Title of Effective Practice: - California Postsecondary Education ...

Direct Connection to Policy Area 4 of The Illinois Commitment
Development of a Fully Online Initiative, RUOnline
Roosevelt University
What issue or need is addressed by the effective practice?
Sub-populations of the RU student body are unable to access traditional campus-based classes because of work
and family demands. Other populations desire academic programs unique to RU but are geographically distant
from its physical campuses. A fully online program enables these populations to begin and sustain enrollment in
degree and certificate programs without interruption, enabling them to achieve their academic goals. Many of
these students become models in their families and communities and begin a new positive cycle focused on
achievement and upward mobility.
RUO mission statement: The purpose of RUOnline is to advance Roosevelt University’s historic mission of
providing educational opportunity to all qualified persons. Its goal is to extend the institutional mission by using
varied pedagogical approaches and appropriate technologies to make high quality programmatic and other
resources available at times and places responsive to constituent needs.
Description of the effective practice:
RUOnline is a fully online learning initiative developed and designed to serve populations unable to earn college
credits in traditional ways.
From program review self-study: RUOnline was based on best practices in online learning. A full academic year
was spent researching best practices and benchmarks and studying the most successful and failed online
programs. RUOnline began with a commitment to be the best online learning program, not the biggest, and the
commitment to academic excellence in online learning remains the program’s core value.
That fundamental conviction is reflected in the RUOnline course development guidelines and assessment
process.
RUOnline’s program development focuses on ease of use and a “one-stop-shopping” philosophy whereby
students and faculty can access all the resources of the institution from the online portal. For example, one of the
first things RUOnline developers did was to work with the library to ensure that library resources were
accessible from the online portal and online course sites. Because of its commitment to academic excellence and
student-centered teaching, RUOnline views its core mission as teaching, not technology; with this philosophy,
technology becomes a tool for teaching and learning. The real education occurs in the interactivity between
students and faculty, students and each other, and students and course content. The RUOnline Course
Development Guidelines depict this core value.
How does this practice achieve sustainability?
Because RUOnline was initially grant funded, the University incurred no start-up costs. Since that time,
RUOnline has exceeded its enrollment and financial goals. For example, the fiscal year 2005 enrollment goal
was 4,596 student credit hours and 1,460 duplicated course enrollments. RUOnline actual enrollments in fully
online course sections for fiscal year 2005 were 6,954 student credit hours and 2,006 duplicated enrollments, or
51% over target for student credit hours and 37.4% over target for course enrollments. The outlook for fiscal
year 2006 is positive as well. Projections were for 5,310 student credit hours and 1,698 duplicated course
enrollments. For fall and spring semesters only, RUOnline has already exceeded these targets, generating 6,660
student credit hours and 1,940 duplicated course enrollments. Also important for the financial sustainability of
the University is the growing percentage of fully online students. With only two fully online degrees, onlineonly
students comprised 6% of the total University enrollment in spring 2006. While program specific revenue
data is not available from the budget office at this time, the number of student credit hours over projections and
the increase in online-only students are good indicators of the financial contribution RUOnline makes to
Roosevelt University. An additional indicator of financial contribution is the comparison between the tuition
revenue generated in fully online courses to the annual operating expense budget for fiscal year 2006 of
$450,554. Using $550 per credit hour as an average tuition rate, RUOnline enrollment for fall and spring
semesters of fiscal year 2006 generated $3,663,000.
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