Sharmin’s story illustrates a fundamental disadvantage for online students at community colleges. It would probably take several years before any individual institution could develop enough courses for an online degree, but by pooling resources of a consortium, however, member institutions can collaborate to meet the online needs of their students immediately.

Online Degree

The Presidents’ Council of the Western Illinois Education Consortium (WIEC) has been the catalyst and motivating force behind the establishment of a consortial agreement for an online degree. A longstanding consortial distance learning agreement was recently expanded to include online learning.

Steps taken by WIEC in developing an online degree are:

• Audit existing courses and degree requirements.
  
• Plan new course development, staff development, and marketing.
  
• Develop a student services agreement.
  
• Faculty adoption of online degree.

The first step in developing an online degree was to determine how close the combined pool of courses came to meeting degree requirements. The Illinois Articulation Initiative (IAI) requirements were also considered. Since each institution will confer the degree to students in its community college district, each conducted a degree audit using the available online courses. All requirements for an Associate in Arts or an Associate in Science degree were met for each institution with the exception of speech. Although a student could take speech online from institutions outside the consortium and transfer it to a WIEC institution, the consortium plans to develop an online speech course. The existing consortium committee structure developed plans for course development, staff development, and marketing. The WIEC Course Development Plan is simply a compilation of each institution’s course development plan. The purpose of compiling the plans was to make everyone aware of what is being developed and identify any areas where development is needed. Special attention is given to courses that fulfill requirements for specific transfer majors, such as business/international, accounting, and economics.

The WIEC Staff Development Plan is another compilation of each institution’s plans for staff development. The institutions share staff development opportunities with other member institutions. The WIEC Director met with the Marketing Directors for the member institutions to discuss the marketing of the online degree. The Marketing Directors developed a menu of ideas for marketing the online degree, including a press release, a sample trifold flyer, institutional fact sheets, institutional web pages, and more. Each institution will then develop and implement its own individualized marketing plan.

To develop a student services agreement, the Presidents’ Council formed an initial student service committee comprised of the WIEC Director, four student services personnel, a director of counseling, a director of financial aid, and a director of admissions to determine the student services issues. The committee identified ten issues related to registration, financial aid, and student services. They recommended each institution send representatives from the various student service areas to a consortium-wide meeting to develop policy statements about the identified issues. Those policy statements were sent forward to a joint meeting of students services and instructional personnel. A small group discussed each statement and brought its recommendation forward to be voted on by the entire group. That meeting resulted in the WIEC Student Services Agreement to be approved by the Presidents’ Council.

Faculty adoption of the consortial online degree is an essential requirement for the success of the agreement. Administrators initiated the effort, determined the viability of the degree, and worked through student services issues. The small number of faculty who were the early adopters of online learning provided the core of courses that meet degree requirements. Hopefully, the majority of faculty, especially those involved in faculty governance, will develop a sense of ownership for the online degree. Each instructional department must plan for the development of online majors. The planning for online courses should be as commonplace as the planning for interactive compressed video courses, independent study courses, Public Television courses, or any other form of distance learning.

Advantages of A Collaborative Approach

There are several advantages to taking a consortial approach to online degrees.

• An online degree is available to students when they need it.
  
  
• Each institution does not bear the development costs of all courses.
  
  
• A course is more likely to have enough enrollments to be viable with the larger population base found in the consortium.
  
  
• The sharing of staff development contributes to institutional savings.

1. How could a student access financial aid for courses not bound in time by semesters?
   
   
2. Since each institution has all necessary state approval for the online courses it offers, can member institutions provide online courses to the consortium by consortial agreement rather than filling out the state paperwork to get the course "on the books" at each institution?

Philosophically, the state probably agrees with the need to address financial aid issues for online students, as well as the consortial sharing of courses. Practically, it will mean making adjustments in existing systems to accommodate the needed programmatic changes.

WIEC member institutions have the tools to offer an online degree. The student services are in place. Required courses are available. WIEC member institutions look forward to Fall 2000, when they can meet the needs of students like Sharmin by offering online degrees that students can access from any location at their convenience. Each institution will decide its own timeline for developing and marketing the online degree to students.