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Features
Serving the Online Learner
4/1/2007
The deployment of virtual classroom applications from vendors such as Horizon Wimba, Elluminate, and Saba across institutions will no doubt soon enhance institutions’ efforts to reach out to students for academic advising and support, particularly in the case of graduate and professional learners.
Program-specific advising. Graduate students’ advising needs are often program-focused, rather than degreefocused. Sandy Lundeen, program director for the Fast Track MBA at Babson College (MA), notes that the program employs an admissions person dedicated to advising potential students about program requirements. The adviser highlights the time commitment of 18 to 22 hours a week, and explains that the program is cohort-based for mid-career professionals. Before a student signs up, he or she is encouraged to negotiate required time and cost commitments with employers and family. This kind of advising is essential, because the lead time for mid-career professionals to sign up and begin a program can be lengthy: up to two or more years. Lundeen puts the minimum lead time for the Fast Track program at two to three months, and that only happens occasionally, she adds.
Learn More About It
The National Academic Advising Association is an excellent resource for academic advising. The association’s annual Advising Technology Innovation Awards recognize the “most creative and unique uses of technology that support academic advising,” including advising websites, databases, learner portfolios, and software applications.
An analysis of what the Spellings Commission recommendations mean for governing boards of institutions is available from the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.
Ongoing Program and Course Advising
Once students are actually enrolled in courses and programs, what types of advising tools and approaches work? Technology formats such as the live, real-time, virtual classroom are increasingly being used for educator office hours, general Q&A, and to manage a range of learning experiences and assessment events. More and more, faculty and students are also seamlessly “roaming” from one technology to the next. For example, Meghan Young, academic sales manager for Saba, reports that a statistics professor at Texas A&M University encourages his students to IM him if they are having trouble during late hours (such as between 10 and 11 pm). If he can, he “meets” them in a Saba Centra Live classroom, to offer real-time help with study difficulties.
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