Sloan Semester

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Sloan Semester

• Burks Oakley II, Co-Chair
• Sloan Semester Steering Committee

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Monday, August 29th
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Xavier University
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Wednesday, August 31st

• 614 am, Burks Oakley sends Frank Mayadas of the
  Alfred P. Sloan Foundation an e-mail note saying
  We need to act now - imagine if every Sloan-C
  institution could open up additional online
  sections for students whose institutions have
  closed. This is EXACTLY the type of campus crisis
  that Ray Schroeder has been telling us about -
  and how ALN can address the problems.

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Wednesday, August 31st

• 845 am Conference call with John Bourne (Exec.
  Director, Sloan-C), Bruce Chaloux (Director, SREB
  Electronic Campus), Ray Schroeder, Frank Mayadas,
  and Burks Oakley to plan Sloan-C response in
  collaboration with SREB
• 1002 am Draft proposal submitted to Sloan
  Foundation requesting 1M to provide stipends to
  institutions providing free online courses to
  students impacted by Katrina

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Thursday, September 1st

• 819 am Request was made to register the domain
  name SloanSemester.org
• 833 am Burks Oakley sent an e-mail to Sloan-C
  listserv, asking Sloan-C institutions to
  voluntarily participate in the Sloan Semester
  an eight-week accelerated term starting on
  October 10th.

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Sloan Semester Evolves

• Sept. 2 Sloan Foundations Executive Committee
  approved proposal provider listserv created
• Sept. 3
• Rules for participation defined
• SloanSemester.org website went live
• 60 institutions expressed interest in joining
• 3 students signed-up on website
• Sept. 9 Ceased allowing new providers to join
  over 200 providers expressed interested and
  signed up

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Sloan Semester Evolves

• Sept. 11 Providers began entering courses in
  Sloan Semester Course Center (via SREB Electronic
  Campus)
• Sept. 12 Advising Coordinator hired
• Sept. 13 Financial aid consultants were
  on-board
• Sept. 15 Catalog went live with 1000 online
  courses
• Sept. 19 Students began requesting registrations

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An Amazing Three Weeks

• 21 days after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, an
  entire online institution had been established
  with a full complement of online courses, online
  application and registration services, student
  advising and financial aid and students were
  registering for free online classes.

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Guiding Principles

• First and foremost, this was for students
• If we err, it will be on the side of the
  student.
• Create a bridge for students back to their home
  institution for the spring term to keep students
  in the educational pipeline
• Many providing institutions had to suspend normal
  operating procedures this was part of the
  buy-in needed to make this happen so quickly

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Sloan Semester Marketing
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The Back Office SREB EC

• Online courses listed in catalog on the SREB
  Electronic Campus (EC) site
• Providing institutions used a back office
  online interface to input their course
  information
• Students requested courses from multiple
  providing institutions using a web-based
  interface

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The Back Office SREB EC

• SREB worked directly with impacted institutions
  to verify that students had been enrolled
• Students course requests were forwarded to the
  providing institutions, which then registered the
  students
• The back office software included invoicing for
  stipends AND every possible type of report with
  relevant data

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Hurricane Rita 24 Sept.
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National Guard
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Hurricane Wilma
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Sloan Semester Results

• Online catalog listed 1,322 courses from 158
  institutions in 38 states
• Applications were processed from 1,725 students
• 4,256 course seat requests, leading to 2,827
  enrollments by SloanSemester students
• 5,385 enrollments by native students
• 8,212 total enrollments

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Sloan Semester Data

• 3.1 million in forgiven tuition and fees
• Students Served
• Predominantly non-white (74)
• Predominantly female (76)
• Predominantly undergraduate (85)
• Largely from three home institutions
• Xavier University (26)
• Delgado Community College (25)
• Loyola University (10)

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Sloan Semester Data

• Student Profile
• Freshman 343
• Sophomore 420
• Junior 349
• Senior 218
• Graduating senior 196
• Graduate 121

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Sloan Semester Faculty

• It is hard for me to imagine what some of them
  are coping with, having nothing left except the
  clothes on their backs and what little they could
  take with them when the waters rose to devastate
  everything in their environment. I have great
  respect for each and every one of them, and for
  those who are pitching in to make their lives a
  little better.

Commenting on his Katrina Students Jim
Gustafson Professor of Philosophy Mass Colleges
Online
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Lessons Learned

• There are a large number of good people in the
  institutions that make up Sloan-C. The fact that
  so many institutions would come forward to offer
  their courses for free, and that so many faculty
  would take on an additional class with only a
  small stipend, speaks volumes about the high
  quality of these institutions and their staff.

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Lessons Learned

• The staff and infrastructure of two existing
  institutions (Sloan-C and SREB) were absolutely
  critical to the success of the Sloan Semester.
  The experienced staff and the existing
  infrastructure meant that it was possible to
  build the website, listservs, online advising
  tools, the course catalog, the course request
  system, the invoicing system, etc. upon what
  already was in place.

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Lessons Learned

• Given the right set of circumstances, you CAN cut
  through academic red tape to get things done
  you CAN build an institution in a couple of
  weeks.
• The trust that the leadership of the Sloan
  Foundation had in key personnel and in Sloan-C
  meant that the Sloan Foundation could move
  incredibly quickly to fund the grant request.

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Lessons Learned

• We need to be prepared for another disaster
  earthquake, SARS, bird flu, tornado, flood
  whatever. Institutions need to be prepared. We
  need to build on the Sloan Semester effort and
  establish a national system that will be ready to
  respond to the next inevitable disaster.

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• Burks Oakley II
• E-mail oakley_at_uillinois.edu
• Web http//www.burksoakley.com/
• Most direct method Google Burks