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“Other states have come to us. We think that’s significant,” said Linda Fell, program director of Allied Health’s Clinical Laboratory Science (CLS) program.
The program is ranked highly by peers across the U.S., as well as students, who give it high marks on surveys, Fell said. And in 2000 and 2004, the school had the top scoring student on national certification examinations.
The key to Allied Health’s success in distance education may in part lie in the approach taken toward engaging students in the coursework.
“The tendency for some programs is to put all text online. It doesn’t engage the student. We design our distance programs for online curriculum. It’s very different from a traditional setting,” said Karen Honeycutt, assistant professor, Clinical Laboratory Science program. “We unitize it so it’s very easy for students to get through a learning exercise without having a faculty member right there. We incorporate a lot of graphics, short videos and a lot of application exercises.”
Fell and Honeycutt say it takes expertise and time, up to two years, to adapt a traditional program to online. Instructional design is one of the key features. Considerations include selecting appropriate multi-media and deciding how to make it work online.
But another critical ingredient, they say, is teamwork.
“It’s a group project. Where faculty once worked independently, they now work with content experts to integrate educational components into an interactive format,” Honeycutt said. “Technology specialists format it for online and make sure it’s available.”
Fell and Honeycutt say the online curriculum teaches students lab processes before performing the work. Because most laboratory procedures are the same across the country, the curriculum is easily adapted to each laboratory setting, they say.
“This is especially helpful in labs that are short-staffed where there’s not as much one-on-one time,” Honeycutt said. “This helps students work through a process and make decisions so they’re more efficient when they get into the work setting.”
“We have a good quality product. We have wonderful resources and for the sake of the program, we want to share them,” Fell said. “It’s the future of education.”