| Student Service Category |
Academic Advising |
| Institution |
Kansas State University |
| Description of Service |
Online academic advising to resident and distant learners |
| Time to Completion1 |
|
Number & Types of
Students Served |
Potentially, all of the 22,000 + resident and more than 2,000
distant learners enrolled at K-State |
Service Providers
(Dept. & Staff Type) |
Several offices that work with or report to the Vice Provost
for Academic Services & Technology (VPAST), Dr. Beth Unger,
who is also the Dean of Continuing Education at K-State. Those
offices include: the Division of Continuing Education; the Office
of Information Services; the Registrar; the Dean of Students;
Computing and Network Services; the Educational Communications
Center |
| Technology Enabling Service |
Creation of middleware in the “K-State Online”
product which lifts the lid on the Degree Audit Reporting System
(DARS) and interrogates the system, combining data there with
information from several other systems (SIS, Student ID, Individual
College records, etc.) to provide a one-page “user-friendly”
summary of student progress through the appropriate degree program
at the university.
“K-State Online”
is the campus-developed course management system (similar to
Blackboard or WebCT) that enables faculty to develop virtual
learning environments for their students. This robust management
system enables many of the same kinds of interactions between
advisors and advisees. |
| Service Developers |
| |
Internal |
External |
Subject
Matter
Experts |
Various advisors in nearly every college
within the university |
Director of NACADA (National Academic
Advising Association), numerous consultants from WCET
and LAAP |
Technical
Experts |
“K-State Online” content
and applications developers |
Burnett Blakeley, IBM; Norm Coombs,
EASI; designers from the University of Texas System, others |
|
Challenges in Creating/
Implementing Service |
Student academic progress data resides in 17 separate data
bases on campus. Solving technical and jurisdictional hurdles
to search and combine information from those sources was a significant
challenge.
Academic advising as a process varies greatly from department
to department, and from college to college. Also, there are
many different “kinds” of academic advisors (full-time
staff advisors, faculty who advise part-time, researchers who
also advise, deans and administrators who determine policy &
procedure, etc.). A major challenge was getting all of these
groups to respect the differences among and between programs,
but concentrate on the common processes. |
| Benefits |
| Students: Simplified,
“user-friendly” updates of progress toward
desired degree, available online. Chat, threaded message
and secure dialog with advisor(s) also available online. |
| Staff: Advisors
have a much faster online source of 80% of the common
student progress information they need than is provided
by DARS, which is much more comprehensive, but looks like
a DOS program and is slow to access and difficult to search
for specific information. |
| Administrators/Institution: A systemic approach to individual processes that
used to be handled by a half-dozen different offices.
Greater efficiency, fewer duplications, reduced errors,
greater student satisfaction. |
|
Challenges in Providing
New Service |
| Students: Learning
new system; online version (at the present time) concentrates
on the “most common” 80% of data usually needed
to make intelligent decisions. Still must refer to DARS
for unique or infrequently needed data. |
| Staff: Learning
new system; learning which parts of the online system
fit within college or departmental culture and processes,
and which parts don’t. |
| Administrators/Institution: Developing a de-bugging online version as it becomes
used, first in test mode, then in general use campus-wide.
Overcoming resistance to anything new. |
|
| Staff Role Changes2 |
Greater understanding of the roles played
by others in the process. Less “empire-building,"
since everyone has access to all data. |
| Lessons Learned |
Solutions are rarely strictly technical, but are often political
or at least jurisdictional and procedural. Getting buy-in at
the very top is critical to creating any movement at all. Once
that happens (often after a long information-providing process)
thing moved very quickly. The technical obstacles, painted as
ominous by those resisting change, were actually quite minor. |
| Future Improvements |
The addition of other services (not just academic advising),
such as student financial aid, professional and personal counseling,
career planning, etc. |
| Resources |
Very difficult to acquire sufficient resources in the current
climate of draconian budget cuts at the national, state and
institutional level. Primary resource requirements are time
and commitment from programmers and developers, once administrators
agree to changes. |
| Link to Demo Site |
http://www.dce.ksu.edu/advise/advisedemo.ram |
| Contact |
Mel Chastain, Ph.D.
Director, Kansas Regents Educational Communications Center
Interim Assoc. Vice Provost for Information Technology
Bob Dole Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-6902
(785)532-3112
Chastain@ksu.edu |
