The Student as the Center - The Individual as the Design

The 2007 Distance Education Survey Results: Tracking the Impact of eLearning at Community Colleges http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/AACC_US/I080318L.pdf (The American Association of Community College’s Instructional Technology Council (ITC)) was just released. It named a number of online student services trends projections.

"The top 5 areas of likely distance learning-related service growth in this segment are (1) online student organization web site and services, (2) online counseling and advising, (3) online plagiarism evaluation, (4) audio/video streaming, and (5) online textbook sales."

Three of these areas have huge impacts within online student services that will, I believe, affect all students - not just distance students. They are (1) online student organization web site and services, (2) online counseling and advising, (3) online textbook sales. Each area has transformational issues of administration and governance that will surround the transference process as we go towards new business models.

As we build new systems with our colleges websites (recognized as one of our institution's biggest front doors - "According to Loyola, 77.8 percent of freshman applications were received online, and the majority of the current freshman class was chosen from online applicants." See http://campustechnology.com/articles/48902/), we need to remember to build on platforms that allow a modular approach, in-order to update nimbly. No more long-time specialty design and build software. Online student tools are going to constantly change, grow, mesh and mash, and then redesign themselves again.

Our job as student services providers and decision makers is to keep the student at the center and the individual as the design bedrock, while recognizing that 24/7/365 access does serve the student better. And needs to keep pace with the business models that students are being offered online elsewhere. As does personalized profiles, personalized portals - see https://mypc.pencol.edu/myuniversity/login.html, personalized career builders - see http://wwcc.kuder.com/, personalized transferability tables, personalized student recruitment and retention systems, personalized advising systems that allow for scenarios and savable instructive pathways - https://portal.wwcc.edu/edplans/help/epdochome.aspx, and personalized bookordering - see http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/minisite/.

In Opening Education, 2020 and Beyond: Future Scenarios for Education in the Age of New Technologies by FutureLab the Questions for Education includes "If environments are intelligent, they offer the opportunity of responding to specific needs, preferences and difficulties of individuals. At the same time, they potentially offer increased flexibility in that there is the capacity to reshape educational environments in multiple ways at different times to meet the needs of different occupants of the space." (And I don't think that means just physical space.) We now have this opportunity.