DEM comes together to offer new 8-week OUD sessions

Campus has set a goal of 5,000 students enrolled in our online undergraduate programs within the next 5 years. To support this growth in a competitive landscape, campus leadership is investigating multiple pathways to attract, retain, and graduate students, while ensuring they have access to financial aid and other student success services. One mechanism to support this goal is to allow additional student starts throughout the year and to offer courses that students need in shorter term sessions, offered more frequently than our traditional semester courses. At the request of the OUD Executive Planning Board, a team was formed to assess the operational feasibility of implementing 8-week course schedules (sessions) with concurrent 16-week courses and adding additional on-ramps (or student starts) with the assumption that a simultaneous change in academic structure would be approved and implemented for UW–Madison Online programs.  What is an 8-week session? Within the fall and spring semesters, departments can offer courses in two, non-overlapping 8-week sessions. Students can be admitted, enroll, receive financial aid and pay their bills, and make progress towards their degree for each session. Students will also enroll in available online courses in the summer session. A team was formed to coordinate and implement the SIS functionality and accompanying student experience processes and services to support 8-week sessions within the existing fall and spring term, as well as to accommodate new student starts aligned with the 8-week sessions during the fall of 2022.  In addition, this project assessed the feasibility, and related implementation, of co-mingling residential and online (OUD) students in an 8-week session that begins the second half of a term. What has been completed so far?
  • Assessed administrative systems and regulatory requirements (ex: Title IV aid)
  • Storyboarded student scenarios (F – full semester; A – first 8-week session in Fall and Spring, first 4 weeks in Summer; B – second 8-week session in a given semester; combination of the others)
  • Drafted a calendar to support 8-week session starting Fall 2022
  • Implemented new academic structure wherein OUD has unique program/plan codes and are no longer “nested” within residential program/plan codes as sub-plans
  • Utilized the new academic structure to build three OUD-specific session codes, supporting the scheduling of classes within the full/regular term, and two 8-week sessions.
  • Created class sections within the OUD sessions, which allowed for OUD-only instruction or comingling between residential and OUD students.
  • Supported admission, matriculation, financial aid awarding, term activation and enrollment of OUD students starting in the second/late 8-week session, essentially providing two student starts in Fall 2022.
  • Successfully implemented a unique, OUD-grading schedule in the first/early 8-week session, aligning with faculty policy.
  • Fostered a partnership between OSFA and OUD’s Success and Enrollment Coaches that allows students to have a single point of contact for their questions.  
  • Adjusted the budgeting, awarding, repackaging and communication processes as well as the Pell policy to administer financial aid within federal, state and institutional policies.    
What have we learned
  • We can have more than one student start a semester! 
  • Co-mingling within the 8-week sessions created complexity and  needs more analysis 
  • Virtually all administrative processes, across DEM, supporting the 8-week sessions were conducted manually and, as/if the student interest in starting in the second/late 8-week session increases, these processes will require technical and functional redesign to manage the increasing scale.
The Division of Enrollment Management is very grateful to everyone who has been involved in this project so far. Nathan Trick in Admissions helped configure a standalone application for Fall 2022 OUD 8-week offering and updating the processes that are used to generate the application data that is imported into SIS. Katie Seibel assisted with planning application dates and deadlines, and has worked closely with the enrollment coaches regarding late materials and initiating term changes; and Becky Ring mentioned coordination with the RO and DCS around matriculation and term activation. Vera Abing has worked closely with OUD’s success coaches to answer financial aid questions for students. Within the Office of the Registrar and the Office of Student Financial Aid, the first semester of OUD 8-week mid-term starts went fairly smoothly. As the implementation phase of this project draws to a close, several project evaluation metrics have been established and will be assessed on an ongoing basis. There were seven OUD students who took advantage of the inaugural opportunity for students to start in the second/late 8-week session, but this foundational work will allow these students greater flexibility going forward and demonstrates DEM’s commitment to delivering the resources and infrastructure needed to support this initiative. All of DEM came together to partner across campus with DCS, OUD, and DoIT AT to make the initial semester as successful as it went. The Office of the Registrar has a couple internal processes which they will implement in the Spring to improve on the success of the project. OSFA is also working with DoIT to automate academic engagement tracking for the purpose of unofficial withdrawal aid calculations by better identifying the date of a student’s “last academically related activity.”