"We are trying to blur the distinction between distance and on-campus students and say you are all part of the same community," says Associate Provost Stephen Anspacher. "We are making tools and systems to allow people to work collaboratively and have access to all the same services, regardless of whether they are physically here or not."

And that includes the library. Since on-campus students have the option of taking advantage of a face-to-face library orientation, a similar service is offered to New School’s online students. During the first two weeks of classes, all online students are invited to participate in a free two-week online research workshop facilitated by faculty members who teach in the field of bibliographic and Web research. "We run as many sections as we need to," says Anspacher. "It starts with how to use search engines and works its way through how to use online databases and what kinds of documents you can retrieve from the different document services we have." Students in the online class are encouraged to ask research-related questions, and complete short assignments.

Another way that NSOU gives its online students a sense of being part of the same campus as their on-ground colleagues is by web-casting campus events in real time and then archiving them on the New School website for anytime, anyplace attendance online. "As all universities do, we have a busy calendar of special events that take place on campus, and we have a selection of those, usually one or two a week, that we web-cast and then run online discussions on for a few weeks afterwards, so that students who aren’t able to come to campus can participate in these events as well," says Anspacher.

DIAL Magazine is another innovative service provided to NSOU students. An online showcase of students’ course work published each term, the last two issues focused around three themes: words, pictures and things that move. Each issue usually gets anywhere from 300 to 400 creative submissions, primarily from NSOU online art students, that a guest editor must choose from to publish in this Flash and Quick-Time-driven e-zine.

NSOU also provides real-time live chat help services, including one focused specifically on financial aid concerns, in addition to its telephone and e-mail support system. "I would say we probably handle in the neighborhood of 1,000 calls a month through our various help features," says Anspacher.

For prospective students, NSOU features a web-based student orientation that allows visitors to enroll in a free online class about film and cinematic arts.

For students who do end up enrolling in an NSOU class, there’s the university portal service, which is a point-of-entry to information, university news and announcements, calendar, and mail.

From the university portal, all students can access their course materials online, participate in group discussions, arrange for live chat sessions, and send email to classmates.