Discover how to assess and enhance student support services in online education! This session uses the OLC Quality Scorecard to evaluate accessibility at Connecticut institutions, revealing patterns and challenges. Attendees will engage hands-on with the scorecard, compare results, and leave equipped to improve student support in their own institutions.

The OLC Quality Scorecard for Online Student Support is used in this study to investigate the accessibility of student support services at online post-secondary institutions in Connecticut, using a multiple case study design. It is grounded in the rationale that online education, while offering flexibility, creates unique challenges in ensuring that support services are accessible to all students. The study emphasizes the importance of considering various principles, such as the social model of disability, humanizing pedagogy, and Transactional Distance Theory (TDT), to address the needs of online learners who may struggle due to the "distance" created by the online education format. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and accessibility of these support services by examining multiple online schools within Connecticut, allowing for a comparative analysis to identify patterns and accessibility issues.
To collect data, the study employs the OLC Quality Scorecard for Online Student Support, which evaluates 51 quality indicators across 11 categories. The data is collected both quantitatively, by scoring each quality indicator, and qualitatively, through researcher notes that provide context for the scores. The analysis involves descriptive statistics to compare post-secondary institutions and content analysis to generate themes based on the collected data.
To engage the audience and promote interactivity, the OLC Quality Scorecard for Online Student Support will be presented. Audience members will be asked to use the OLC Quality Scorecard for Online Student Support to evaluate student support at their home institution to see how it might compare to this study’s results.
Attendees will take away a better understanding of comprehensive support services according to the OLC Quality Scorecard for Online Student Support. They will also be able to use the tool practically to evaluate student support services in other higher ed contexts. Attendees will have a better understanding of how accessible student support services are in a specific context.