Tuesday, December 5, 2000

Commission's Web Site Helps Colleges Put Student Services Online By DAN CARNEVALE Officials at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education get telephone calls almost daily from institutions that need help putting student services online. So WICHE took its own advice and put its help online. Its new Web site, Guide to Developing Online Student Services, offers hundreds of examples of how institutions have recreated traditional student services on the Internet. Students who take courses online often expect to find student services available there as well, and they may be resentful if, for example, they have to travel to the campus to get financial aid. And students who take their courses from a distance aren't the only ones who benefit from services offered on the Internet. Many students who take courses on campus have found that they prefer using online versions of services to standing in line. Sally Johnstone, the director of the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications at WICHE, says the Web site is meant to help institutions that are just starting to develop online services. Those institutions will be able to browse through the site and see hundreds of examples of online programs. "They'll be able to go in and see how other institutions handled it," Ms. Johnstone says. The Web site was paid for by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Ms. Johnstone says the site could simply be looked at as a Frequently Asked Questions of WICHE. The Web site highlights individual components of institutions' online services and arranges them by topic. One institution may have done a good job at developing a community environment online, while another may have created some helpful tutorials, Ms. Johnstone says. The Web site is designed to bring those examples together in one place. "No one institution did it all really, really well," she says. "The good examples were found scattered among institutions." Say a university wants to improve its online academic advising. The WICHE site features the approaches of six different institutions. For example, Weber State University created a chat room in which students can ask questions of counselors and each other before choosing classes. North Dakota State University, on the other hand, posts degree requirements in one area so students can sort through them and decide which major suits them best. WICHE surveyed programs in the 15 western states that it represents -- which means that most of the programs selected are from colleges and universities in the West and Midwest. "It means we left out some good ones," says Barbara Krauth, who was the project director with WICHE and is now an independent consultant. She was one of the primary developers of the Web site. The life span of the site may be short, Ms. Krauth says. It could be taken down as early as next September. "There is such movement in this area, it will be completely outdated by then," she says. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Swarthmore drops 3 sports, prompting an uproar on the campus Hampton U. campaign raises $216-million, shattering record for black colleges In 11th-hour deal, U. of Washington deflects strike by T.A.'s Ruling on Prop. 209 could affect U. of California's minority-recruitment programs Russia announces new effort to stem brain drain Japanese universities, one public and one private, agree to unprecedented cooperation "Electronic dorm" gives U. of Maryland students an entrepreneurial environment Commission's Web site helps colleges put student services online