Centralizing Graduate Student Services: The Process, the Pitfalls, and the Progress
Concurrent Session 5
Brief Abstract
Addressing student needs is made difficult when a hodgepodge of resources exist without a centralized base. A graduate school of education online learning team centralized student services with careful planning and collaboration. In this session, the team will provide an overview of the process and showcase samples of materials created.
Additional Authors
Extended Abstract
Addressing varied and complex student needs is inherently challenging, especially with the rise of mental health concerns among higher education students. Meeting student needs can be even more difficult when there are a hodgepodge of resources from a variety of institutional departments with no centralized base. Higher education faculty and administrators are often overwhelmed with communicating and providing the variety of services essential for the best, most accessible support to their students. One solution to this challenge is the creation of a single, centralized student services program. Over the course of this past academic year, the online learning team at a graduate school of education in a large, non-profit, private higher education institution decreased the burden on faculty to be sole providers of support by single-handedly building a one-stop shop for its online graduate students to access easily all the support and resources they deserve.
The need for centralized student services was made shockingly apparent when the graduate school of education transitioned from using an Online Program Management (OPM) company to fully in-house program design and delivery. Through the hiring of a dedicated Student Success Counselor for online students, the online learning team was able to offer online students full care and guidance for the duration of their academic journey from enrollment to graduation.
While the centralized services are still being developed, the online learning team has designed, built, and implemented processes and materials that effectively support the online students. When a student is enrolled, the Admissions team hands them over to the Student Success Counselor (SSC), who provides for them (1) an intake questionnaire which asks about study skills, online learning comfort, professional goals, and employment, an important factor for planning field experiences later in their academic journey; (2) a new student checklist which helps students stay on track for a smooth transition to the start of their life as a graduate student; and (3) a link to the SSC’s appointment calendar to book an interior welcome virtual meeting. In this meeting, the SSC gets to know the student and provides the student with their own personalized advisement sheet.
The SSC centralizes all program sequencing and crafts individualized advisement sheets based on the long-term plan of study for the program and the students’ preference of attending full-time or part-time. This advisement sheet ensures full transparency between the student, the faculty advisor, and the School. The students feel comfort in knowing their trajectory from the start. The faculty advisors feel a sense of relief in that they no longer have to keep track of student sequencing on their own; this once labor-intensive administrative task is now centralized with the SSC. Taken together, the creation of individualized plans of study helps keep the students on the right track. This long-term planning also allows for course enrollment projections to aid in planning for course scheduling far in advance.
In addition to these steps taken for new students, the SSC also provides support to all continuing students, including, but not limited to: updating all student handbooks; crafting and sending consistently a periodic student newsletter; communicating announcements for all deadlines; sending reminders and guides for registration; completing a registration audit to ensure proper registration of all students; organizing and running orientations, professional development workshops, writing center workshops, career service workshops, etc.; and ensuring all requirements are met for graduation. All these resources are housed together on a student community site located as a “course” on the learning management system.
The implementation of this centralized student service and advisement came with careful and intentional planning. Collaboration was needed among several departments: faculty, financial aid, the writing center, counseling and psychological services, career services, Admissions, the Dean’s office, and more. However, the time and effort invested in planning and roll-out was worth it to enhance student satisfaction.
In this session, the online learning team will provide an overview of the steps taken to plan and implement the centralization of these services. They will also showcase samples of materials used to support students, such as the student community site and advisement sheets. By the end of the session, the attendees should (1) have an understanding of the planning process for student service centralization and feel empowered with being able to initiate such a plan at their own institution if possible; (2) get ideas for materials and strategies to centralize student services at their own institutions, using the online team’s exhibits as templates; and (3) identify practical applications which can be implemented immediately upon return to their institution, no matter what kind of student support structure they work within.
This session will be structured so that the audience can participate in the conversation. Questions, comments, and shared stories will be encouraged throughout the presentation. Presenters will lead the attendees in a goal-setting and brainstorming activity to fulfill learning objective #3, which is for attendees to come away with practical tools they can immediately put to action in their institutions.