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?
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.
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