Sloan Semester

1
SLOAN SEMESTER
Building an Academic "Bridge"
Through On-Line Learning
2
SLOAN SEMESTER
3
SLOAN SEMESTER -- Basics

• Sloan Foundation funding
• Donation of 1.1M to provide online education for
  students impacted by Katrina and Rita
• Stipends paid to institutions (2500 max)
• Courses free to students
• Sloan Semester Courses
• Must start on or after October 10 and conclude by
  first week of January
• Must accept Visiting Electronic Student
  Authorization (VESA) application

4

SLOAN SEMESTER -- Guiding Principles

• First and foremost, this is for students
• make process as easy as possible
• if we err, it will be on the side of the student
• Creating a bridge for students from their home
  institution back to their home institution for
  the spring term
• While there are difficult provisions that will
  require suspension of normal operating
  procedures, these are part of the donation to
  make this happen

5
EVOLUTION OF SLOAN SEMESTER

• August 29 Katrina Hits Gulf Coast
• August 30 Levees fail in New Orleans
• August 31 Sloan Semester evolves
• 731a e-mail from Burks Oakley, Sloan C desire
  to respond using e-learning
• 845a conference call with Sloan C defines
  basic concept of bridge
• 1002a draft proposal to Sloan Foundation
• September 1 email invitation to Sloan C and
  SREB Electronic Campus institutions to gauge
  interest in Sloan Semester

6
EVOLUTION OF SLOAN SEMESTER

• September 2
• 1000a SloanSemester.org site is activated
• 345p Green light that Sloan Foundation
  Executive Committee approves proposal
• Provider listserv created
• September 3
• Rules for participation defined
• Site goes live
• 60 institutions express interest in joining
• 3 students register on site

7
EVOLUTION OF SLOAN SEMESTER

• September 9 Ceased allowing new providers to
  join over 200 providers have signed up
• September 11 Providers begin entering courses
  in website
• September 12 Academic Advisor Coordinator hired
• September 13 Financial aid consultants on-board
  (Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation)
• 800 students have signed up on website, 380
  courses in database
• September 15 Catalog goes live with 1000
  courses
• September 19 Students begin registering

8
EVOLUTION OF SLOAN SEMESTER

• 21 days after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, an
  entire online institution had been established
  with a full complement of courses, online
  application and registration services, advising
  for courses and financial aid and students were
  registering for classesthrough Sloan-C and SREB

9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
SLOAN SEMESTER -- "Back Office"

• Courses hosted on the SREB Electronic Campus site
  in a special section for Sloan Semester. 
• Institutions used a "back office" interface to
  input their course information
• VESA application auto-populated from student
  profile information.  It includes information
  institutions need to create a student file in
  SIS.
• SREB worked directly with states and institutions
  to verify the student is from an impacted
  institution.
• Students indicated the courses of interest on the
  VESA and requests were forwarded to the
  institutions offering the courses.  Institutions
  then registered the students.

12
SLOAN SEMESTER NUMBERS

• 1,322 courses from 158 institutions in 38 states
• 1,736 VESA applications processed
• 4,256 course seat requests
• 2,900 enrollments at census
• 5,400 enrollments by native students

13
SLOAN SEMESTER NUMBERS

• Students Served
• Predominantly non-white (74 )
• Predominantly female (76 )
• Predominantly undergraduate (85 )
• Predominantly from three home institutions
• Xavier University (26 )
• Delgado Community College ( 25 )
• Loyola University (10 )

14
SLOAN SEMESTER -- ROI

• 750k in Stipends
• 3.1m Tuition and Fees
• (non-monetary considerations may be even more
  valuable)

15
SLOAN SEMESTER -- A "Do-Over"

• Communications!!!
• Institutional (impacted) buy-in
• Cover book costsa few hundred dollars could have
  made a difference
• Students are students, they registered, dropped
  and added, and dropped and added
• Student loads were too heavy

16
SLOAN SEMESTER -- Lessons Learned

• We have a compassionate, concerned and caring
  academic community
• When we want to get something done, we canand
  quickly
• Many barriers can be removed when there is a will
  (can we make this happen without a crisis?)
• Online learning works!!! (But we knew this
  already)

17
SLOAN SEMESTER -- Lessons Learned

• We must develop academic emergency plans, not
  just facility plans
• Re-establishing institutional web site is
  criticalhave a back-up plan
• Student continuation plansonline learning should
  be a key component
• Policies should be accommodating
• Tuition and fees
• Credit transfer/recognition

18
A Closing Comment...

• 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
19
THANK YOU

• Participating colleges and universities who made
  this happen
• The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Sloan
  Consortium
• Vendors and providers
• Leadership institutions in AL, LA, MS
• Students and their parents

We hope the Sloan Semester "bridge" helped.