Distance Education: Student Academic Plan Issue Overview

This article provides historical information regarding the 2020 Data Governance  project focused on standardizing the methods for coding students in distance/online academic offerings across the University of Maine System.

Detailed Information

Issue Summary

To enable reliable reporting on distance/online programs that provide increased access for students to complete coursework from locations other than campus, the Distance Education Coding Committee is proposing that all seven campuses of the UMS use one or two methods for coding students in distance/online academic offerings, with the potential for one institution using a different methodology as determined by that campus. 

Background

Over the past few decades, opportunities and need for students to complete UMS programs and courses either partially or fully through modalities other than face-to-face, campus-based instruction have grown. These online/distance courses and programs align with the UMS mission to provide access to a wide range of academic programming to as many students as possible. Through online courses, regional centers, and low-residency programs, the UMS meets students where they are and provides relevant programming in modalities that fit with many students’ daily lives and geographic locations. Academic offerings include graduate programs, undergraduate majors, minors, certificates (grad and undergrad), etc. that are offered to students through technology, online or otherwise.

At the time of this proposal, a few methods exist within the UMS for coding students in distance/online programs:

  1. UMFK codes students enrolled in distance/online programs at the academic plan level (major), which provides transparency in terms of student enrollment in distance/online programs, but complicates reporting that focuses on academic areas and reports across program modalities (e.g., to report on Nursing enrollment, one must know that there is a second Academic Plan to add to ‘Nursing’ plan enrollment, namely ‘Nursing Online’). 

  2. At UM, UMM, UMPI, and USM, students in distance programs are assigned to a Student Group for online education. Student Group is a difficult data field to maintain after the initial assignment to the group. Using this field is an easy up-front solution, but one that results in a fair amount of inaccuracy in the data. Students who are put into the student group are often not removed from it if they change their major, change their status from online to face-to-face (or vice versa), graduate from that particular program (the group needs to be discontinued at completion), or many other data changes that result in inaccuracies. 

  3. At UMA and UMF, distance/online students are not tracked at the program or student levels in PeopleSoft. At UMA, information on distance/online enrollment is gathered on individual students by examining the modalities of students’ course enrollments. At UMF, enrollment in distance/online programs is at the program level-where all students enrolled in a given distance/online program are known to be distance/online students by nature of the program itself, but the programs are not designated as distance/online in PeopleSoft.

March 2020 Proposal Forum

Distance Education: Student Academic Plan Proposal

Presentation Slides

Proposal Summary: Students enrolled in a distance program will be coded into an academic sub-plan of distance, online, low residency, etc. One campus may use the Campus field as an alternative to the sub-plan. 

Background: In order to plan and evaluate distance/online courses and programs, and to track student success in these academic endeavors, it is critical that we be able to accurately and easily identify these courses and programs, as well as the students enrolled in them. This proposal focuses on identifying the students matriculated in distance/online academic programs; other, related, data elements (i.e., course Instruction Mode and Component) are handled in separate Data Governance proposals and projects.

Comments/Questions

  • This is the most recent version of the proposal for coding of students in online or distance programs; this proposal previously came before the DAC in August 2019. 
  • It was mentioned that at one of the campuses they struggle with current use of the student group in that it is not very accurate, emphasizing the need for a new process.
  • A request was made that with the updated coding, sub-plans be frozen and joined as of census since currently they are not frozen at census. 
  • A question was raised about the timing of changing students over to the sub-plan, and the criteria used to assign current students to the sub-plans. This will likely be campus dependent, and more information will be shared during implementation.
  • A question was raised about when to use the online designation (e.g., students who are local but completing all their courses online), and it was discussed that this should be used not to identify whether or not the student is traveling to a site for classes, but whether or not those classes are delivered online or through other distance technology. 
    • UMA, in using the Campus field designation, will likely only use the online designation for out of state students completing their degrees online, since distance sites will want local students associated with their particular center, not online. 
  • An alternative was shared, that will need further investigation, of a custom framework attribute in Mainestreet that allows attaching an online attribute to an academic program. It is another page that can be activated, and also attaches to the admissions application. It also appears when changing a major for a student.

Resources & Research

Related Links

Strategic Goals Addressed

Over the past few decades, opportunities and need for students to complete UMS programs and courses either partially or fully through modalities other than face-to-face, campus-based instruction have grown. These online/distance courses and programs align with the UMS mission to provide access to a wide range of academic programming to as many students as possible. Through online courses, regional centers, and low-residency programs, the UMS meets students where they are and provides relevant programming in modalities that fit with many students’ daily lives and geographic locations. In order to plan and evaluate  these distance/online courses and programs, and to track student success in these academic endeavors, it is critical that we be able to accurately and easily identify these courses and programs, as well as the students enrolled in them. 

Implementation Plan

Audience

  • System-Wide
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