Anita Crawley - Supporting Online Students: A Practical Guide to Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating Services

Foreword

In this age of always-on, always-available uber-connectness, the value of deploying interactive web-based technologies to help more students achieve the dream of a college education may seem obvious and self-evident. Yet, the phenomenon of online learningwhere a significant percentage of an academic program is delivered to students via web and online technologieshas only recently emerged from the margins of postsecondary education practice to assume its long-anticipated, mission-critical role.

Todays evidence points to increasing rates of online learning adoption, growth in the numbers and kinds of online program offerings available at colleges and universities of all kinds and sizes, and the diversification of the technological forms of instructional delivery. As the goal of increasing college graduates in the United States by more than 1 million students in less than six years has become a central part of the national postsecondary education conversation, the role of online learning takes on even more significance. The ongoing recognition that todays economies demand new skills for future workforce success has further accelerated online learnings move toward the middle of the mainstream institutional adoption.

As online learning has moved toward the mainstream, the need for services that maximize online student success has never been more pressing. Anita Crawley has written a timely and highly relevant guidebook that will come to be prized by its readers for helping them navigate the complex ecosystem of todays online learning. Crawley provides the essential framework needed to provide the full range of support services that are known to contribute to student success. As student success becomes the de facto measure of quality for online learning programs, the student services that maximize probabilities of student success become an important and integral part of the formula.

Crawley provides online learning practitioners, educational policy makers, and program managers with a comprehensive overview of todays world online learning. She makes a strong case that student services are an essential ingredient in every institutional strategy for online learning that wants to ensure student success as measured by progress, retention, and completion. She then considers how the student populations drawn to online learning need support and services that actively spark momentum and engagement while reducing barriers shown to impede progress. She provides a detailed look at essential administrative services such as online scheduling and online registration, while also walking readers through financial aid and financial planning considerations about which every online learning stakeholder should be aware. She provides a useful overview of academic services required by online students that include advising, counseling, assessment, testing, book store services, library services, and tutoring services. She helps readers understand the value of personal services for online students, such as career advising, that take on even greater significance when federal concerns for gainful employment continue to swirl around the discussion of online learning quality. Readers are provided with planning and implementation guidance, with particular attention paid to using Center for Transforming Student Services (CENTSS) audit tools to evaluate the delivery of online student services. Readers are also offered advice and guidance on quality measurement.

Anita brings an experienced perspective to the online student services conversation. Her writing is informed by her more than twenty years of experience in all facets of online learning. She has worked as course developer, has led faculty development efforts, has served as a director of an online learning program, and has served as a faculty member at such notable institutions as UCLA, Montgomery College, and the University of Illinois. At the heart of her experiences in postsecondary online learning is a notable dedication to ensuring that students completing online learning programs have a fair shot at securing high-quality student services.