The document discusses various issues adult learners face with Penn State systems including access accounts being deactivated if they stop out for a semester, difficulty registering for courses after stopping out, and lack of communication when their Penn State email is deactivated. It also summarizes feedback on other Penn State systems like ANGEL, eLion, ISIS, and libraries regarding maintenance windows, course registration, and lack of consistent policies.

2. Adult learners frequently stop out for a semester or two to deal with life issues and then want to return. The University shuts off their Access Accounts if they don’t register for a course in the very next semester. If the student stops out for a year, they have to go through the whole process of requesting an account again; if they only stop out for a semester, the WC can reactivate their accounts for them. Other schools make this much easier for their students—as soon as those students register, they’re immediately given their access account and access to their courses. We make them go through several manual steps to get their access back if they stop out for even a semester.

3. Here are only two examples of when this has created issues for students:

4. CE Student: A CE@UP student did not enroll in classes for her final semester; instead, she filed her intent to graduate and was going to take CLEP exams to get credit for her final degree requirements and then graduate. Because she wasn’t in classes in the final semester, the University closed her Access Account, which meant she didn’t have access to take the CLEP exams. She had to pay the University to get temporary access to her account so that she could take the CLEP exams.

5. WC Student: A WC student was set to graduate this semester, but wasn’t taking WC courses this semester—instead, she was taking courses at another school that would transfer in to World Campus and complete her degree requirements. The University closed her Access Account, even though she had filed her intent to graduate, creating issues. Because all we had was her PSU e-mail address – and it was deactivated – we couldn’t communicate with her easily. She had to proactively reach out and tell us her personal e-mail account and we had to be the liaison between the student and the college to get her graduation indicator set, which would normally be something the student did through eLion using her Access Account.

7. Does not support the latest versions of Internet browsers (Internet Explorer 9 in this case)

8. Daily maintenance window continues to be an issue for (and frustrate) our students, especially military students stationed in time zones for which the maintenance window falls during their workday. Adult learners are juggling multiple responsibilities and sometimes the only time they have to work on their courses is 5:00 a.m. (or for students on the West Coast, 2:00 a.m.), which is in the middle of the downtime.

9. Student express lack of confidence in trusting the exam timer is accurate

10. Students express difficulty in finding grades easily; it used to be its own tab, but now it’s hidden under a Reports tab and students have to submit a query to get their grades; some students lose interest

12. A specific example of this: A traditional-age student who lives in the Philadelphia area is in the WC BSBIC program; he wanted to mix WC and Abington courses one semester, but would have had to change his location to Abington. If we’re truly one Penn State, why do we make it so difficult for students to take courses wherever it’s most convenient for them in a particular semester?

13. This is not an issue for adult learners because they’re tagged with the adult indicator in ISIS, but as the number of traditional-age students wanting to pursue online degrees increases, this issue will need to be resolved.

15. Still no location indicator for CE@UP students

16. No campus or college codes for World Campus students—makes it almost impossible to track students and get accurate data

19. Our HelpDesk does not have course content access (and when asked for has not been granted) on the Academic Unit sites E-education/Elearning servers.

20. If a student is having an issue with the course content, the HelpDesk is unable to verify the error and properly troubleshoot for the student; instead, they have to send a request for help to the appropriate WC or Academic Unit staff and wait for their response before being able to resolve the issue for the student. If given the ability to pinpoint the issue/error, the HelpDesk could resolve the issue quickly for the student.

21. Access to the servers would not require administrative rights to these servers. Even giving the HelpDesk “student” access would give them the ability to verify the type of issue the student is having.

22. There is no system to do degree audits for prospective students—prospects have to go through the application process and then work with an adviser before they get an official degree audit that shows them what they need to do (what credits transferred). Students “shopping” credits get frustrated because they’ve wasted money and end up going somewhere else (where more of their credits transferred).

23. Some students in INART courses have difficulty using the codes they’re provided in their textbooks to access course content. This typically happens because a student has purchased a used textbook and the cost has expired—however, this becomes a quagmire of red tape for the students since they have to work with the book publisher for resolution. This does upset our students in these courses, but it’s more of a publisher issue than a Penn State system issue.