Chats, online counseling & advising, oh my!

We are thinking about developing online academic advising chat sessions, online workshops and thinking about offering online career counseling. We currently provide email advising, but are anxious hear what you are doing.

I would like to hear any lessons you have learned, any challenges you may have experienced such as student misinterpreting information or any other negative (and positive) consequences you have had with chat sessions, online advising and counseling. Please share anything else you think we should consider before embarking on this type of adventure at my community college.

What approach do you use to maintain notes from these forms of communication?

Are you willing to share examples of disclaimers that you use?

What are your thoughts about creating online student services that enable students to become self directed learners? Have students at your school resported any difficulties as a result of offering this type of information online?

Lots of questions this late in the semester. I would appreciate any information - informal responses would be great either on the blog or through email. Anita

Anita's Introduction

Hi Everyone,
I thought it would be fun to share of picture of my favorite activity outside of work. Meet my granddaughter, Juliana.

Here's a little about me. I have been community college career counselor and academic advisor first in Illinois and now in Maryland. I wound up doing a variety of things, but my passions were teaching, working with students on career decision making, educational planning, multicultural education (teaching and programming), and enhancing the work of counselors and faculty through the use of technology. I was happy as a clam in that role until I began teaching the Career Development course online in 1999. The following semester I was asked to serve as Acting Coordinator of Online Learning and did I get hooked on the potential of working with students at a distance. I took an educational leave of absence to earn the certificate from the Online Teaching Program from UCLA Extension and work for the Illinois Virtual Campus. One thing led to another and I decided to take another educational leave a year later to pursue a second Master's Degree in Educational Technology Leadership from George Washington University (GWU).

During the first week of classes, I found out that, after many years in the Chicago area, we would be relocating to Baltimore. Never did I imagine that I would actually be able to visit the GWU campus! The wonders of online learning allowed me to complete the assignments first from my home in Illinois, then from my temporary location in Wisconsin. The final report for one class was completed from my new home in Ellicott City, Md. I finished the degree during Summer '04 - what a relief.

I began working as a Distance Learning Counselor at Montgomery College (MC) Fall '03. It's the perfect way to combine my interest in working with students and enhancing the work we do through the use of technology. I have focused on developing web based resources for students, developing an online college survival course, and supporting online students primarily through a web based ongoing workshop. I continue my work with ION, WCET, Student Affairs.com and others in my spare time.

I look forward to collaborating with members of the Advising With Technology Blog in the areas of providing online services through new technologies such as Blogs, Podcasts, Chats, virtual classrooms and other tools we haven't yet dreamed of, all to the end of expanding educational opportunities to a broader audience.

Anita 

Minutes 3/31/06

Advising & Technology Committee
Minutes March 31, 2006

Present: Bob Baer, Anita Crawley, Michele Knoerlein, Eva Surowiec,
Fran Smither, Gina Strauss, Tomeka Swan, Bonnie Sulzbach, Maria Agosta-Martinez,
Bill Elliott

Bob provided a description of how the ATC was formed and the
relationship with the Advising Affinity Group.

The group listed the following in response to an inquiry about what everyone
wants from the committee:

• Professional Development
• Speakers
• Vendor Presentations
• To learn what others are doing
• Online Student Services - Best Practices
• IT representative
• Academic Advising website development

Online advising was the topic of most interest and was broken down into these
components:

• Tracking systems
• Keeping statistics for online advising (counting #'s, content, online
  forms)
• Mission of online advising
• Confidentiality/FERPA
• What is and is not most effectively accomplished at a distance
• Working differently with current and perspective students based on access
  to student portals/course management systems & public websites
• Organizational structure of online advising
• Minimal standards - what might be included in all online advising
  interactions
• Evaluating impact/outcomes/effectiveness of online advising
• Useful tools and strategies in addition to email
• Styles used in email advising
• Utilizing student feedback through focus groups
  

Many resources at each of our college and beyond were described. Here
are some of them:

• Michigan State used instant messaging to communicate with students even
  with an evening shift. At Cecil, they are using instant messaging for
  communication between the front desk and counselors. Benefits - can
  communicate outside of student earshot, less interruptive than phone, yet more
  effective/immediate than email. Also used instead of taking phone
  messages.


• Right Now FAQ software allows development of FAQs based on student
  inquiry. See link to the right.


• Bergen Community College in New Jersey is doing online orientations.


• Employ On - pulls jobs from several online job search engines including
  Monster


• Math Anxiety had a great response at Cecil. How about doing
  workshops such as this online. See Collaborative Software link for
  platforms. Also can be delivered through course management systems such
  at WebCT and Blackboard.


• CCBC uses a form that students submit along with their question. The
  fields including identifying information, a choice from several categories of
  questions, and the question itself. Lots of potential uses including
  filtering to most appropriate office/advisors for answer and ultimately
  tracking email advising activity.

Anita Crawley presented Montgomery College's Online Student Success Center
and Online Companion: A Guide to Online Success. PowerPoint can be found
in the Online Student Services link

What's next?

• We will meet twice a semester


• Harford agreed to host the next meeting in late September. Possible
  topic managing emails, tracking email advising, etc. Possible vendor
  presentation from Right Now. Bonnie Sulzbach is point of contact.


• We will create a blog to continue the discussion between meetings.
  Start by introducing yourself on the blog - uploading a picture would be great
  for connecting names and faces.


• June 16th is the Advising Affinity Group annual conference at Howard
  Community College. Bob and Anita will be presenting. Let us know
  if anyone is interested in joining us.
  

Welcome

Please join us in our effort to collaborate across time and space. Our goal is to discover and develop new ways to help college students make educational and career decisions through the use of technology.

Send me your name & email address if you would like to receive an email alert when new messages are posted on the blog anita.crawley@montgomerycollege.edu

Anita