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IDLA Innovators Award - Nomination Category Name/Title/Address of Nominated Individual Role of Nominee within Distance Education Summary of Contributions to Distance Education The nomination of Christy Roland for the IDLA Innovators Award is certainly a deserving recognition of Ms. Roland’s determination and success in providing high quality online education for the students of AIB College of Business (AIB). Several years ago, AIB began offering a few online classes. As the number of classes grew, students began asking if they could take more classes online or finish their degrees online. Even though AIB provides housing on its campus, the majority of AIB’s students commute to school, some of them quite a distance. AIB also has a significant number of non-traditional students. The majority of AIB’s students are employed, either full or part-time, and many have families. Numerous AIB students were being forced to interrupt their education due to the constraints of commuting, family responsibilities, or employment commitments. AIB also had a number of students that wished to continue their education over the summer but also wanted to return to their hometowns for that period of time. Due to these reasons, AIB felt distance education was a very viable option for many of its students. In June 2003, AIB received approval from The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (HLC) to offer its first online only major, Business Administration and Leadership. AIB began courses in this major with online only students in Fall 2003. In February 2004, a team from the HLC visited AIB’s campus to review the progress on this first degree and to review AIB’s request to add an additional five majors to its online only program. The team found AIB’s online program to be moving ahead very well and changed AIB’s request, from offering an additional five majors, to AIB being allowed to offer any of its associate degree majors online. This was a strong affirmation of the quality of the online program at AIB and a great recognition of the tremendous work of Christy Roland in leading the development of AIB’s online program. Ms. Roland’s outstanding contributions were also recognized when she was asked by the HLC to share the documentation related to the development, implementation, and evaluation of AIB’s online program with participants at the HLC’s Annual Meeting in Chicago in April 2005. The online program has seen tremendous growth over the past 2 years. In Spring 2004, AIB had an enrollment of 20 online only students. By Spring 2005, 73 students were online only majors. Now, in Spring 2006 with twelve majors entirely online, AIB has over 100 students enrolled in the program. The strength of this program is reflected in the retention rates. Retention of students in the online only program has been consistently above 90%, usually above 95%, over each term. This is significantly better than anecdotal reports of a 50% retention rate in many online programs. At the end of each term, the students not only evaluate the individual courses but they are also asked to complete a program evaluation. The online only program consistently receives high marks for its quality and student satisfaction. It is not just AIB’s online only students that have benefited from the expanded online program. Many of AIB’s students like the flexibility of taking one or two online classes in combination with one or two day or evening classes. This combination of on-campus and online classes gives students more flexibility in working around family and/or work commitments. In May 2004, 215 online class seats were filled by AIB students. By May 2005, this had risen to 404 and currently there are 544 class seats in online classes at AIB. One of the many reasons AIB’s online program is thriving is Ms. Roland’s insistence in having the online courses as consistent as possible with on-campus courses. Online classes at AIB are not independent study courses. Each course has weekly assignments and deadlines just like the on-campus classroom. Activities are included to facilitate interactions between students and between the students and faculty member. This includes the use of Horizon Wimba where students and faculty can interact in realtime. It also includes the availability of online tutoring. The rigor of AIB’s online classes is in many cases probably at a higher level than some on-campus classes due to the student having to take more responsibility for their own learning. In order to provide the resources to online students that are provided on-campus, each online course also contains a virtual campus developed by Ms. Roland and her staff. To assure a student understands the concept of online learning, Ms. Roland developed the Online Readiness Inventory. The first time a student wishes to take an online class, the student is required to complete this inventory and attain a minimum score. The HLC was particularly impressed with this component of AIB’s online program. A sample online course is also on the AIB website for prospective students to review. Ms. Roland also assures that each faculty member wishing to teach online has been appropriately trained. She has developed an instructor training program that each faculty member must complete prior to being assigned their first online class. There are eight units and each unit takes approximately three hours to complete. At the beginning, this training was done on-campus. Now, all of this training can be completed online. |
