World Campus

Course focuses on best practices for assisting online learners’ supporters

The new professional development course from World Campus Online Faculty Development focuses on the best practices when helping online learners’ parents, spouses and other supporters while maintaining confidentiality.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new professional development course explores how Penn State faculty members and staff can help the parents, guardians and spouses of online learners while following federal and University privacy policies. 

The course, “OL 3855: Empowering Conversations: Interacting with Student Supporters,” is part of the Excellence in Academic Advising series from Penn State World Campus Online Faculty Development. It is available through Canvas, Penn State’s learning management system. 

The course is free, and registration is open. Those interested in registering must log in using their Penn State credentials. 

The modules in the self-guided course focus on the best practices for faculty and staff to interact with students’ supporters, such as parents or spouses while adhering to federal and University confidentiality and privacy regulations. Students’ educational records cannot be released to their parents, spouses or anyone else without their consent. 

The course comes as World Campus has seen a 13-percentage point increase in the number of traditional-age college students. The course is one of the resources World Campus has developed to prepare its staff, who have predominantly supported adult learners over the course of its 26-year history, for serving a changing student demographic population. 

The World Campus academic advising staff, who collectively have over 20 years’ experience working with traditional-aged learners, provided subject-matter expertise for the lessons in collaboration with Dawn Coder, the assistant vice provost for student success at Penn State World Campus. 

“We should look at this as an opportunity to create beneficial relationships with the parents and supporters of our online learners,” said Coder, who wrote an op-ed in Higher Ed Dive on this topic in April. “We hope the course ‘Empowering Conversations’ will prepare Penn State faculty and staff to handle situations that they may not have faced when they were serving mostly adult learners. It provides the best practices for those who have interactions with students’ parents and support networks. We are excited to offer this resource to encourage our students’ supporters to be involved in their education.” 

The four modules of “Empowering Conversations” are support and its impact on students; communication opportunities and student supporters; collaborating across generations; and cultural awareness. 

For example, the course provides guidance on navigating requests from parents for access to student records such as a course schedule.  

The parents may be accustomed to having that access when their child was in high school, but the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, has implications for college students.  An academic adviser cannot share their schedule but can share that a student can fill out a form to consent to having Penn State release their academic records. 

Coder encouraged any staff or faculty member who works with students or their supporters to take the course. They can expect to spend 5-8 hours completing the modules. 

Penn State World Campus Online Faculty Development offers a variety of self-guided and instructor-led courses focusing on online learning, student success, advising, and more. 

Visit the Online Faculty Development website to register for the “Empowering Conversations: Interacting with Student Supporters” course.  

Last Updated October 21, 2024

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