<-- Back to Good Stuff from TxDLA 2003
Truths about online:
- 1989 was first online student, on Prodity BBS system
- currently 57,000 students (taking at least 8 classes with them in a calendar
year) - these are full time students
-- enrollment is sequential, is semester credit
- have nearly 7,300 faculty
- students in all 50 states and 40 countries
- discussion-based classroom is available 24/7
- strong retention and completion rates
-- 75% retention after 6 months
-- 65% graduation rate
-- very proud of this, can hold these numbers up against any higher ed institution's
graduate programs
MY IDEA: Need to track online students in COE, track their retention rates
and satisfaction
Have taken a different approach: not "into courseware"
Online enrollment growth
- FY 1998: about 5000
- FY 1999: about 10000
FY 2000: about 15000
FY 2001: almost 30,000
FY 2002: 45,000
FY 2003 in first half: 55,000
About an 80% consistent growth rate since 2000
Asychrononous Learning model
- have chosen this model from the beginning, to keep the most inclusive model
Phases
1- content
2- thinking
3- application
4- student and faculty evaluation
Try to replicate very closely what happens in traditional classroom
Day 1- intro lecture on topic of the week
- discussion questions and assignments
Day 2 and 3- student responses to questions
- ffaculty responses
- assignments turned in
Day 4- faculty response
- student summary of week's learning
- faculty integration of readings and discussion
- finishes 1 week in online class
This 1 week experience is representative of what would happen during a 4 hour
class
Attend class in online learning system
- looks like newsgroups
- main news group is core group for faculty and students
- assignments group
- chat room
- course materials news group (lectures, syllabus)
- learning team newsgroup (students work on projects)
Discussion questions get very involved and extensive
- paper is subsequently turned in
- all students can read others' students
Have learning team assignment with others, turn in paper together with research
Core Technology Philosophy
- technology serves as infrastructure, not the star
- students should be able to enter and exit with ease at anytime, working in
online or offline mode
- technology interface is user-friendly and based on consumer standards
Have NOT found that everything changes because of the technology tool
- their philosophy is that if a tool is not something people are comfortable
with, they are very wary of it
- they find email to be a comfortable environment
Their philosophy rules out whole-group synchronous activity
Where is the content?
- faculty lecture
- UOP custom books
- rEsource
- student work
- centrally created curriculum
-- expert faculty
-- faculty and student feedback
-- continual course revisions
Benefit of their size has enabled U of P to work with publishers, to just get
certain chapters, and to get electronic version
- publishers have been grudgingly workable on this
- use Adobe's eBook Reader
Common problem: people don't wan't to read on their screen
- can highlight and underline with Adobe's eBook
rEsource
- some believe that textbooks from an edcuation standpoint either are or should
be going away
- all students receive materials online, they don't receive any physical books
or materials (they can print the electronic materials)
Intent in 2 years: have fully online with all course materials, including textbooks
- this is a huge undertaking with the size of their system
After assignments are posted, they are available for everyone to see
- can review other's work, and gain context from that
- to do that in every class and at every level is unique
DO have centrally created curriculum, using teacher-expert model
Choice to move online with materials allows them to evolve and change, be extremely
flexible, continually revise course
Relevant curriculum
- outcomes and obmectives are standardized but teaching is dynamic and flexible
- outcomes driven by faculty, students, and employers, using both internal
and external reviews
- strongintegration of theory and practice
- emphasis on critical thinking versus rote memorization
- case study approach replicates business environmentEverything taught by faculty
comes from a guide that is provided from the central curriculum
- strong integration of theory and practice is very important
- talk about relevance of education
- is not at the loss of theory and how it relates
Academic Advantages
- immeidate and consistent feedback
- social learning environment
- active: no passive learners@
- democratic
- multi-contextual
- written: deeper reflection (than just talking about something)
- critical thinking
- permanent archive (literally archive every class that has been taught online)
If a student is not active in the discussion, he/she is literally not there
(in the classroom)
Really does create a more social environment in many ways than a traditional
classroom
"
In our classroom: all the seats are in the front of the class"
- don't have the option of being introverted
- removes some self-consciousness about participation in classroom
All students are required to be working and have a place to apply what they
are learning
People can literally look at an entire
Many students will tell you that the U of P online courses are more rigorous
than traditional students
learning methods
- lecture
- reading
- audio/visual CBT
- demonstration
- discussion group
- learn by doing
- teaching others
As go down this continnum, learning retention increases (their model supports
this)
Customer Service (1600 total people)
- call center
- enrollment advisors
- financial advisors
- academic counselors
- technical support (have about 160, 24 hour shop)
- instructional specialists (people who monitor the online experience, are "lurkers," watch
interaction going on, assist instructors who have questions or are struggling,
getting started - constant peer review)
