives feedback on what the student may have missed, did not complete or completed incorrectly. It is our belief that students want to know what they did wrong, so they can make corrections in future assignments.

Motivational supplies words of encouragement, regardless of the quality or score of the student’s submission. Comments such as “Well done,” “Keep up the good work,” and “I know you can improve” can motivate students to continue a course and their program to graduation. We all enjoy hearing comments that let us know we are valued and important. Motivational feedback can move a student past the fear of failure and encourage that individual to persevere.

The implementation of PICM has prompted many members of our faculty to abandon their old patterns of interaction and we have seen increased numbers of positive comments from students to their professors. These early results have encouraged our deans and department chairs to also use this model when responding to our professors. The circle is almost complete and we believe this paradigm will bring improved retention and greater student success.

Elwin Jones, MBA, is the chair of Undergraduate Studies at Columbia Southern University.

It is one thing to have a misunderstanding about an idea in discussion and quite another for a student to misinterpret a major project. If a final project is not communicated effectively, this could affect a student’s grade and overall online learning experience. If a student has a negative learning experience, this may adversely affect retention. Instructors must go above and beyond to clearly communicate assignment directions and expectations. The best way to communicate these expectations is through rubric creation and implementation.

A well-designed rubric is an effective communication tool. It emphasizes the important skills or concepts to demonstrate. It provides criteria for evaluation and takes the intangible on an unfamiliar assignment and makes it more tangible. While rubrics clarify assignments for students, a rubric does so much more for the online instructor.

A rubric streamlines the grading process. It helps teachers to efficiently work through a stack of ungraded papers. It quantifies the elusive expectations and makes them clear. There can be no claims from students saying, “You never told us that was needed.” One cannot argue with the on-screen, printed standards. It makes estimates more scientific and grading fairer. There is no room for bias or subjective prejudice in rubric utilization, because a rubric is impartial. A student either meets the defined objectives or does not. This helps promote fairness and increases satisfaction, since there is no preferential treatment when everyone is measured using the same benchmarks.

A rubric is surprisingly versatile and can be crafted to meet the needs of any assignment. The variety of rubrics available creates flexibility to meet a wide range of assignments. Holistic rubrics identify all factors for an assignment using a checklist or description. Analytical rubrics provide scales and a set of scores for multiple criteria (2008). There is a wealth of rubric resources available to help instructors build their own. Any search on the Internet for “rubric builder” will provide many sites. There also are many websites with specific assignment examples by topic for instructors.

The online learning environment brought many unexpected benefits. My initial concerns about communicating with students have vanished. Thanks to the use of rubrics, I am confident of a student’s ability to understand the assignment criteria and to meet it. Rubrics have increased the efficiency of my students in creating projects and have maximized my effectiveness in grading them. When it comes to teaching online, rubrics are a necessary tool.

References
Assessing Student Performance—Types of Rubrics. Retrieved May 2, 2008, from
MarkED Career Paths website, www.mark-ed.com/assessment/TypesOfRubrics.htm.

Cindy Rippé is a marketing, sales, and business instructor for Bryant and Stratton Online Education.

Excerpted from Using Rubrics to Improve Teaching, Learning, and Retention in Distance Education, Online Classroom, July 2008.

Q: How can we turn teachers who were initially reluctant recruits to teaching online into regular consumers of the latest knowledge, research and best practices in the field?
Shelton: First of all, I believe that support specialists are critical factors in the success of online education. We are the distance education experts, not the faculty, and we have more time that we can devote to searching for resources. It is our job to provide as many tools and resources as possible to support excellence in teaching and help the teachers remain current as well as efficient. Actually, I believe that by providing the latest knowledge, research and best practices in the field and making them easily accessible often encourages those instructors who are reluctant because we are assuring them constant support and reminding them they are important to us and to the online classroom.

Some of my best success stories are regarding instructors who we bring in ‘kicking and screaming’ but leave our office with a positive outlook and with much less trepidation. As faculty support specialists, we should also try to make it fun during the professional development opportunities. For example, during our annual online faculty workshop, in a drawing, we give away prizes such as flash drives, iPods, and Flip video cameras which are items that can help them as online instructors. For those faculty who cannot attend, we mail them the resources and archives of the workshop.

Q: What are some motivating factors we can offer our best instructional designers and support specialists in addition to salary to make them stay with the program?
Shelton: One of the best incentives would be to provide professional development opportunities which help them remain more confident in their support of faculty teaching online. Offering opportunities to work from home and offering flexible work hours can be good incentives as well. I also try to remind my staff of how important they are to the overall process. Sometimes, those behind the scenes are less noticed, but in reality, instructional support staff can be critical to online success.

Q: What are the most important things we can do to help the faculty’s first online experience be a positive one?
Shelton: Teaching online is different from teaching in the classroom. Prior to the first online teaching experience, it is important to help the faculty understand those differences. We provide ePedagogy training for every first time instructor which offers tips and tricks for teaching online such as methods for saving time and keeping their email inbox down to a minimum. Instructors need to understand student expectations as well as institutional expectations, such as how often they are expected to be online with the students.

Q: Do you have to train your technical support people in the interpersonal aspects of support, the “human factor”?
Shelton: I am fortunate to have an incredible team of online course developers and don’t really need to spend time training on the “human factor.” They greatly respect our faculty and are patient with their learning process. We always tell the faculty, “There are no silly questions, so ask away!” I do sometimes need to encourage them though because it can be frustrating when our timetable doesn’t always match the faculty’s timetable and expectations. But being flexible, understanding and focused on the ultimate goal–which is excellent faculty support–is the most important thing we can do, because we are partnering with them to deliver quality online education.

