Abstract
When Old Dominion University created a summer institute to allow adult distance learning students to enroll in accelerated on-campus courses, typical college transition issues were, at first, left off the schedule. Over the years, the institute has evolved to provide these students with the same kind of personal and academic support needed by their traditional-age peers.
On her first night of sleeping in the residence hall, the city noises seemed almost deafening to Sienna. Just before sunrise, when she was sure she heard someone in the hallway, she followed her lifelong instinct and called her mom back home for advice and support. Her mother made the reasonable suggestion that if Sienna thought it was a prowler, she should call campus police or her residence staff. Instead, Sienna just stayed under the covers till morning.
Does Sienna's experience sound familiar? In some ways, it is: she left her small-town home for the first time and was making her way through many of the usual personal, social, and academic adjustments to college. But in other ways, Sienna's experience was fairly unique. It wasn't her age (she is twenty-eight) and family responsibilities (a husband and two kids at home) or the ten-year break between high school and college that set her apart. It was the special on-campus Summer Institute for Distance Learners in which she was enrolled.
Old Dominion University's distance learning program, called TELETECHNET, brings the main-campus college experience to geographically distant learners at sites across Virginia and as far away as the state of Washington and to military personnel on Navy bases, carriers, and submarines. In an interesting turnabout, the Summer Institute for Distance Learners is now bringing students like Sienna to the main campus.
Many institutions invite distance learners to campus for a long weekend. What makes this program different is that students participate in courses on campus for at least a week, and some stay for an entire month. Over the years, administrators, faculty, and staff have discovered that adult learners arriving for the extended institute face concerns similar to those of traditional-age students. As a result, the program has been reshaped over time to offer support beyond the classroom. Participants deal with college transition issues, confront intellectual and developmental challenges, and leave campus with a shorter version of the traditional collegiate experience.
Distance learning students themselves suggested the institute. At Old Dominion University, distance learners first earn their associate degree at their local community college. Once they transfer to the university, students complete all of the courses in their major via interactive televised instruction, beamed from the institution's main campus to specially designed receiving classrooms located at a local community college. Human services majors form one of the university's largest groups of distance learners.
Although mostly satisfied with broadcast classes, students regularly asked for new course formats to augment distance learning experiences. They wanted two things: First, students wished for a chance to come to campus to work in person with faculty and peers. Second, because limited academic air time and bandwidth mean that most classes are offered only once per year, they wanted a more compact time frame that would allow them to speed up their progress toward graduation.
In the beginning, human services faculty members were concerned that a shortened course might weaken rigor, reduce academic impact, and lessen opportunities for adequate assessment of student work. They debated about how to design a compact classroom experience that would maintain academic integrity, provide learning equivalent to a full semester, and give instructors adequate means of appraising student performance. The result was a series of compressed classes in a one-week format, collectively called the Summer Institute for Distance Learners.
The four courses selected for the institute rely most heavily on face-to-face human interaction: Interpersonal Skills, Human Services Methods, Psy-choeducational Groups, and Diversity Issues in Human Services. The classes are offered from mid-July through early August to conform with other summer teaching needs. Depending on which prerequisites they have completed, some students enroll in just one or two institute classes, while others stay for all four weeks.
MANY ADULT STUDENTS NEED TO OVERCOME PREVIOUS POOR LEARNING EXPERIENCES, ACADEMIC ANXIETY, AND LACK OF FAMILIARITY WITH COLLEGE INSTRUCTION.
Each course starts on a Monday afternoon and finishes on a Saturday morning, allowing for same-day travel on the first and last days of class. Unlike weekend experiences offered at other institutions, students complete forty-five live class hours in each course, the equivalent of a full semester. For each course, participants must complete some assignments in advance. Depending on the class, they take a final exam on Saturday or after they return home. Students also complete final projects after the weeklong course is over.
Keeping all of this in mind, the faculty members who teach each weeklong course combine lectures with group discussions, exercises, demonstrations, practice, and use of audiovisual media. The faculty emphasize how interpersonal skills, counseling methods, group education skills, and diversity concepts are essential to human services work. Students participate in blindfolded “trust walks,” learn stress management techniques, assess their own characteristics, role-play, debate gender and communication styles, and study the influence of ethnicity on help seeking. They analyze family functioning in movies such as Terms of Endearment and examine group dynamics in The Breakfast Club. Faculty members maintain regular academic standards and cover a full semester of content.
Over the past four summers, students' impressions of their learning experiences at the institute have been positive. During annual focus groups held to allow students to provide feedback on the experience, some participants regularly say the weeklong format is actually better at helping them retain new information than classes taught in the regular full-semester time frame. Many students prefer focusing on just one course at a time and say the design of the institute courses fits their learning preferences better than that of traditionally taught classes. Although comparative data on learning in the institute versus learning in other courses have not been collected, students' own perceptions of the experience have generally been positive.
One facet of the institute experience that we had not anticipated at first were the intense cognitive and noncognitive development issues that the students would need help in facing. Traditionally, educators see higher education as promoting cognitive growth, identity formation, and psychoemotional development. (Nancy Evans and her colleagues give a good summary of student development in Student Development in College: Theory, Research, and Practice.) In the students of the institute, these changes are surprisingly magnified. In just a few weeks, instructors have seen participants progress from dualistic to more complex, relativistic thinking; begin making less conventional, more self-guided value choices; and make strides in seeing themselves as competent, independent adults.