We don't want someone who calls to talk to one of 1600 people, they want them
to be able to talk to their specfically assigned person, either on the phone
or via email
Myths
1- We are stealing everyone's students
2- We don't have real faculty
3- We have different academic standards
4- For-profit status makes us greedy
5- We can't support our online students as well as classroom students
Stealing students
- we do advertise: a lot
- our niche has moved to use
- we don't have history, endowments, religious ties
- our students are not choosing UOP or your school, rather UOP or no school
We have had belief from the beginning that any product you have that no one
knows about it is irrelevant
- have NOT believed "if you build it they will come"
- selling not pejoritive: we believe in what we do, we have seen lives changed,
that makes us more motivated to tell others
We were a niche player, 7 years ago just had 12,000 students (when he started)
- were the alternative adult college
- now are the largest private university in the USA
Behind Univ of CA and Univ of TX systems
- 4th largest university in the country period
- the non-traditional student is becoming the norm
UofP really measures almost anything that moves
- this is a key to success
- talk to students constantly, in the program, 3 years after they finish, talk
about their professional success, the choices they have made
Consistently we hear students didn't choose UofP over another place, they chose
it because it is the only place that will work for them
- for the last 15 years they have heard this consistently
- this should be a call to action for everyone who is trying to help adult
students
- U of P staff would like to see adult enrollments across across the board
nationwide
2- No Real Faculty argument / myth
- we offer no tenure
- we do have 250 full time faculty dedicated to curricular oversight and quality
control (do teach as well, but they are in constant communication with Deans
in Phoenix)
- extensive training and mentorships
- peer and administrative reviews
- vast majority of 17,000 faculty are not full time, they are professionals
in their field (Masters or Doctorate level)
Anyone interest in teaching online classes
- required to go thru training, could "wash out"
- go thru whole mentorship process
- of everyone who says they want to teach online, just 15% of those people
make it to teach online (that is the first screening thru to the end)
- put all prospective faculty in an online class and let them become students
-- topic of class is "how we teach online:
-- future teachers thereby experience things as a student before they have
become a teacher themselves
-- continuous peer and administrative reviews
3- Different Academic Standards Myth
- just flat wrong
- regulation
-- HLC (higher learning Center is accreditation/reaffirmation and the whole
process)
-- state regulations apply too (in TX, State Coordinating Board) - abide by
all regulations that the state requires
-- DOE ($700 million dispersed last year in federal financial aid last year,
largest number in the country by a factor of two!) - spend a lot of resources
in compliance
-- SEC (Security and Exchange Company, Apollo is parent company that is federally
traded, also have Univ of Phoenix
- Is the issue learning outcomes being different? Then we should look at this
as a challenge
-- put this in context of federal discussion of
--- all students take pre-assessment in entering a program, and a post-assessment
--- then they look at the change over time
--- we have normed this and have a pretty good pattern of demonstrated growth,
other universities may have to do this as well
probably are the most highly regulated instition in the country (his contention)
- encouraged any other region they participate in to help with evaluation,
are proud of the results from SACS as well
4- For profit greed argument
- makes us responsive, not greedy, to be for profit
- Wall Street wants growth, which comes through meeting needs
- we pay $600 per student in state taxes and millions in federal taxes
- as for profit they don't get nonprofit status
5- Supporting our online students
- only 1/3 are online (altho there are online resources for all students)
- online done well is not cheap (Online tuition is MORE than tuition for campus-based
programs)
- high graduation rates speak to support
- huge library resource (over 11 million articles, 500,000 journal articles
are downloaded by students every month)
- virtual writing lab (for all students, 24/7 service, after submitting an
article can submit a paper for analysis and help with grammer, sentence structure,
etc. Not tutoring, but does have benefits for students)
Lessons Learned
- it's about the learning experience, period (have not fallen prey to many
technology traps, have focused on trying to replicate what is happening in
the classroom as well as we can)
- schools need to identify a niche, there will be continued consolidation
- focus on your mission and be true to it
- can't be everything to everyone
Our Quality Test
- At completion of our program, students:
-- Know what they need to know?
-- Can they do what they should be able to do?
-- Have values appropriate to their profession?
-- Accomplishing their personal and profesional goals?
Class is really more a process than an event
- students must post a meaningful post 5 of 7 days of the week in order to
be considered "in attendance"
In terms of plagiarism and dealing with it
- not aware of software faculty members are using to check for it
- because there is so much discussion and interaction going on, faculty get
to know the student's "voice" even better than in a traditional class,
and are able to identify writing that is not the student's own potentially
better than in a traditional setting (esp in large lecture hall classes
MY Question: Would our college accept trainsfer credits from Univ of P?
Page last updated: Wednesday, March 5, 2003 12:11 PM