what happens if IT issue intervenes in online schooling?

Back2SchoolRN · Sep 22, 2014

[h=1]what happens if IT issue intervenes in online schooling?[/h]

Please see my post under these headings. I want to want to warn others and would appreciate feedback (gentle, please) form educators currently working in online grad nursing programs as to any survival tips/where do I go from here/immediate suggestion I might offer my school to see if they would consider them, etc..

IrishIzCPNP, MSN, RN, APRN, NP · Sep 27, 2014

Not enough details. What issues were you having? How did you attempt to resolve them? What did the school recommend?

caliotter3 · Sep 27, 2014

Every online course or test situation I have ever encountered has had a section that gave instructions to insure that the student is able to physically make the connections so hard to see how the school would let you off the hook. If you dropped your internet service for not being able to pay, the school will say that is your problem. I would just contact them and see if you can work something out.

Back2SchoolRN · Oct 5, 2014

I had the required broadband, webcam, etc. Had had many webinars, student conferences, done Skype and video-chat. This was a 3rd-party proctoring service used for ONE course, whose requirements were NOT specified in the tutorial or instructions.

I sat down at the appointed time to connect, the service had trouble taking control of my desktop WHILE video-chatting, and they directed me to a speed-testing site, "speedtest.net" to see how fast my broadband was.

They need >3 Mbps UPLOAD speed, not just download speed, which is often many, many times faster. Don't know right off what that is, or if you have it? I didn't either. I had switched from DSL to U-Verse for this one class, and my bill was paid.

AT&T lied about what my broadband would do, but it easily met recommended requirements at that school, not only the required ones! Anyway, the proctor cancelled my exam. I notified the instructor immediately.

I immediately started looking around and calling around for anywhere else I could go; not even the public library had everything the proctor service needed. Even the online school's IT student help department were surprised and, as the head of IT said, "disturbed" by the sudden requirement, and had not known the 3rd-party proctoring service was being used.

The proctoring service "Examity" was actually hired by a Kaplan-style NP certification prep course the school was using as the bulk of material for that one "core" course. On Examity's web site, the upload speed is stated, but from withing the school's "BlackBoard Learn" virtual classroom environment, from which we registered for the exam and took the tutorial, there was no hint nor warning. When we reached Examity's site via BlackBoard, there was zero warning, too. I read it all thoroughly..and you can bet I combed through it all again more than once afterward, in case it was my fault, having just overlooked it!

I paid AT&T to install a new speed package--just short of commercial speed--as fast as they could. The instructor gave me some extra time. I stayed in constant contact and gave ample evidence I was absolutely doing all I could. I asked where that information was, if it was available. (Yes, I asked it very respectfully and carefully!)

I offered to take the exam by phone, on paper, at a local NCLEX testing site; anything. The instructor failed me, because I could not get the upgrade until 46 minutes after her deadline.

No retakes. No course substitutions, or possible transfers from another school, no make-up work or alternative exam or project. Just "you're done". That automatically meant dropping from the program, because courses are given only annually in a set-in-stone sequence. It means, per policy, waiting until next year to go on, with no guarantees they'll have a spot, because the new cohort gets priority....and no trust left on my part.

I was making more A's than B's, and had an A in the course to that point. I even turned in all the homework in advance so that all that was standing between me and an "A" was the final and that missed mid-term. I don't know what else I could have done.

(It was suggested I finish the course without the exam, which would have meant a cumulative score of 68%, and appealing it. Guess who would have been deciding whether to uphold their own faculty member's decision, or not? And what would my 3.5 GPA look like with an "F" if I lost? Too low to go to any other school.)

There's also the old nursing culture problem of, "Are you saying I'm mean? Me, not nice?!" Once you suggest something might be unfair--even unintentionally unfair--you run the risk of going from ordinary good student to "attitude problem" or potential trouble-maker. I did my best to point out the unique nature of the situation and avoid any personal accusations or hostility, even when little interest was shown in one student's plight.

I've been told that online schools overbook like airline flights do; that they take on many more students than they expect to have by the time largely-automated "core courses" are done and the more faculty-labor-intensive courses like clinicals begin. Don't know if that's true, but based on demographics, maybe I wasn't expected to still be there, and it was a chance to weed out just one more of too many students. We WERE very close to clinicals and a huge Advanced Health Assessment performance exam.

