Webcast Series

"Providing Student Services to Distance Learners"

Transcript of LAAP Orientation to Academic Advising Project 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.