How Colleges Should Set Up Online College Courses

More and more colleges are offering online courses and even degrees. However, some of those colleges are woefully unprepared to help those students who sign up for these programs. Although instructors have their own issues with regard to setting up online courses, the colleges should take care of their own agenda.

Email

Nearly all college departments have email set up now, and those addresses are typically displayed on the pages online students access. The trick is to get staff to actually answer those emails in a timely manner. Sometimes the addresses don't seem to be connected to a true box; although mail doesn't bounce back, it never gets answered, even when several are sent. Offices are sometimes simply overwhelmed because they are not set up to handle the numbers of mail they receive, especially offices like financial aid. Hiring more help, at least at particularly busy times such as the two or three weeks before fall semester begins as well as the first couple weeks after the semester starts, can help make student experiences more positive. Even if extra staff can't answer all the questions, they can route students toward the appropriate other staff. It also can help ease a student's mind just by being able to talk to a person rather than getting an answering machine or no answer at all.

Hours

Online college students typically sign up for online courses because they don't have a lot of extra time during the regular workday. If campus staff are only available 8-5, when is the online student supposed to get in touch with someone? Some campuses suggest online students stick to email, and that is often the best choice, particularly since students then have a written record of their conversation. But some situations require direct, immediate contact. Maybe a student doesn't understand the process to go through for a certain aspect, or the email response the student received regarding a question doesn't make sense to him/her.

Staggering staff so someone is available at other times would be ideal. Having assistance available until midnight can make an online student's experience much more rewarding. This could be either phone service or perhaps a live chat, a service set up that would be useful during regular work hours, as well. Online students tend to prefer to contact online rather than on the phone.

Centralization

All students have to deal with a number of different staff members and departments, particularly when they are trying to register for courses. But the online student's limitations again warrant some special consideration. Ideally, a department should be set up to assist online students only. These employees could work from a standard set of responses for many questions, just as big companies do, personalizing when necessary. They could also route questions or make a quick call to get a response so the online students can get speedy feedback. These are positions that could quite readily be manned by student employees or even faculty/staff volunteers-putting in a certain number of hours could be reflected on a performance pay plan.

Do it right

Colleges need to either set up a complete, easy-to-use system for online students, or they need to stick to their brick-and-mortar classes and not offer online courses at all. Attending college is stressful enough for most students; finding their way around a system that is supposed to make it easier for them should not be yet another frustration they have to deal with.