U of A Enhancing Support Services and Resources for Online Students

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A tutor and student work through a math problem at the Enhanced Learning Center.

Units across the University of Arkansas campus have found – and are finding – ways to bring the same strong lineup of student support services and resources to online learners that are now available on campus. These services include tutoring, library resources, counseling, career services, financial aid, advising and support for unique student groups.

Providing student support services enhances the overall distance learning experience and contributes to students’ academic success in earning their degrees, said Javier A. Reyes, vice provost for distance education. Students can thank the Enhanced Learning Center, the Quality Writing Center, the David W. Mullins Library, and other support units for expanding their offerings to enhance distance learning.

Students studying online can access a list of support services through a new page on the Global Campus website.

“I firmly believe that the U of A has steadily increased its overall enrollment and attracted higher-achieving students because of the many student support resources that are available,” Reyes said. “We want to be sure that we are providing the same services – though with a different delivery method – to our online students.”

The university’s fall 2012 total enrollment number hit an all-time high of nearly 24,600 students.

Reyes heads the Global Campus, a unit dedicated to supporting academic colleges and schools that develop and deliver online and distance education degree programs and courses. The Global Campus and faculty and instructors across campus want to make students aware of the resources and support available to them online.

The Enhanced Learning Center can now provide Supplemental Instruction Leaders for online courses, providing online students with enhanced learning opportunity now available to on-campus students. The leaders are model students who succeed in difficult courses and are hired to share their knowledge by guiding other students. The center focuses on math, the sciences, social sciences and world languages.

Charlotte Lee, the center director, and Anne Raines, associate director and supplemental instruction lead, worked with Reyes to secure the services of a student leader for his ECON 2023, Principles of Microeconomics, course that went online in spring 2013. When offered on campus, students are required to take supplemental instruction, and now that same support is available online.

Leaders will use Blackboard Collaborate to connect and interact with students via the Web. The center will work with the Global Campus and academic colleges and schools to support other courses as they are offered online.

“It is our intent to provide the same quality and level of services to off-site students as we do for on-site students, whenever possible,” Lee said.

The Quality Writing Center now offers live chat tutoring to assist students with brainstorming, organizing, drafting, revising, citing, and improving grammar.

The center’s staple service is face-to-face tutoring, said Bob Haslam, the center’s director. About nine years ago, the center added an asynchronous online option that allows students who cannot come to the center to submit their papers and assignment details. Then tutors comment on the documents and return them via email.

This February the center launched live chat tutoring, a third option that provides the convenience of online assistance and the immediate feedback of the face-to-face session, Haslam said.

Live chat tutoring provides a virtual room using Blackboard Collaborate, he said. Both student and tutor share files simultaneously, take turns editing a shared document, view reference documents, and simultaneously view websites like library databases. All the while the student and tutor are communicating via live audio, providing students with immediate feedback.

This service helps students who study at a distance and cannot come to campus and others who come to campus for classes but cannot stay for a tutoring session because of work, family or other obligations.

“Having more options for students is going to contribute to student success,” Haslam said.

The Global Campus and the library are partnering to better connect online students with the wealth of services and research material offered by the David W. Mullins Library.

Global Campus instructional designers and librarians assigned to specific academic subjects are meeting monthly to discuss ways to link the library’s resources with Blackboard Learn, the learning content management system used to deliver U of A online courses. They also discuss copyright issues and ways to support online faculty and students.

A part-time graduate assistant at the library, funded by the Global Campus, is dedicated to helping online students and faculty obtain the library resources and help they need. The new graduate assistant position is the first step in expanding library resources for online students, which must grow as the online student population grows, Reyes said.

In the future, other support services will be added to include advising and counseling, Reyes said. Online students also need access to services provided by the Career Development Center, the Veterans Resource and Information Center, the Center for Educational Access and others.

“As we move forward we want to bring a full line of services to students who are taking advantage of online degree programs and courses offered by the university’s academic colleges and schools,” Reyes said.

The enhancement of services and resources for online students is crucial because more U of A students are studying online today than ever before. About 14 percent of U of A students who enrolled in fall 2012 courses took at least one online course, and more than 1,000 students are studying exclusively online, according U of A Institutional Research.

A survey of U.S. higher education institutions by Babson Survey Research Group showed that 31 percent of students at 2,500 colleges and universities across the nation took at least one course online in 2011.

The Global Campus expects the number of online students to grow as more online courses are developed and made available to students, Reyes said.

A list of the university’s degree programs that are completely or primarily online and online courses is available at http://online.uark.edu.

The number of unique online courses increased from 200 in the 2007-2008 academic year to 326 in the 2011-2012 academic year. The number of sections of unique courses more than doubled in the last five years, growing from 508 sections in the 2007-2008 academic year to 1,219 sections in the 2011-2012 academic year.

For information about faculty resources, instructional design services, and access to national organizations committed to distance learning, visit the Global Campus website.