SOME WOMEN HAD TO COMBAT FEELINGS OF GUILT ABOUT LEAVING RESPONSIBILITIES AT HOME UNDONE OR WERE CRITICIZED FOR ABANDONING TRADITIONAL FEMALE FAMILY DUTIES.
As an illustration, one student entered the institute with overbearing and negative personal beliefs that resulted in her open criticism of social services clients. After just two weeks of classes in which she was challenged by peer viewpoints, engaged in debates, analyzed films such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and role-played life situations of others, this student left the institute with a more open attitude toward a wider range of lifestyles, particularly in regard to single parenthood and HIV/AIDS.
For another student, who spent a month at the institute, the role-plays and vignettes, discussions of emotional dysfunction, videotaped counseling demonstrations, and self-assessment exercises unexpectedly raised troubling realizations about his own family. In later weeks, he opted out of exercises that stirred strong emotions. As he described it, “The first week looking at how families communicate and how it affects our relationships as adults really stirred up new, difficult feelings about growing up with my father. The second week just intensified it. By the third week, I really saw some things I needed to straighten out for my own adjustment. But by that point, I couldn't sit through some of the videos and listen to the class's reactions. I had enough to think about.” As a result of his experience, the student followed through on a referral to counseling to begin working on his concerns. While classroom instruction is not confused with personal counseling or pscyhoed-ucational workshops, institute faculty members now keep their eyes open for students who might be experiencing particularly powerful moments of personal growth as a result of the program's intensive design.
To our surprise, the institute would need to evolve further to improve the students' on-campus experiences and help them manage college adjustment issues that we hadn't expected to arise among adult learners, much less over the course of just a few weeks. As Robert Baker and his colleagues explain in two articles in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, there are several kinds of traditional college adjustment, including academic, personal-emotional, social, and institutional adjustment. Our adult learners exhibited the same types of adjustment issues during their short introduction to college life.
The first year, participants were frustrated with campus living. They felt overwhelmed and lacked necessary information for settling into the campus experience. Often they were disappointed with their residence halls, felt anxious about security, and wanted more meal options. Even in the short time frame of the institute, some had social adjustment issues and roommate conflicts.
Many participants also dealt with unexpected personal-emotional adjustments, including fear of the city, fear of leaving family, and inexperience with diversity. Most were away from their children, spouses or partners, parents, and hometowns for the first time. Furthermore, many had spent the stressful weeks prior to the institute planning family schedules and making child care and elder care arrangements.
Many had had to deal with the negative reactions of others: coworkers, friends, and family who thought they were “just getting away for a nice vacation” and “escaping family and work for an easy week away.” Some women had to combat feelings of guilt about leaving responsibilities at home undone or were criticized for abandoning traditional female family duties: “How can you leave your husband and kids to go have fun for a month with your college friends?”
In response, institute organizers have become more intentional about exposing these students to a fuller slice of the campus life experience, both inside and outside of the classroom. An academic coordinator and a graduate assistant work year-round on the program. A year ahead of each institute, these individuals select the instructors, reserve the classrooms, and do the groundwork with housing and the registrar. Informational sessions addressing logistical issues are broadcast throughout the year, and then each registrant is communicated with individually to confirm their institute participation and to answer last-minute questions. A Web site provides early online registration and housing reservations, advance syllabi and course materials, and topical links describing what to bring and what to leave at home and providing tips on navigating city life and campus living. Students now have single-room and shared-room residence options. On-campus dining continues to be limited in the summer, so participants receive detailed information about off-campus eating options as well as visitor and nightlife suggestions.
During the institute, each week begins with a welcome lunch and orientation. Participants receive specific guidance about the practicalities of parking, moving in, and learning their way around. Staff members now provide easier and fuller access to academic facilities, including the library and computer center, as well as student services such as counseling, career, and health centers. Hours are scheduled each week for distance learners to meet in person with academic advisers, program coordinators, and additional faculty, if they choose. The coordinator and her graduate assistant now serve as clear points of contact, mentors, and student development counselors. Faculty members are carefully selected for their understanding of student development issues, so they set aside some class time for group advising and individualized support regarding college transition issues. Faculty offer breakfast get-togethers and evening activities, including group outings and movie-and-dis-cussion nights. A student advisory committee has been established to help with institute planning, and weekly focus groups collect participant feedback.
Some obstacles persist. Due to budget constraints, participants must personally pay for the welcome lunch, and faculty must donate the food and their time for social events. The coordinator and graduate assistant juggle institute tasks with preexisting responsibilities, and participants sometimes are disappointed when their favorite human services professor is not available during the summer.
Still, we believe that the expanded concept has been effective. Institute participants come better prepared, receive more support once they arrive, and get more of a traditional college experience. Recently, based on the institute's track record, the concept was extended to doctoral students. Distance learners in the community college leadership doctoral program now come to campus for several summer institutes that provide two one-week compressed courses at a time, along with orientation, advising, mentoring, and expanded student services and campus offerings. These learners also come to campus periodically for weekend support sessions, and faculty sometimes take a turn at traveling to meet the doctoral students in their own region. Although technology has greatly enhanced how we deliver higher education, we've found that one way to deliver the college experience to our constituents at a distance is to invite them to share in campus life for a while. Over the years, we've learned to extend both in-class and out-of-class support to distance learning students as part of that campus life experience.