An Ode to Student Support

I have a newfound respect for my colleagues in Student Engagement. And by that I mean the teams of people at 2U who support students throughout their online programs. Before my own experience of navigating an application process and onboarding to student life after 15 years away, my understanding of the value that these groups add to the overall online student experience was superficial at best. I’m only now fully realizing the degree to which the online student experience is about more than just the coursework and instructors who teach it, it’s also about the people and systems that support you along the way. 

Support through the application process

Some OPMs have gotten bad press recently for their "aggressive recruiting" tactics—portrayed as withholding information and dogging students just to secure an enrollment. While I am sure there are some problematic practices within the industry, there’s also an under-told story about admissions counselors who have a real positive impact on the students they serve. To clarify: by admissions counselors I mean folks who work with interested potential applicants to help them evaluate whether a program is right for them and support them through the application process. I mentioned in my last post that I interacted with a helpful admissions counselor while exploring a program offered by American University. She helped me gather information much more quickly and easily than I was able to do on my own. She was clear and direct about application requirements, confirmed the cost of tuition and deadlines, hunted down additional details on coursework, student body, and faculty at my request, and she always followed up promptly. Because of my admissions counselor, I had all of the information I needed in order to make an informed decision about what was best for me.

The School of Education at Indiana University Bloomington, by contrast, does not employ admissions counselors. IU is an exceptional university with a number of highly ranked online degree programs and an exemplary attitude toward online learning, but (at least in the Instructional Systems Technology program) they do not currently provide this level of applicant support. The faculty are wonderful and willing to respond to questions, but they have a lot on the go, and being my admissions counselor is not their full-time job. The school’s website contains a wealth of information, but at times I found it hard to find the exact information I was looking for. That, or I needed further clarification or detail on the information I found. 

I had a number of questions throughout the application process. My undergrad university didn’t calculate GPA, so what do I put in this application field? Should I submit the application with only these unofficial GRE scores so that I don’t miss the application deadline? Why won’t the portal let me submit the contact information for my second recommender? To get answers, I sent a message through the application portal. I emailed the department office. I called the department office. Eventually I got what I needed, but it took a few days, a few people, and some extra time and effort on my part. If only I had a counselor! 

You should know this about me: when I want something, I am tenacious. I will chase it down as a matter of principle. But I also have very little free time during the workday and limited hours in the evening to get life done. For context, my mail stacks up for months before I find time to open it. And that’s without having kids or overtime shifts or a second job or any of the other circumstances that many applicants must face. I imagine that, for lots of people, it is easier to just let the questions stack up and the application form go uncompleted—thus causing them to miss out on education that might change their lives. IN my experience, applicant support in the form of counselors or streamlined websites and well-designed portals can go a long way toward both getting learners to the education they need and ensuring the right fit between student and program. 

Support through onboarding

In November, I received an email congratulating me on my acceptance to the online program. The email contained information about the student orientation being held on campus the week before classes began. I assumed that this was boilerplate language and perhaps details about an online orientation would follow—if there’s an orientation residentially, why not online? In December, I did get an email from the department administrator with the name of my academic advisor (an associate professor in the department), plus a comprehensive document with numerous links to information about computer systems, registration, tuition, and more, but no indication of any formal online orientation.

My academic advisor and I (and another one of her advisees) met by Zoom a couple of days later. She gave us a quick overview of a few academic topics, including the courses we should take and in what order. I wasn’t confident that I should be wasting her time with questions about course waitlists, the Canvas LMS, my email account issues, or tuition bills, so the meeting was relatively brief. 

Between that meeting and the beginning of classes, communication from the school and my program was limited (it was the holidays, after all). I did eventually get an email from the bursar’s office directing me to pay my tuition bill. I found my way to tech support who advised me not to use Gmail and stick to Outlook Exchange. I figured out how to enroll in courses and poked around Canvas. And I joined the program’s Facebook group, connecting with a few existing students who were helpful in providing information and answering my basic questions like: when do professors typically publish their courses in Canvas? And, what courses are popular with students?

In 2U-powered programs, every student has a student success advisor to help them navigate onboarding and life as a student. Every program starts with an orientation course with asynchronous videos and resources on getting started and about the school and program. It is the student success advisor’s full-time job to provide personalized support tailored to what that student needs and what motivates them. They may talk on the phone every week (or more, or less), making sure the student has the information they need, when they need it. Advisors help students understand tuition and financial aid, calendars and deadlines, technology, library resources, and other expectations. They offer time management advice and lend an ear when students are feeling anxious or alone. And they counsel and encourage students to persist through difficult courses. 

Before you start thinking this is a propaganda piece: it’s not. I am very aware that advisors and counselors cost money. And, as I’ve previously written, the relatively low cost of the IST program at IU was an attractive feature to me. I also mentioned previously that the tuition for the American University program with an admissions counselor (I can’t confirm if they have student success advisors) was approximately $40,000. Would I pay an extra $20,000 for this level of support? Nope. Is the $20,000 extra tuition solely due to the extra support? Doubtful. Could you offer additional support to students on IU’s $20,000 tuition? I don’t know. Would a peer mentoring program or a low cost pre-recorded orientation course in Canvas strike the right balance of providing additional support and staying within budget? Maybe!

Support through the learning experience

To be totally honest, I am five weeks into my program and—while I’m definitely still calibrating—I am doing just fine on my own. That said, I would not have turned down a student success advisor or other forms of additional support. Personally, I found wading through documentation plus the anxiety of the unknown to be unnecessary additional cognitive burden at a time when I really didn’t need it. The possibility that I’m forgetting to do something is still weighing on my mind. And there are things I’d be interested in talking through, like program-wide norms and expectations for discussion board participation, or strategies for finding work-life-school balance. 

Beyond that, I’m waking up to the potential for advisors to serve as real people who can help students reflect on their personal learning journey—human metacognitive scaffolds, if you will. (I’m using my colleagues for this, but I won’t assume everyone has such patient and kind coworkers.) The research is clear that reflecting on the process of learning positively impacts learner success. But, if reflection is not designed concretely into a course, it can take real self-discipline to make the time to stop and do it on your own. Not to mention that typing reflections into a text box is a very different experience than talking to a real live person. Why not spend 30 minutes on the phone or via Zoom every week or two to debrief with your advisor? With detailed knowledge of the courses, their objectives and activities, plus working knowledge of evidence-based principles of how people learn, advisors become exceptionally valuable academic coaches who can drive learner success in meaningful ways.

And in addition to the value they bring to students, advisors are an excellent source of qualitative data on student perception and behavior for program leadership and faculty. They hear what students are really thinking about their learning experiences. They get detailed information on how students are studying and building learning into their lives. What their challenges are, what they enjoy. As a learning designer myself, I would consider this feedback incredibly valuable in helping improve the quality of the courses I design. 

When I first began my search for an online program, I was heavily focused on the curriculum and quality of the coursework itself. Over the course of the past few months, my eyes have been opened to the reality that the online learning experience is so much more than what’s in the learning management system. Studying online as an adult with a full-time job and busy life feels very different to when I was studying while living on campus as a 20-year old with nothing else to do. It’s hard. It would be easy to quit. Having surrounding people and systems along the way to support online learners who are increasingly coming from nontraditional backgrounds can make the experience much less difficult, stressful, and isolating. It has the potential to fundamentally improve the learning itself—and I’d venture to guess that it doesn’t necessarily need to blow the budget in order to make a significant difference.