April 2006, Vol. 5, Issue 4
DISCOVERING IF YOUR STUDENT SERVICES PROVIDED ONLINE ARE UP
TO SPEED
In our modern digital world, where savvy students are
tethered to the Internet for the vast majority of their
information, entertainment and communication needs,
providing top-notch student services online has grown into a
vitally important element of an institution’s ability to
effectively conduct business. Institutions can now find
guidance in this area of their strategic planning through
the new Center for Transforming Student Services (CENTSS),
which this month officially launched a sophisticated “audit
tool” service for measuring and benchmarking the
effectiveness of online student services in 20 key areas,
ranging from academic advising, catalog production, and
library services to orientation processes, registration
services, and tutoring.
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GOING FROM A BASIC SURVEY TOOL TO THE CENTSS
WEB-BASED AUDIT
TOOL
The survey tool started to take on a life beyond MnSCU when
its Minnesota Online division won a WCET Outstanding Work
(WOW) Award in 2004 for helping to create the audit tool and
successfully piloting it during the summer of 2003. The
recognition brought inquiries from other institutions
seeking to get access to the tool, which became the catalyst
for converting it to its current Web-based CENTSS
environment, which was built by Seward, Inc.
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WHAT IT COSTS
CENTSS offers a number of options for licensing its audit
tool.
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TRENDS IN STUDENT SERVICES PROVIDED ONLINE
What are some of the trends in the world of student services
online? “There is certainly more of a trend toward
interactivity,” says Patricia A. Shea, WCET’s assistant
director. “We are seeing more live chat and other types of
instant messaging.”
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PROJECT SAIL EXPANDING
Colleges that don’t have the means to develop specialty
workforce development courses and programs offered at a
distance in disciplines that may fill an education need or
desire in their local communities can look no further than
Project SAIL, a Sloan-C and League for Innovation in the
Community College initiative that is quickly gaining ground,
primarily at the community college level, but also moving
into the four-year higher education space.
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THE HANDBOOK OF BLENDED LEARNING
If you are interested in acquiring a keen understanding of
how blended learning works in a wide variety of institutions
throughout the world, read “The Handbook of Blended
Learning: Global Perspectives, Local Designs,” edited by
Curtis J. Bonk and Charles R. Graham, published by Pfeiffer,
an imprint of Wiley, 2006.
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MORE ON USING BREEZE
We devoted a good chunk of last month’s issue to Breeze
Presenter and Breeze Meeting, and this month we take this
topic a little bit further with a synthesis of an interview
we had with Ellen Wagner, senior director of Worldwide
eLearning Solutions with Adobe Systems, and an example of
Breeze adoption from Mesa Community College.
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