Good student services, such as academic advising, orientation, tutoring, and library services, are essential to a student’s academic success. Yet, while traditional students may access these services on campus, a growing population of part-time and distance students who cannot come to campus often find themselves struggling with limited or nonexistent access to such services. Given Sloan-C's estimate that 2.6 million students were studying online at U.S. colleges and universities in the Fall of 2004, it is imperative that institutions find ways to service this burgeoning population. Indeed, today, all students expect to access many services over the Web. By using well-designed technology solutions, institutions can more effectively and efficiently serve both their on- and off-campus student populations.

For most institutions, offering online student services is only one of a host of institutional priorities. Thus, it is not surprising to find that most institutions are putting their services online gradually, as resources become available. To help institutions measure their progress in this endeavor, as well as assess the quality of their new online services, WCET—in partnership with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU)—created the Student Services Audit Tool.

The Audit Tool focuses on the critical components a student would need or expect from his institution in each service area, with descriptions of the components at four levels of online sophistication. To date, 20 different student services are included in the Audit Tool: academic advising, admissions, assessment and testing, bookstore services, career planning, catalog, communications (institution to student), disability services, financial aid, library services, orientation, personal counseling, placement services, registration, schedule of classes, services for international students, student accounts, student activities, technical support, and tutoring.

WCET offers the Student Services Audit Tool to institutions via two types of contracts. One type of contract allows institutions to use the tool for self-assessment. Institutions can assign an unlimited number of student services staff to respond to online questions about a selected set of services for a certain period of time. When that period ends, the campus administrator for the audit receives a report from WCET summarizing the results of the staff survey. Institutions looking for a more in-depth, objective, third-party analysis have the option of selecting the second type of contract: a full review of the institution’s student services site by WCET. At the end of such a contract, WCET provides a report to the institution containing findings from the review, including annotated pages from the institution’s website along with recommendations for improvements. All reports are confidential to the institution.

As WCET uses the Student Services Audit Tool to assist institutions in assessing their student services online, it is uncovering trends, common institutional and software problems, and new best practices in serving students online. It is WCET’s hope that it can provide some of this information to the higher education community through a new website now under development. This new service is being created through a partnership among WCET, MnSCU, and Seward, Inc. Stay tuned for its launch this fall! If you would like more information in the interim about use of the Audit Tool, please contact Pat Shea at pshea@wcet.info or 303.541.0302.

WCET Resources
Defining Open Educational Resources (OER) WCET staff presided in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) forum that first defined the phrase, ‘Open Educational Resources’ (OER). Establishing a clear, concise, consistent definition for OER is a crucial first step to creating repositories of truly reusable, open content educational

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