A Statewide Study of Perceptions of Directors on the Availability of Online Student Support Services at Postsecondary Institutions

Victoria S Brown,Josh Strigle,Mario Toussaint

doi:10.24059/olj.v24i4.2147

Victoria S Brown, Josh Strigle + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i4.2147

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Journal: Online Learning	Publication Date: Dec 1, 2020
Citations: 2	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Florida Atlantic University, Florida College

Abstract

As a state university system planned for growth in the availability of distance education degrees, the presidents and the provosts decided to include consideration for the availability of student support services. To ensure availability of student support services for online students, college and university systems in the state developed and implemented a self-reporting tool, the Online Student Support Scorecard to measure the availability of those services at both the college and the university levels. Although institutions were offering many of the services identified in the scorecard as essential, institutions were struggling to provide some of the services. Differences also were identified between the types of services available at the state college system compared with the university system.

Highlights

The demand for distance learning courses grew steadily during the past decade (Seaman, Allen, & Seaman, 2017)
The results have indicated that the distance education students have less favorable academic outcomes than the oncampus students
The calculated aggregate score for the universities and the state colleges created the total score received by each institution and provided a comparison point as the maximum number of points available for each category of service (CAT) and each STD for an answer to research Question 2

Summary

Introduction

The demand for distance learning courses grew steadily during the past decade (Seaman, Allen, & Seaman, 2017). Tinto’s (1993) student integration model for higher retention rates referred to two dimensions of students’ academic experience that need to interact together for improved retention. In a study about the availability of student support services, the data indicated that institutions with higher graduation rates for the on-campus students were more likely to graduate the online-only students as well. For those institutions, student support was a contributing variable for increasing students’ opportunities for success

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Conclusion