WCET Cooperative Consulting

Alaska Distance Education Consortium

WCET staff continues to assist in the development and evaluation of the Alaska Distance Education Consortium (ADEC), which includes higher education institutions, public education, libraries, vocational education, and the National Guard. All these entities are working together to create a statewide utility that will allow students throughout Alaska to go to a single site for information about all distance-learning opportunities in the state. This year the staff of ADEC is moving its headquarters from Juneau to Anchorage.

Arizona Board of Regents

Phase I. Under contract with the Arizona Board of Regents, Pat Shea and Darlene Burnett used the WCET audit tool they developed and interviews with key staff at Northern Arizona University, University of Arizona, and Arizona State University to assess the quality of the student services offered online by the three universities. The assessment focused on 10 services: admissions, registration, student accounts, financial aid, catalog, schedule of classes, orientation, academic advising, career planning, and communications (institution to student). In addition to the individual school reports, they presented a final report to the board with findings and recommendations about the role of the online Arizona Regents University in supporting the distance learner from the state perspective.

Phase II. WCET explored the compatibility of the technical infrastructures of the three Arizona universities to support the seamless vision for Arizona Regents University, derived from WCET’s Phase I contract. High-level steps for implementing a new infrastructure with approximate costs were presented in a report to the Arizona Board of Regents.

Athabasca University

To help prepare for its review for accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, Athabasca University contracted for a WCET audit of its online student services. The audit focused on enrollment services, academic advising, career center services, communications (institution to student, orientation, and services for students with disabilities).

Benchmarking Project

During the winter and spring of 2005, WCET staff joined with the staff of the Observatory for Borderless Higher education in the U.K. to manage an international benchmarking project around the integration of information technology and e-learning into campus operations. The six WCET-member universities participating in the project included: California State University, Sacramento; Indiana State University; University of North Dakota; University of Wyoming; Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; and Western Carolina University. They were joined by three universities from Australia – Edith Cowan University, Monash University, and University of South Australia – and one from England, the University of Surrey.

All the universities responded to a set of questions that helped WCET and Observatory staff determine “good practices” in each of several areas of policy and practice. Senior administrators from participating universities came together in Vancouver, British Columbia, to learn from one another and refine the “good practice states.” A final report, compiled by the Observatory and WCET staff, allowed each institution to compare its policies and practices against those of all the participants.

Distance Opportunities for Interpreter Trainers (DO IT)

DO IT is a series of federally funded projects, operated out of Front Range Community College in Colorado. The project educates interpreters for the deaf in rural areas of the upper plains and mountain states. WCET is one of the project evaluators and also consults on possible services to be offered by DO IT.

Borderless Access to Teacher Education

Seeking to jointly develop and offer online certifications for school librarians and administrators in rural states, Montana State University-Bozeman partnered with the University of

Nevada-Las Vegas and University of South Dakota to create the Borderless Access to Teacher Education project. WCET serves as the project evaluator and is participating in a related project to further study the library administration program’s success in retaining students.

eArmy University, Council for Academic Management

With support from the Sloan Foundation, a WCET staff member serves on the Council for Academic Management (CAM) for the eArmy University. Based on the advice of the CAM, the Army education staff has created a new electronic tool that allows potential soldiers to assess their readiness for online study. When a potential student finds deficits in his or her skills or knowledge, the tool refers him or her to remediation opportunities.

Middle States Commission for Higher Education

WCET staff served on the accrediting team for the first Canadian institution to go through the commission’s accrediting process.

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

Under contract with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU), Pat Shea and Darlene Burnett conducted research on 10 online student services, to be used in expanding the existing WCET audit tool to 20 services. The services selected by the MnSCU e-Student Services Committee included: personal counseling, library services, bookstore services, technical support, tutoring, student activities, placement services, services for students with disabilities, services for international students, and assessment and testing. An alpha version of the expanded audit tool was pilot tested with the 32 MnSCU institutions, and a presentation of the results was delivered at a MnSCU meeting of the chief academic officers, deans, and student services staffs in October 2005.

New School University

WCET staff concluded work this year in assisting the New School in their plans for the restructuring the management of their distance-learning activities and for the expansion of those activities. After assisting with an internal assessment of their academic strengths, WCET staff helped the New School leadership develop a feasible vision for their distance-learning expansion.

Northwest Educational Outreach Network (NEON)

The Northwest Academic Forum (NWAF) and WICHE collaborated to create the Northwest Educational Outreach Network (NEON), which will identify degree programs that are not available in every state and make these programs available through distance learning. Based upon the success of WICHE’s Student Exchange Programs, NEON seeks to bring the program to the student rather than having the student move to the institution offering the program. The project is funded by a U.S. Department of Education FIPSE grant. WICHE received the grant for this project and served as the fiscal agent, therefore the grant is not reflected in WCET’s financial information.

NEON is working on activities in three fields, selected by the NWAF Executive Committee:

• Ph.D. in Nursing. Oregon Health and Science University is offering its Ph.D. in nursing program via videoconferencing to students in Alaska (which began in fall 2004) and to additional students in Idaho in fall 2005. Also, in partnership with the Western Institute of Nursing, NEON has created a website (NursingPhD.org) aimed at informing potential doctoral nursing students about why they should pursue a doctorate and what Western institutions may be a good match for them to pursue their research interests.

• Supply Chain Management. Boise State University, the University of Alaska Anchorage, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa have agreed to create a joint graduate certificate program aimed at those who need supply chain management skills for their jobs but who do not need a full master’s degree.

• Library Media Certification. While state departments of education require schools to have certified librarians, not all states have graduate courses providing the necessary skills to meet the certification requirements. NEON is working to match those states with a library certificate program offered at a distance by Montana State University-Bozeman.

As part of the work on the Nursing Ph.D. program, a new partnership with the Western Institute of Nursing developed into the Nursing Education Xchange (NEXus project). This grant-funded project is a pilot partnership among five colleges of nursing and is designed to lower the barriers to students who wish to enroll in different institutions’ courses. The NWAF Executive Committee became intrigued with the idea of a course exchange and asked NEON to develop a plan for a similar service for their institutions. As a result, the NEON Course Exchange was recently unveiled at an NWAF meeting, and five NWAF institutions are being sought to partner in exchanging course enrollments. If successful, NWAF plans to open the project to more institutions in the future.

University of Alaska System

As the University of Alaska System and the Fairbanks campus go through the process of consolidating their information technology offices, WCET staff is assisting the management team.