The 2+2 Bachelor of Applied Science in Information Technology Follow-up 2 Years Later Dealing With Challenges

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1 The 2+2 Bachelor of Applied Science in Information Technology Follow-up 2 Years Later Dealing With Challenges Rebecca H. Rutherfoord brutherf@spsu.edu Han Reichgelt hreichge@spsu.edu Ju An Wang jwang@spsu.edu ABSTRACT One of the tasks that most universities face is the problem of transfer credits for students coming from other schools. This is particularly problematic with students who attend accredited two year technical schools and receive an AAS or AAT degree. Our university created an articulation agreement with technical two year colleges who offer AAS degrees in computing fields. This paper will examine the challenges, particularly credit evaluation and advising, that have occurred over the last two years. The paper discusses the challenges and how the department has solved them. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.2 Computer & Information Science Education General Terms Management Keywords IT curriculum, 2+2 programs, transfer of courses 1. BACKGROUND For many states, 2+2 programs are designed to accept students who have completed their first two years and earned an associates degree (AS), to transfer to four year institutions to complete their bachelors degree. Examples of such programs include Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY [6], the of North Carolina with North Carolina Community College System [1], Metropolitan State College of Denver with Front Range Community and Community College of Aurora [7], and Richland Community College with Benedictine, Eastern Illinois, Franklin Uniersity, Greenville College, Millikin, Robert Morris College, Southern Illinois at Carbondale, and of Illinois at Springfield [8]. These are typical examples of 2+2 programs. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. SIGITE 11, October 20 22, 2011, West Point, New York, USA. Copyright 2011 ACM /11/10...$ In our state, there are two separate college/university systems. One is the System of Georgia (USG) that encompasses two-year, four-year, and research universities offering Associate, Bachelor, Master and doctoral degrees. The other system is the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG). The TCSG comprises schools offering certificates, and AAT and AAS degrees. SPSU entered into an articulation agreement with the Technical College System of Georgia to create a Bachelor of Applied Science in Information Technology (BASIT) that fully accepts the two year AAS or AAT degree credits in a computing field from any regionally accredited TCSG schools. The students then complete the last two years at SPSU to receive their bachelor of applied science degree. 2. NORMAL COURSE TRANSFER Many four-year institutions do not accept credit from AAS or AAT degrees. Four-year institutions often believe that the AAS or AAT degree courses are not rigorous enough to map into a four-year course curriculum. The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, the American Council on Education (ACE), and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) have created a joint statement on the transfer and award of credit [4]. They state that transfer of credit from one institution to another involves at least three considerations: 1. The educational quality of the learning experience which the student transfers; 2. The comparability of the nature, content, and level of the learning experience to that offered by the receiving institution; and 3. The appropriateness and applicability of the learning experience to the programs offered by the receiving institution, in light of the student s educational goals. In addition, CHEA has a formal process of recognition which requires that all accrediting bodies so recognized must meet the same standards. These standards help to assure institutions that accredited schools that have accreditations recognized by CHEA can assume appropriate rigor and appropriateness of courses for transferability. There is an additional problem, specific to for-profit institutions, most of which are not accredited by one of the standard regional 149

2 accrediting bodies. Many of the for-profit institutions are accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. However, many schools and public institutions disregard this rating, and do not accept transfer credits from these institutions. Many students find themselves in the difficulty of having none of their credits transferring when they have attended a for-profit school. There are even law firms that specialize in this problem. Van Wey & Johnson, Attorneys at Law, believe that many for-profit institutions actually commit a type of fraud by not letting their students know that their credits will not transfer to most public or private accredited institutions. [9] If a student wishes to transfer from a two-year college within the System of Georgia (USG) to another USG college/university, the transfer of credits is relatively seamless, and is done on a course-by-course basis. However, if a student wishes to transfer from a two-year TCSG college to a USG school, they are very likely to lose most of their degree credits in transfer. The AAT and AAS degrees of the TCSG schools do not contain many hours of general education. USG bachelor programs, on the other hand, have approximately 1/3 of credits in the general education area. In addition, most technical courses offered at TCSG schools do not have an equivalent course at the USG level. Students are very frustrated that coursework taken at a TCSG college will most likely not transfer to a USG school. This means that a student, who wishes to continue his/her education beyond the AAS or AAT degree, must complete more than two years worth of courses to get a bachelor s degree. In fact, most students are required to take at least three years worth of additional coursework to get a bachelor s degree. This has caused many students to stop their education at the associate degree level. Given the fact that there is a continuing shortage of IT professionals, and given that an increasing number of entry level positions in IT require a bachelor degree, this is clearly an issue not only for individual students but also for the nation. 