Stephanie J. Jones
Texas Tech University
stephanie.j.jones@ttu.edu
Katrina A. Meyer
The University of Memphis
kmeyer@memphis.edu Abstract
This study investigated how higher education institutions support
their distance learning initiatives through their institutional websites
- their "virtual face." The population was 40 institutions, of which
10 each were doctoral/research, master, baccalaureate, and community
college, located in 40 different states. Using a researcher-developed
instrument that included input from distance learning professionals,
websites were analyzed based on the location of administrative student
support services for distance students from the institution's distance
learning office home page. The descriptive study answered three
research questions: (1) How are higher education institutions
establishing a "virtual face" for their distance learning initiatives?
(2) How well do distance learning offices support distance students?,
and (3) What does the “virtual face” of distance learning offices say
about the commitment to distance learning students by higher education
institutions? Findings indicate that many institutions have
centralized distance learning offices and have made a concerted effort
to serve their distance students. These efforts can be improved
further by providing access to all necessary administrative student
support services online from the distance learning office home page.
Missing services and information for most of the analyzed sites included
distance student retention, success, and satisfaction, as well as
assessments for potential students to gauge their distance learning
readiness.
Introduction
Students continue to demand for distance learning courses and programs. According to
Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011,
6.1 million students were enrolled in at least one online course in
fall 2010 (Allen & Seaman, 2011), which was a 10% increase over fall
2009 online enrollments. With enrollments in online courses
contributing to 31.3% of total postsecondary enrollments in fall 2010
(Allen & Seaman, 2011), colleges and universities must address
demands for distance learning and the technologies and services that
support it. Distance students want flexible and convenient access to
courses and degree offerings, and expect to have equal access to student
support services as their on-campus peers. As distance learning has
evolved, online student support services have been added on to existing
student services, which served the needs of students while enrollments
in distance learning were small (LaPadula, 2003). Colleges tend to
expand existing services versus developing those unique to the needs of
distance students. As distance students continue to make up a large
percentage of overall institutional enrollments, it is imperative that
colleges and universities evaluate their online student support systems
to ensure that distance students receive the services that can support
their success. As institutions move into the competitive distance
learning market and utilize increased enrollments in distance learning
to generate new revenues, they must provide online support services for
students, beginning with the institution's website.
It has been well over a decade since colleges and universities started
promoting themselves through their websites. In order to evaluate the
progress of distance learning in higher education institutions, it is
appropriate to ask how well college and university websites perform as a
tool to provide potential and current distance students the support
they need to make informed decisions on distance courses and degree
programs. For purposes of this study, the definition of distance
learning is courses delivered online and through interactive audio- and
videoconferencing. An important question for distance learning offices
at colleges and universities to ask themselves today is,
How do higher education institutions support their distance learning initiatives through their institutional websites?
Literature and Research Questions
Students and Institutional Websites
As colleges and universities increase their distance learning
presence, they must seriously evaluate the institutional website --
their "virtual face" – which is viewed and used by potential and current
students. Today's college students have options and are no longer
geographically bound to local institutions, due to the development of
the Internet and distance education. Students expect to interact with
potential and current institutions through their websites (Shea, 2005).
Excellent web-based services available through an institution’s website
are a necessity for distance students who do not expect to travel to
campus to take courses, much less to access support services in person
at the campus. The importance of websites was confirmed by Noel-Levitz
(2007), which asked 1,000 prospective graduate students about their
“e-expectations” and found these students wanted information about
programs of study and financial aid in an electronic form (i.e., on the
web or email). In other words, “graduate programs need to put as much
information as possible within a few mouse clicks of their target
audience” (Noel-Levitz, 2007, p. 1). Prospective graduate students, in
ranking the importance of different types of information from 1 (not
important) to 5 (extremely important), ranked “graduate program detail”
as 4.77, scholarship/assistantship information as 4.62,
tuition/cost/fees as 4.38, and details on the faculty as 4.03
(Noel-Levitz, 2007, p. 3). These studies support the assertion that an
institution’s “virtual face” is essential to recruiting graduate
students. The reliance on the web for high school students investigating
colleges has been confirmed by Noel-Levitz (2012), which found that 50%
of potential students eliminated a college from further consideration
based on its website, and 55% specifically mentioned difficulty with
site navigation as a challenge to doing research on institutions through
the web.
This web-based interaction with institutions can be either positive
or negative based on the experiences students have with institutional
websites as well as students’ ability to locate desired information.
Institutions continue to struggle to "provide time- and
location-independent access to a complete array of student support
services" (LaPadula, 2003, p. 120). As noted in
Beyond the Administrative Core: Creating Web-Based Student Services for Online Learners, when
developing online support services, institutions focus on the common
administrative services of admissions, financial aid, and registration
(U. S. Department of Education, 2002). Secondary considerations include
academic and student services support.
