Beyond the Administrative Core: Creating Web-Based Student Services for Online Learners
link to Home About the Project link to Project Partners link to Resources link to Guidelines link to Webcast Series link to Consulting

Webcast Series

"Providing Student Services to Distance Learners"

Transcript of LAAP Learning Support Services Project 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.


« WCET home         Close this window