2.1 Regional Accreditation Regional accrediting bodies, such as SACS Southern Association for College and Schools, and NEASC New England Association of Schools and Colleges, have position statements concerning transfer credit [2, 3]. These regional accrediting bodies are recognized by CHEA. In its position statement, The Commission on Colleges of SACS states Many systems and institutions have taken positive action such as negotiating articulation agreements These kinds of proactive approaches, involving qualified faculty in the decisions, ease the way toward resolving transfer of credit problems while maintaining curricular coherence and academic and institutional integrity. The Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of NEASC states that policies and procedures should provide maximum consideration for the individual student who has changed institutions or objectives. [2, 3] One of the ways to help ensure quality in the transfer of courses is to examine the curriculum from the transfer institution, along with faculty and other pertinent accreditation criteria. Another is to accept only courses from accredited institutions. Since it takes a great deal of time to individually ensure quality from many different institutions, most accredited public, private and for-profit institutions have chosen to only accept credits from regionally CHEA recognized accredited institutions. The state of Georgia has taken transfer credit between public institutions very seriously. It has created the Georgia College 411 website to help students plan, apply and pay for college in the state. It also has policies relating to transfer credits [5]. At (SPSU) in Marietta, GA, we have chosen to look at accepting transfer students from accredited institutions from the Technical College System of Georgia. We accept the complete AAS or AAT degree in a computing field. In order to better serve the students of Georgia, we have established an articulation agreement with most of the institutions within the TCSG. 3. ARTICULATION AGREEMENT SPSU has entered into an articulation agreement with the Technical College System of Georgia in five different degree areas. For reasons that we explain below, the articulation is not into our regular bachelor of science programs, but into a different type of degree, namely the bachelor of applied science. Our department has been a leader in establishing this articulation since we had already established a stand-alone articulation with one technical college located close to our own university. We have developed a BASIT Bachelor of Applied Science in Information Technology degree program that fully accepts the two year AAS or AAT degree credits in a computing field from any regionally accredited TCSG school. The students then complete the last two years at SPSU to receive their bachelor of applied science degree. The articulation agreement states that the transition from a SACS-COC accredited TCSG technical college to SPSU will be as smooth as possible for the students choosing to do so. The agreement goes on to state equal partners with the responsibility to maintain the integrity of their separate programs, to remain true to their institutional missions The agreement states that students must complete the associates degree at their respective technical college, and that subagreements will be completed for specific degrees. The articulation agreement also determines primary contact representatives from the participating schools. Finally, it covers the assessment process for the agreement by providing for a regular review of sub-agreements, at a minimum of once every three years. 4. FIRST CHALLENGE - DEALING WITH TRANSFER COURSES Since the articulation agreement with the technical colleges allows a transfer student who has completed their AAS degree in a computing field with a minimum 2.5 GPA to transfer the whole degree, we had to come up with a process for dealing with the transfer of those courses. The TCSG schools have a variety of AAS degrees in computing fields such as network specialist, database specialist, programming, web design specialist, and information security specialist. These different majors have some similar courses, but most of the degree is made up of specialized computing courses appropriate to the 150