Cuyahoga is Ohio’s oldest and largest multi-campus community college with about 10,000 online students, many of whom were entering these classes with no idea of what to expect.

To address this problem, Karpus and the distance learning team at Cuyahoga created an online orientation program for students.

1. Move from in-person to online orientation
Cuyahoga started by doing in-person orientation sessions in the classroom, but met with student complaints. “We had students saying ‘I signed up to take a web-based course, I don’t want to be coming to campus,’ Karpus says. “That’s when we started playing around with virtual orientation tools.”

2. Logistics
Karpus conducts the virtual orientation live, in her office with a webcam and headset. She records each session, so that it can be offered to students any time they log in. There is a link to register for in person sessions, but there is always a link to a recorded virtual session.

3. Convenient scheduling
Not only did the students want virtual orientations, they want them at times that were convenient for them. They don’t want them from 8:30 to 5 when they’re working, so Cuyahoga has taken to scheduling orientations in the evening and even on the weekend.

5. Keep students engaged
When Karpus runs a session she starts with a pre-formulated curriculum that’s about 40 minutes long. Then she opens it up to the students to allow some interactivity—she solicits feedback on any questions they may have, and what they didn’t understand.

“It’s important during a virtual orientation to have a way to see if they’re paying attention,” Karpus says. If she has a small group she can give them power to use the whiteboard. She’s also experimenting with a phone bridge, to allow students to call in during a session rather than just using text-based chat.

6. Show an impact on retention
Every public college and university is feeling the pressure to show increased student retention, student success and performance. Karpus is in the middle of a research project to determine if orientation makes a difference in a academic performance and online retention rates. She’s at the data-gathering stage, and she will be doing focus groups with students who go through orientation.

Excerpted from 10 Tips for Running an Effective Online LMS Orientation, Distance Education Report, May 15, 2008.

Using Web 2.0 to Enhance Classes and Improve Retention

Online courses today share little resemblance with what was happening 5-10 years ago. With the right tools, what was once text-based content is now a rich, interactive learning environment that can accommodate more learning styles and improve engagement. If you’re not using Web 2.0 tools in your classes, you’re missing out, and so are your students.

Debates about the causes of poor student retention rates in online courses can involve a multitude of factors, but there are two issues that everyone agrees on: 1.) online students are more likely to be successful if they feel connected to their instructor and fellow students, and 2). online learning affords instructors the opportunity to offer a greater variety of learning options.

Enter Web 2.0 learning tools … blogs, wikis, social networking, photo-sharing sites and other interactive applications that build student engagement.

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If your institution is looking for ways to overcome poor student retention rates, you’ll want to get a copy of this seminar. Led by Todd Conaway, Using Web 2.0 to Enhance Classes and Improve Retention will show you how to use these technologies to improve your online courses.

Conaway is an instructional designer at Yavapai College in Prescott, Ariz., and has more than 15 years of experience integrating various technologies into classrooms at both the college and secondary school levels.

During this seminar you will see examples of online instruction using Web 2.0 tools, including content developed by students and teachers using Web 2.0. This is an ideal opportunity for anyone interested in learning how to incorporate Web 2.0 to strengthen instructional practices and better retain students.

After participating in this content-rich seminar, you’ll be able to:

• Incorporate your presence into online courses with discussion boards and by bringing Web 2.0 products into content management systems.
• Identify commercial products to help capture your lectures more effectively.
• Use Web 2.0 tools in your online courses, including setting up a wiki or a Ning site to share ideas, using blogs as e-portfolios and using photo-sharing sites.
• Integrate your personality into online courses and audio, using tools such as videos (YouTube) and audio software (Audacity).
• Understand how to use Web 2.0 technologies in a less time-consuming way.
• Develop the necessary skills for developing a professional portfolio of your work.

This seminar will benefit:

• Program Chairs
• Instructors
• Online Instructors
• Instructional Designers
• Curriculum Developers

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Here are just a few of his suggestions. To see the article in its entirety, download a copy of our FREE report, Strategies for Increasing Online Student Retention and Satisfaction.

1. An “early alert” system. If a distance learning student hasn’t been responding the first few weeks of the course the instructor can pass on the student’s name to this automated system. The student then gets an e-mail saying (in Nash’s words) “Hey we haven’t heard from you for a while – is there anything we can do to help you? Here are some services at the institution that might help you succeed.” The instructor follows up with a personal phone call or email.

2. An online tutoring program. Coastline instituted a program that included tutors available both on the phone and online, along with other student success services. “Those student who used it succeeded at higher rates than their peer group,” Nash says.

3. A student success course. “I would recommend a student orientation or a student success course,” says Nash. Coastline developed a three-unit student success course, called “Mastering the College Experience,” teaching learning skills, “life skills” and various aspects of college orientation. Enrollments are good and, in surveys, students have reported they feel more prepared to succeed after having taken it.

4. Learning communities. Nash calls this the tactic that has produced the best student retention rates. “The research recommends [learning communities] again and again,” says Nash. Coastline’s STAR Program is a group of cohorts that move through a program together. It’s an accelerated program so that students get their associate’s degree in eighteen months instead of two years. Classes are smaller and hybrid-style, split about evenly between face-to-face and online.

5. Focus on individual courses. Spotlight the ones that have the biggest problem with attrition. Focus on those while measuring results against the baseline. Pay attention to both the differences in course completion rates and the cost and resources it took to get there. Do a cost-benefit analysis, measuring return on investment.

6. Involve faculty. They are the key service providers. They should be involved in the needs assessment and in the planning because they’re going to have to implement it. You need their buy-in and advice, Nash advises.

Excerpted from 11 Tips for Improving Retention of Distance Learning Students, Distance Education Report, August 15, 2006.