Professional Learning Objective 3

I had a small break through on one of my processes this week concerning "concurrent enrollment". First a little background on what has been building up to require a change in how I handle the concurrent enrollment process.

Every spring many students want to complete course work at other institutions when they return home for the summer. I have seen the number of requests grow every year from around 500 two years ago, over 700 last spring and this year close to 1,000. My normal process consists of the following:

•  Verify that a student is eligble to complete courses outside of the university (there is a maximum of 18 hours which may be transferred once a student has matriculated);
• Verify that the institution is regionally accredited;
• Determine how the course will transfer back to the university;
• Send an e-mail to the student to inform them of the approval and how the course/s will transfer;
• Save a copy of the e-mail into the student's file.

When the requests starting coming in, I was able to keep up; however, since the number of requests have grown signifacantly it became clearly aparent that I could not keep up. My first attempt at change was to approve the requests when the students brought them in and send them an e-mail after the fact. Although I was able to approve the forms right away, I was having trouble getting e-mails out within a timely fashion. Problem, this led to many e-mails from students wanting to know their status. My final solution to the current problem was to approve the requests as they came in and give a copy to the students so they knew when they left my office what they were approved for and had a copy of the approval in their hand. To satisfy those students who I had approved concurrent enrollment but not yet sent an e-mail, I scanned their approval into a .PDF file and e-mailed it to them. Although this new system rectified the immediate problem, it is just a temporary bandaid for a much larger wound.

I am proposing that an official request deadline is enforced for next year and I will create a different form that will allow me to write down the course a student is proposing to complete and its' equivalency once an official transcript is received from the concurrent institution. Since many students do not make a decision to take courses outside of the university until the last possible minute, a deadline might prove to be ineffective and cause more trouble than fixing the problem. For this reason, I think a new form in general will benefit all involved.

Thoughts?....