3 major. In order to process the transfer of courses into the BASIT program, a process was created whereby the Registrar s office would evaluate the general education courses for transfer and the major courses would be sent to the BASIT coordinator for transfer evaluation of those courses. We have chosen to refer to the major transfer courses as technical block courses. This means that we are not doing a direct course-by-course match for transfer credit. Each student desiring to come into the BASIT program must have their technical block set of courses approved by the BASIT coordinator, who documents which courses in the major will transfer to SPSU in the tech block area. This amounts to 37 hours or courses, depending on the number of hours for each transfer course. With the additional general education hours each TCSG student transfers between hours towards the 120 total hours required for graduation. The challenge in this area is that the numbers of students has grown over the last two years. The following table shows the growth of the number of majors in the BASIT program over the last two years. FALL SPRING 10 FALL 10 SPRING FALL The coordinator for the BASIT program, therefore, has seen the workload jump in this program. The coordinator receives a course release to help deal with the time-consuming efforts of not only doing the technical block course transfer evaluations, but the challenge of advising each of these students. 5. SECOND CHALLENGE ADVISING Students transferring into the BASIT program are required to complete their last two years 60+ semester hours, at SPSU. The SPSU courses cover both general education and IT. As with our regular 4 year degree program, we want both our BSIT and our BASIT students to obtain both breadth and depth. This is driven both by the demands of employers of our graduates, the ABET CAC accreditation standards in IT, and the IT model curriculum. In line with 4 year programs offered at most other institutions, in our regular BSIT program, students usually obtain the breadth early in their academic program with courses taken in the junior and senior year providing depth. However, the structure of our BASIT program is different because students who enter the program have typically studied a particular area within IT in depth. For example, students may enter with an AAS or AAT in networking or web development. They thus enter SPSU with the required depth in IT but without the required breadth. The IT courses that they finish at SPSU therefore aim to provide a broad coverage of areas described in the BET CAC accreditation criteria for IT and in the IT Model Curriculum. The fact that students transferring from TCSG schools obtain depth before they obtain breadth, and the consequent need to restructure the courses that make up the degree program, is the primary reason for articulating into a BAS IT program, rather than into our regular BS IT program. The students take 3 lower level IT courses, 9 upper level IT courses and complete their required general education courses usually about 8 additional courses. [10] In the area of IT, students take courses in 1. Programming (two courses) 2. Hardware/software concepts 3. Software acquisition and project management 4. Operating systems 5. Introduction to Web development 6. Advanced Applications Development 7. Data Communications & Networks 8. Information Security 9. Professional Practices & Ethics 10. Database 11. Two directed electives (such as E-commerce, IT and the Law or Management Information Systems) The challenge is that most of the students coming into the BASIT program require more face-to-face advising than other transfer students. Most of the students do not understand the tech block credit transfer. Also, since the TCSG schools are on quarters (although they are changing to semesters beginning fall 2011), students often fail to understand why their total hours do not transfer. The coordinator of the program, therefore, spends more time with each individual student coming into the BASIT program than for students transferring into the regular BSIT program. The coordinator has established several standard s, curriculum sheets and orientation materials to assist the students in understanding more about their transfer. This has reduced the number of students who fail to understand how the transfer agreement works. This process has been working well and students appear to have a better grasp on what transfers and what they have left to take to complete their BASIT degree. 6. THIRD CHALLENGE DELIVERY MODE TCSG institutions, in common with community colleges and technical colleges elsewhere, have a narrowly defined regional mission and this fact influenced the delivery mode of the courses that make up the BAS IT. All courses are offered in a variety of modalities, including completely on-line, face-to-face and in a blended or hybrid mode, with half the session online and the other face-to-face. The fact that we deliver courses fully online allows students from across the state to participate in the program without leaving their home town. This is very attractive to students who want to continue working in their hometown area. The challenge in this area was getting all of the lower and upper level BASIT courses online. The Dean of the School of Computing and Software Engineering agreed to pay faculty to develop the online courses. Not only are these courses for the BASIT students, but are also the same courses that the regular BSIT students take. Therefore, BASIT and BSIT students are enrolled together in courses. It is common for us to offer both an on-campus and on-line section of the same course during a term. We are seeing students across the state enrolled in the BASIT program who do not ever have to come to campus. We are also serving our BSIT students with the online offerings. 151