I wasn't that cynical then, was just looking for unexplored suggestions, comfort or closure. Even just one story of a similar event, so I wouldn't feel so alone. But I wonder now, and my recent reading hasn't helped my trust.

So I am focused now on moving on, though I will lose a year and pots of wasted money repeating courses. But I wanted to correct any ideas I had either not paid my electric bill, or just didn't ask about any other way of meeting requirements.

Back2SchoolRN · Oct 5, 2014

There IS one more thing. That school was in a different cultural region form my home. I have noticed that many smaller or less well-known schools will expressly state they are "concentrating on" recruitment of, or "giving priority to" students from their own area, such as the same state, or a regions such as "the Midwest", etc. This seems especially true if the region seems to need nurses, or their own residents have historically lacked opportunities.

It seems to me that getting the word out to your own people is one thing; treating them differently once they are students is another. If you need the funds from many students, maybe you recruit from all over, but when you're paring down to what your staff can actually mentor and teach, then "your own" locals could easily receive that "concentration" or priority treatment all over again.

One comment that an instructor made suggested that the on-site students, coincidentally almost all from the region, had priority over obligations to online students. Is this tracked at all, I wonder? How many nearby online students vs. farther distance learners do well?

(You can see I've wondered about a lot of aspects, most suggested by others who heard the story. Yes, I started by wondering what I personally might have done to get on her or the department's bad side, but we just didn't have a problem that I saw or had been told about.)

Sadly, I chose the program precisely because I wanted to help in regions like theirs, not as a condescending outsider, but proudly right alongside, and the program was labeled as focusing on preparing nurses to work with under-served populations.

This time I will most likely choose a school in my region, or one so big and well-known that their student body is MOSTLY from elsewhere.

HarryTheCat, MSN, RN · Oct 5, 2014

We had similar issues with U-Verse as well, and had to switch back to cable internet. It seems that if you are more than a mile from some sort of "hub" you won't have reliable service or anything close to the speeds they advertise. We are 1.5 miles from the nearest hub, and had all kinds of outage and speed issues. AT&T didn't bother to tell us about the one-mile limitation, and sold it to us anyway, then kept trying to make it work. That AT&T truck was in our driveway at least once a week.

My wife did her MSN in a blended classroom/online program and had a couple of internet issues due to the U-Verse problems. Tests were time-limited, and if you lost connectivity the test was stopped and you couldn't just log back in a pick up where you left off. All it took though was a call to the professor, who called the school's IT department to reset the test for her, and they were really understanding about it all.

ComeTogether, LPN · Oct 5, 2014

I don't know what you can do other than appeal to get your tuition refunded, which isn't likely. This kind of thing is look upon as you should have had everything figured out with enough time to spare. Will they not allow you to make it up?

Back2SchoolRN · Oct 6, 2014

Glycerin82, they absolutely would not allow me any possible way to make it up. No taking the same course at another accredited grad school and transferring in; no rescheduling the exam; no taking it concurrently with the next course, no alternative massive term paper, nothing, nunca, nada. They suggested I finish the course, when not enough remaining possible points that would allow anything but an "F". After the "F", I could appeal the grade...with mostly the same faculty deciding the answer. And if the answer was "no", my GPA would drop from 3.5 ish to 2-something, and I would not be able to enter another school! There was nothing to do but drop the course, but that may interfere with financial aid due to "academic progress, because the courses are given one at a time and you can't take one until you have taken all the preceding ones. Thus no way to earn at least 50% of the credits I registered for. They weren't very empathetic at all; they seemed comfortable with the impact on the student, s I am guessing they have done this before under other other (in mind questionably fair) circumstances.

