Best Practices (from WCET Best Practices Project) - How do we compare?

Question: How does TWU compare to the best practice?
• It's about people, not technology
Moving student services to the online environment is primarily a challenge of leading people in a new direction. Dealing with politics, policies, practices and culture are human, not technical, issues.
• It’s time to end the silos
Student services have developed over time as the need for them arose on campus. Many have separate policies, practices, and technical infrastructures. New technologies make it possible to integrate services into a cohesive system of student support. This requires re-engineering student services — designing new policies and practices — and takes a cross-functional campus team to make it happen.
• The user is king
Web-based services should be designed from the users' perspective. Students are primarily task-oriented — they want to pay a bill, run a degree audit, schedule an appointment — and they don’t want to think about which department provides what service. They prefer a single sign-on to integrated, personalized and customized services and the options of self-service, general help and personalized assistance. The full range of optimized services includes online and real-person/real-time resources.
• Internal consistency and integrity are vital
The extent to which an institution puts its student services online should be consistent with its mission, culture, and priorities. If an institution is enrolling distance students in online courses, it must provide those students with accessible services of equal quality to those for campus-based students. Otherwise, these students cannot be expected to succeed at the same rate and it calls into question the institution’s commitment to learning for all of its students — not just those privileged to come to campus.
• Technology should enable new services, not define them
At a rapid pace, new technologies are coming onto the market. New versions of existing software are common. In envisioning new services, the focus should not be limited by what is possible today. By defining the ideal and then phasing in the solutions as the technology becomes available, the best service will result.
• Outside experts move projects forward
Outside experts bring a broader perspective and objectivity into the project that can help transcend campus politics. Scheduled visits from a consultant in organizational change or best practices in online student services also provide motivation for project teams to accomplish goals. In some cases, the expert may not bring new expertise, but rather validate what the campus is doing — and this can be equally important to project progress. The LAAP project partners identified site visits as one of the most important influences in their success.
• Distance staff should take a leadership role
On many campuses, the staff of the division of continuing education or other outreach unit has provided both the courses and the services for distance students for many years. They have tremendous expertise in providing remote service that is convenient and just-in-time. As today’s campus population looks increasingly like the distant population, it is important that this experienced staff be tapped as a valuable resource in the redesign of services to support all students.
• Developing decentralized services means focusing on the commonalities while respecting the differences
Perhaps as much as 80% of a service is the same across campus, but the last 20% can vary significantly. The trick is to design a system that builds on the commonalities with the flexibility to accommodate the differences via customization. That means understanding the needs, processes, and policies of each college/department/program in enough detail to make the system work for them.