Develop a Website and Offerings for Academic Support Services for Online Students

Our Institution – XXXXX College – offers a fairly extensive degree of online academic support services that have been developed and improved upon over the last eight years.  The offerings do not just include tutoring, but many other services.  The tutoring can be handled in a number of ways by the online tutorial staff which the college employs (both peer and faculty tutors are involved). Students can submit questions via the discussion board, “meet” with tutors in one of the chat areas, faculty tutors have the option of using the “whiteboard” to communicate with tutees, and audio messages can be recorded by both the students and their tutors and remain of the site for others who may need assistance on the same topic.

Students who live near any of the branch campuses in NY and NJ also have the option to come to any campus for walk-in or scheduled tutoring sessions.  The Writing Center accepts papers for review that are then returned to the senders.  Even phone hours can be scheduled.

But, the website includes many guides for study skills in general and in specific subject areas.  The site also has college course syllabi listed, study guides posted by many faculty members, and even directions on how to most effectively approach studying and preparing for online offerings of the college.

Requests - for academic assistance - are forwarded by students to the directors and assistant directors in NJ and NY.  These requests are then passed along to the appropriate tutors who make arrangements directly to assist students. 

To enable the Center to best support students, extensive data is collected on the courses being tutored, the number of hours spent, the success rates of students, and the collection of feedback forms from the tutees.  This is all done in coordination with the online faculty and the Online Degree Department.

The critical components of the website are the registration forms for academic assistance, the various postings (guides, study materials, etc.), the communication area, and the links to other sites where appropriate support service materials are listed.  However, viewing our site is restricted to college faculty, staff, and students, and unfortunately cannot be accessed by others to see the actual site and offerings posted.

There are a number of colleges that offer online support services, but like our college, some sites restrict access.

In NJ, Rutgers University, Seton Hall University, Montclair State University are just some colleges offering academic support services that are somewhat similar to those offered by our college.  To include in this list such institutions as Princeton would not be relevant to our students needs due to the significant differences in the type of student  attending the two schools of higher education.