Back2SchoolRN · Oct 28, 2014

As a follow-up, let me state that they have been incredibly cold and distant about it, confirming, I guess, that once you have a problem, you ARE the problem, and so why should they care anymore, anyway? They won't even answer my questions or give me the syllabus to classes to help me try to transfer. I guess they are used to students sobbing (which I did not do,with them anyway... pleading (which I did do, in a low-key way), then sitting meekly on the sidelines for a year, praying the school would have more losses than they expected, even with "overbooking", and plug them into the budget. I have learned enough to be wary of online schools, even though many allow a good education. ("Provided seems in some cases to be an exaggeration; there's not that much interaction or even content not provided by the student, who teaches himself with supervision. It's a good way to learn, but more time-consuming and labor-intensive than traditional school, albeit more expensive, usually--and yet VERY cost-effective for the school. I've done a lot of reading up, Googling phrases I would never have thought to check when I was just looking fr school quality and feasibility!) I will be going back to school, but will lose a year unless I switch specialties, at least for the initial degree. The one professor who seemed empathetic (without hand-holding or trying to fix it) was the psych prof, with whom I was impressed form the start. Partly because of her attitude, I will try again, and risk another online school.In the meantime, let this make you very cautious; savvy consumers are the best defense against fraud.

IrishIzCPNP, MSN, RN, APRN, NP · Oct 28, 2014

I'm in my second online program. The first was great for technical stuff. The second pretty good for technical stuff.

There are good options out there.

Back2SchoolRN · Oct 28, 2014

You are right; we just have to be cautious, and willing to back out if the signs of "in it for the money" appear. These might include:

...."fibbing" about how many transfer credits are allowed, "fibs" about how much the program costs and lots of hidden fees,

....aggressive enrollment counselors who are slow to provide detailed answers to your questions,

..."fibs" about how quickly you can graduate (followed by major barriers later on), ....substitution of "group projects" (some of which are great) by the bucketload in place of interaction with the professor and some "real time" content,

...quick phrases on a SmartPhone in response to serious concerns,

...whole days spent supervising brick and mortar students during which the prof is unreachable for online students,

....communications mostly sent through a junior "class helper" (who has a lower or newer degree),

...seemingly incidental (vs. deliberate) isolation of cohorts and classmates from each other by having supervised "class lounge" as the only means of student interaction other than private e-mail,

....use of outside resources like YouTube and Facebook for posting of student projects, vs. creating a secure and private way via the school's own technology,

...little or no useful feedback on work other than a grade,

...little or no individualized feedback from a designated "faculty advisor",

...slow or very limited response to general inquiries about future requirements, low program completion rate (which may indicate "overbooking" following by "cherry-picking" for program completion those students considered most "representative" of the ideal student as the school defines it),

...little or no help finding preceptors, but no warnings if they are extremely difficult to find,

...requiring the newest version of every text (even when updates are essentially cosmetic rather than including new clinical updates), especially if the school sells you the books,

...big "withdrawal fees", repayment of loan funds not required by the originator of the loans, and other penalties for leaving, even when the leaving is involuntary (which also amounts to a reward for those schools that overbook and then weed out the "less desirable"),

...and so on.

You may wonder how a school could be picking students based on anything other than work, and class-assignment interaction with others. Many schools have class requirement that students post public "bios" with photos, and class-project video presentations very early in the program. These are legitimately and accurately described as ways for students to gain professional presentation skills and polish, and they do that--but they also allow the school to immediately learn what they couldn't during admission reviews--your age, race, weight, regional accent, how much polish you do or don't already possess, and so on.

I do really think the vast majority of schools have no intent to discriminate based on forbidden criteria like race--but the opportunity exists, and this means professors must guard themselves against prejudices the way they presumably do with in-person students. If something seems weird at ANY school, it might be interesting to compare the entering class demographics with those of the graduating classes. Hopefully the government does that.

In general-buyer beware! Good schools may show some of these undesirable behaviors, just as students are imperfect. Several at a time are a red flag. Ask a lot of questions, even if you are scared that may make you less likely to be accepted. A good school will want you to ask, so they can demonstrate superiority in their answers!

But make sure you ask questions specific to the online program; if the answers are all about the glowing reputation of the entire school, and seldom directly about your question, this might be a warning sign. Quality traditional schools do sometimes dive into the online market too quickly, because it is extremely lucrative, and may (even just accidentally) short-change those students.

And if you are tricked and disappointed, let others know. Report it. Fight it, if actual fraud is involved. These are the only way that abuse of nurses can be stopped.

Reporting bad schools is also protecting those schools that do care, and do give an equal education with equal support to ALL their students, not just the brick-and-mortar traditional ones. This means we must complain when necessary about even the ones whose "brick and mortar" versions are great, because if you see these signs, the program you're getting is not likely the same as the in-person version. That's true whether or not it is intentional.