Like many distance education programs, the Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Human Resource Education (ELFH)—a unit within the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville—was concerned about how to ensure that their distance education students felt connected to faculty and staff and aware of university policies and procedures. The department offers four online degree programs: a B.S. in Occupational Training and Development, an M.S. in Human Resource Education, an M.Ed. in Instructional Technology, and an M.A. in Higher Education. Both the online and local student populations are comprised entirely of nontraditional students, and many courses are taught off campus. The department recognized that these students often feel isolated from campus and unaware of important information and deadlines. To address this problem, the department is in the process of creating a virtual advising center, which it plans to unveil during the summer 2004 semester.
The advising center will be constructed in a Blackboard shell—a pseudo class, so to speak. Students who register for a course offered by the ELFH department will automatically be “enrolled” in the ELFH Virtual Advising Center, thereby giving them access to the services and materials made available by the center. The advising center will be a centralized location for students to access advising information and websites. Students will be able to post messages on program-specific message boards and have the opportunity to participate in advising chat sessions. The center will be maintained by the department adviser; however, it is hoped that faculty will be active participants as well.
The center's menu will be organized into five different areas: announcements, advising information, staff information, websites, and a discussion board. The announcements page will be the first thing students see upon logging into the advising center, just as it is the first thing students see when logging into a traditional course. Information about important college and university policies and procedures (e.g., add/drop policies, degree application deadlines, and commencement information) will be covered in the announcements section.
The advising information section will contain the following links: an overview of the center, a list of adviser/advisee responsibilities, and information on how to schedule an appointment and/or set up an advising chat session. The overview of the center will discuss the department's vision for the center and the role of the professional adviser who maintains the website. The adviser/advisee responsibilities section will provide students with a detailed list of their responsibilities and the adviser's responsibilities to help ensure a successful interchange for both the students and the advisers.
Advising appointments with both faculty advisers and the department's professional advisers will be conducted via the chat function that is available on the Blackboard. To schedule an appointment, students will have the option of e-mailing their advisers directly with a request or submitting an e-mail request based on set office hours that will be listed on a calendar in the Blackboard. Students who use the calendar will select a date and time based on their advisers' availability and will request an appointment by submitting an electronic form that will be e-mailed to the requested adviser. Students will receive an e-mail confirmation of the appointment within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. (This method of scheduling advising appointments is based on a model used by the Virtual Writing Center at the University of Louisville.) Once an appointment has been made, the adviser will create a chat session in the Blackboard and use the private messaging function when chatting with the student. This section will also contain the directions for logging on and preparing for the chat session.
These advising chat sessions are a cheap and convenient way for students and advisers to communicate and will hopefully eliminate the need for some students to travel to campus to have routine questions answered. However, advisers will continue to be available for in-person and phone advising. The department recognizes that chats are not sufficient for all situations and that some students feel more comfortable meeting in person.
The faculty/staff information category will contain basic information about faculty advisers and the departmental advisers, including a photograph of each. Information for faculty advisers will include programs for which the faculty member advises, contact information, a link to his or her home page, and any other pertinent information. Information about the professional advisers for the department will include contact information and areas of expertise.
The websites category will house a link to the department's Web page, which is currently being redesigned to be more student services-oriented. On this page, students will find program information, practicum and internship opportunities, and links to other services offered on campus. Links to the college and its advising center's Web page will also be available. In addition, there will be folders with links pertaining to registration and student services and a folder for each program containing program-specific links. The last menu item will be one that takes students to a discussion board, which will house a thread for each program as well as a thread for the general advising questions of undergraduate and graduate students. The department adviser will moderate all of the threads and will have the ability to delete any posts deemed inappropriate. A note will be attached to each thread to outline what is considered appropriate and inappropriate behavior on the message boards.
Posts to the program-specific threads will not be limited to academic matters. The purpose of these threads will be to build community among students, especially those in distance education programs. Students will have the opportunity to discuss not only their programs but also job-related situations and issues, seeking advice and networking with students in their fields. The adviser will answer the questions posted by students or, if a question is beyond his or her area of expertise, refer students to the appropriate person or office. A forum for advising questions could potentially lessen advising loads in two ways: students can post nonspecific questions to the forum rather than scheduling an appointment or contacting an adviser directly, and hopefully the answers to many student questions will already be available online in these advising threads.
In creating a virtual advising center, the Leadership, Foundations, and Human Resource Education Department hopes to give students a centralized location through which to retrieve both program- and student services-related information. Just as important, though, it will provide students with a way to connect with advisers and other students outside the classroom environment. These connections will help to create a community of students within each of the various programs for discussing school, work, family, networking, etc. It is mainly for this reason that the department chose a virtual advising format. Other means of communication, such as an electronic newsletter, might enable students to stay informed, but Blackboard offers opportunities for students to build relationships with other students, faculty, and advisers. The department hopes that the Virtual Advising Center will help students to feel engaged and connected to the department and thus have a positive impact on student retention rates.