Join two experienced Faculty and Student Support Administrators for an overview of simple ways to boost your online student support. We will also have an open discussion about proactive communication, effective collaboration, and lessons learned. Participants will leave with a toolkit of actions they can implement right away!
Providing effective student support services to online learners is critical to their success. It can be difficult to balance preparing new students for their online learning experience while also addressing the needs of continuing students. Effective support services can ease the burden on students, which allows them to concentrate on learning while reducing barriers to course and degree completion. By anticipating student needs and identifying risks, administrators and instructors can be a reassuring presence for students. By sharing pertinent information with faculty about their students, support administrators can empower instructors to focus more on teaching than on administrative tasks. Everyone thrives with consistent support and communication.
Join two experienced Faculty and Student Support Administrators from Boston University’s Office of Distance Education (ODE) for a presentation about our support model followed by open discussion about additional easy-to-implement methods to enhance any administrator or instructor’s interactions with online students. While support services encompass a broad spectrum of actions, we will discuss three that our office employs most extensively:
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Personalizing communications
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Collaborating with other departments
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Advocating on behalf of students
By the end of the session, each attendee will have a toolkit of actionable items they can bring back to their department.
Since 2001, BU ODE has provided a centralized model of support and production to students enrolled in intensive graduate programs throughout their entire academic lifecycle. We currently support 21 fully online degree programs and 32 fully online certificate programs. Annually, ODE delivers approximately 500 online courses to over 3,500 students.