Home

Welcome to the SOU Growing Online Enrollments Project Site

After a Fall 2014 retreat on strategies to increase enrollments, the Provost assigned the Center for Instructional Support Director and staff to develop a report focused on growing online enrollments (see Growing Online Enrollments). In January 2015, the CIS staff began working with the Associate Provost on a six-month project to analyze capacity and needs associated with growing enrollments through offering courses online or in nontraditional formats, and to facilitate the development of policies and practices necessary to successfully expand such offerings.

The purpose of the Growing Online Enrollments project was to:

Gain an understanding of national trends in online programs;
Review the current environment at SOU;
Begin drafting a working framework to use for making decisions about online courses and programs; and
Lay the groundwork for a formal strategic planning process that can be implemented as SOU emerges from retrenchment (AY 2017-2018).

Questions Guiding the Analysis

Who are the key stakeholders (who needs to be involved in the conversation, how, and when)?
What questions need to be explored?
What data do we need to make good decisions? What data do we have?
What are the situations where we should consider an online course offering or alternative arrangement (low residency, weekend and evening courses with limited face-to-face class meetings)?
What is happening on the national scene?
What is the current state of affairs at SOU regarding online and alternative format courses?
What are the needs and the capacity issues?

In addition to online coursework, alternative formats such as low residency programs, evening and weekend programs, and summer programs were also included in this analysis.

Page updated

Report abuse