1. Cost Effectiveness By sharing knowledge, resources and costs with the campus MSOL programs, the MSOL ONLINE incurs few additional administrative costs. An administrative staff of four serves approximately 200 students a year. In addition, the team approach to faculty training both strengthens the learning/teaching community and reduces training costs. Because the program is highly structured, it can minimize potentially costly complications in areas such as scheduling. Both students and faculty members always know what will come next and can plan accordingly.

2. Access To promote the effectiveness of the learning community, all online student services are available with a one-click link within each course for each member of the MSOL ONLINE cohort, including all WebCT training programs, support services, tutorial services, bookstore, and library resources. In addition, students living within commuting distance of any of Mercy's five (5) campuses (Manhattan, Bronx, White Plains, Dobbs Ferry, and Yorktown) can use the tutorial services, administrative services, bookstores, and library resources on any one of these campuses. Students have access to each other through course email and pipe mail on Mercy's pipeline. Student access to each faculty member and the academic mentors, as well as to the Director of the MSOL ONLINE, is available through the course email, pipe mail, private email and private telephone numbers. All personnel involved with the MSOL ONLINE provide these avenues to access to the students. In addition, emphasis is placed on responding to the students as soon as possible, never waiting longer than a 24-hour period. This is a critical issue of access in an accelerated program such as the MSOL ONLINE. Providing these avenues of access allows the MSOL ONLINE to embrace students with a wide variety of learning styles and needs from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures.

3. Faculty Satisfaction To enhance faculty satisfaction and the quality of online learning in the MSOL program and to promote the growth of the online learning community, extensive orientation and ongoing training is available for the faculty. This includes a unique team interaction among both new and veteran MSOL ONLINE faculty members, as well as among MSOL ONLINE and MSOL faculty. By establishing a common username and password, all faculty members are able to access and "observe" each other's courses, become familiar with the MSOL ONLINE instructional format and share effective teaching techniques. In addition, each course in the MSOL ONLINE is structured in the same way, so that students do not have to waste any time in this accelerated program looking through their courses to find the lectures, assignments, deadlines and discussion topics platform. This consistency of presentation format further strengthens the student and faculty learning community. Both new and veteran MSOL ONLINE faculty are excited to be part of a coordinated team effort and find the ability to access and "observe" their colleagues' courses of particular benefit. The Mercy College Virtual Campus also provides online and on campus individual and group training for all online faculty with the Coordinator of Faculty Training and Development. The Coordinator is available to all online faculty by email and phone seven days a week. In addition, faculty find the online student evaluations, made available for students within each course when the course ends, especially valuable for improving their delivery and interactions in the courses they teach. These evaluations are also forwarded to the Director of the MSOL ONLINE for continued training of faculty. In addition, the Director of the MSOL ONLINE is always available to discuss student progress, course design, and curriculum development with members of the MSOL ONLINE faculty team. To further develop the MSOL ONLINE collaborative learning community, The Mercy College Virtual Campus at Mercy College provides many opportunities each semester for online faculty to share and demonstrate their effective practices with each other. Also, the MSOL faculty is invited to meet faculty in other online programs at Mercy College for seminars on distance learning, where they share their most effective teaching practices and advance their knowledge of available teaching tools.

4. Student Satisfaction The learning community that is established for the MSOL ONLINE cohorts is a key element in insuring student satisfaction and success. Students report a transformational experience in their academic development as well as in their personal and professional lives as a result of the cohort experience. Students are supported not only by consistent access and close interaction with their mentors and instructors but also by each other as they study together in this intensive, accelerated, 12-month program. The Director of the MSOL ONLINE has a phone interview with each student as part of the Admission procedure, and the Director and faculty mentors remain accessible to the students throughout the 12-month program and, sometimes, beyond. In addition, MSOL ONLINE students are connected to and supported by the larger Mercy College community through shared administrative and student services and shared resources; and they are connected to MSOL graduates through alumni activities and contact information. Student satisfaction is measured by evaluation forms, available within their courses, which they fill out and submit, as well as by ongoing evaluation of seniors conducted by Mercy College and periodic evaluations conducted by the MSOL and MSOL ONLINE program directors. In addition, two online student orientations are available to students as soon as they register for Module One of the MSOL ONLINE. Facilitated by the program director for the MSOL ONLINE and faculty mentor for the cohort, these orientations include an MSOL Student Orientation and a WebCT Orientation. Further technical assistance is available to all online students through the MerLIN distance learning campus. The MSOL Student Orientation contains an overview of the year's program, a Research Project Handbook with all the information the student will need during the year to complete the final thesis (Research Project), the steps the student will need to take to get started in the first course and Module One, an introduction to their mentor, with contact information and an explanation of the role of their mentor, and a list of the required textbooks for the Module One, including information about the online bookstore that is available to them. Online student resources are also introduced, including online library services, learning center tutorial services, and psychological services.