And yet two studies stress the importance of academic and student
services for students. In a study of graduate students admitted to the
online and blended programs in higher education at Texas Tech University
and the University of Memphis, Meyer and Jones (2011) asked a total of
42 students open-ended questions about information they needed, could
not find, or found with much effort on their university's website. Their
responses paint a picture of busy adult students who often struggle to
find basic information or services (e.g., email login, registration) on
institutional websites that are important functions for graduate
students. They were also asked what messages the websites conveyed and
should convey and who the intended audience was. The students perceived
the audience to be students, but still found the messages mostly to be
about marketing the institution rather than addressing their educational
needs. In Meyer and Jones (2012), the 42 graduate students rated 30
web-based services as “must have,” “nice to have,” “delighted to have
(but not necessary),” or “I’m indifferent to this service” based on the
Kano, Seraku, Takahashi, and Tsuji (1984) model of marketing research on
customer satisfaction. The majority (11 of 17) of services in the “must
have” category are essential for functioning as a student (e.g., course
registration, program costs, helpdesk), while the social media services
(e.g., podcasts and iPhone applications) were in the “nice to have”
category. Items of importance to the institution (history of the
university, strategic plan, contributions to community) were in the
“nice to have” or “delighted to have” categories. The continuing
interest in viewing photos (of the campus, students, athletics) as a
“nice to have” is intriguing for students in online and blended
programs. These two studies appear to imply that graduate students find
their institution’s websites to be serviceable, but less than optimal
for their needs. In other words, the information and services needed by
these distance learning students had room for improvement.
The Evolution of Web Services
In the early years of Green's (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006) Campus
Computing Project, he tracked the implementation of a number of online
services as well as the institutional home pages of two- and four-year
colleges and universities. Green continues to survey annually 496
senior campus information technology managers about current technology
issues at their institutions, but institutional websites and online
services no longer seem to be a critical need; these services appear to
be standard expectations of institutions.
Several studies of institutions’ "virtual face" have been conducted,
focusing on general information and student services applicable to all
higher education students and the messages such websites have for
visitors to the institutions’ home pages (Meyer, 2008a). These studies
focused on higher education websites and their roles in providing
specific information that legislators and parents want (Meyer, 2008b),
the specific services and information of importance sought by minority
students (Wilson & Meyer, 2009), and a process for using website
information to assess competitive advantage (Meyer & Wilson, 2010).
Only Meyer and Wilson's (2010) study dealt specifically with
information needs of planners or administrators of distance learning
programs, but not the needs of distance learning students. The current
study is the first to investigate how well the "virtual face" of an
institution’s website for its distance learning office is working to
support students throughout their distance learning studies.
Based on this review, it is clear that the literature on college and
university websites is modest, but the research on these websites for
distance learning within these institutions is even more limited and
therefore necessary to undertake. This study describes distance
learning's "virtual face" at higher education institutions and answers
three research questions:
- How are higher education institutions establishing a "virtual face" for their distance learning initiatives?
- How well do distance learning offices support distance students?
- What do the "virtual faces" of distance learning offices say
about the commitment to distance learning students by higher education
institutions?
The Study
Study Design
This research is best categorized as descriptive of distance learning
offices within higher education institutions' websites. The lack of a
prior body of research literature means there is little basis for making
predictions of the analysis. One methodology, which may help in this
study is “focused synthesis” (Majchrzak, 1984, p. 59), which depends on a
synthesis of various information sources to develop insights into the
information. A focused synthesis may develop answers to specific
questions or add to our understanding of an issue. Traditional
questions of reliability and validity depend on the ability of the
researcher to explain the data and provide transparent reasoning about
the data as well as its limits or holes in the analysis.
Sample
A list of 40 colleges and universities was drawn from the population
of public higher education institutions using three types of
information. First, public institutions were grouped by Carnegie
classification using the definitions from 2006 and aided by The Carnegie
Classification of Institutions of Higher Education ™ website
http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/lookup_listings/institution.php).
Only four categories of institutions were used: doctoral/research,
master, baccalaureate, and community college. Second, institutions were
grouped by state. Third, the states were grouped by geographic region:
northeast/middle; north central/midwest; southern; and
northwest/western. Although some of these designations are the same as
the relevant regional accrediting associations, some are not; the
grouping by region was not critical to a research question, but an
attempt to ensure institutions were drawn from all regions in the U.S.
From these groupings, a recursive process was followed to develop the
sample of 40 institutions, to represent 40 different states (states that
are not represented in this sample are Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Iowa,
New Hampshire, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin).
Then, 10 institutions were drawn from each of the four regions.
Similarly, 10 institutions were drawn from each of the four Carnegie
types. Last, as the sample took shape, an effort was made to ensure
that both urban and rural, main campus and branch campus locations were
included. Therefore, this sample was drawn to maximize representation of
different types of institutions in different states and regions.
Clearly, these were not random selections, but purposeful in the sense
that there was an attempt to be representative in regards to geography
and Carnegie type. The institutions included in the sample are
displayed in Table 1 below.
It was not the intent of this research to identify the home pages of
distance learning offices at individual institutions, so the remainder
of the study will focus on differences by Carnegie type and/or
characteristics of the sample as a whole. In other words, the name of
an individual institution will not be associated with any result.
Set realistic goals.