4 We have found that the on-line courses sometimes fill up quicker than our on-campus courses. 7. FOURTH CHALLENGE PUBLICITY One of the challenges has been for the university to let students at the technical colleges know that we have the transfer articulation agreement for their AAS students. As can be seen by the growth of the program, we have been trying out different methods for publicizing the program. We have created a website devoted to the BAS articulation agreement. This website gives general information about the articulation and gives students curriculum sheets which shows them what classes they have already taken for their AAS degree and what they will need to take to complete the BASIT. In addition, the Dean has funded a mailing to all of the recent graduates of the TCSG computing programs across the state. In the letter, it talks about the articulation agreement and how to get information about the program. We are planning another mailing early in June for students who have graduated during the last year. 8. FIFTH CHALLENGE PREPAREDNESS OF BASIT STUDENTS An additional challenge is the preparedness of students who enroll into our BASIT program. Many of the newly enrolled BASIT students struggle especially early on in their career at SPSU. There are two likely reasons for this. First, for many students, this is the first time that they complete courses fully online. Second, the performance expectations at SPSU appear to be more demanding than they appear to be at many TCSG institutions. In order to address these issues, we have developed a fairly detailed online orientation. Since introducing this orientation, new students appear to have had less issues with either the online delivery mode or the transition to SPSU. However, it is too early to make any definitive statements on the effect of this. 9. SIXTH CHALLENGE HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE FOR ONLINE STUDENTS Distance learning has become an increasingly popular choice for students. At SPSU, we allow students to complete their degrees in a complete online format and we strive to make the online program offer the same quality as our classroom-based programs. Our classroom-based courses include closed lab exercises such as router configuration, LAN design, and digital forensics practice, etc. How could online students gain hands-on experience in technology-intensive courses like network security, hardware/software concepts, and computer forensics? Our solution is to establish a virtual lab called Remote Lab that allows online students to gain hands-on experience for technical courses. The Remote Lab combines the functionalities of a web conferencing software Wimba, web cameras, and a remote switch to offer a virtual hands-on learning environment. Currently we have a general Remote Lab framework and a number of lab practices for Computer Networks and Information Security courses. The design and implementation of the Remote Lab combines the strength of existing solutions and have included the following components and functionalities: (1) Scheduling for student-oriented, unsupervised labs and instructor-oriented, supervised labs; (2) Remote access using VPN and a web-based interface; (3) An operating environment that consists of servers and remote switches; (4) Hardware devices and equipments; and (5) Reporting and assessment tools; (6) A web camera used to display live feed from the laboratory to the remote students through a web conferencing software Wimba. The use of web camera would give the users virtual hands-on experience while performing the lab exercises. The design and implementation incorporate the latest technologies including virtual machines, active directories, virtual private networks (VPN), console servers, remote switches and collaborative learning software applications and services for distance education, such as GeorgiaView (Blackboard Vista product) and web conferencing software Wimba. The Remote Lab network is internal to SPSU s network and accessible through VPN. The core part of the Remote lab is a LDAP-based reservation system and web interfaces which facilitate hands-on experience on network devices. The remote lab has the domain RLAB, in which students taking online Networking and Information Security courses are registered. An Oracle database is used to store the information about assignment details, assignment status, user s details regarding assignments, work hours etc. The RLAB network terminal servers are used by students to log on remotely and perform the network assignments. Students can schedule the assignments by using the scheduling system, which is one of the core parts of the RLAB architecture. The scheduling system has been developed using Microsoft.NET platform and it facilitates user to schedule their assignment day and time. It uses Active Directory to store the logon hour information for the user. The user can log on to the scheduling system by providing their credentials and then selecting the available assignments and date. The user is allotted necessary hardware devices from the list of idle hardware. The users are permitted to log on to the RLAB for the scheduled time slot only. The administrator can access and modify all users data, and set/reset the user logon hours using the reservation system. The web interface provides various functionalities to the user and the administrator of the system. The administrator can alter user s data remotely using the scheduling system. The administrator can specify the user s home directory which is used to store the files required to perform assignments. A file management tool allows administrator to upload files to the server, modify assignment files, and remove obsolete files (i.e., redundant files, files created by the users which are not used). The Remote Lab website also provides an interface to the APC master switch, which allows remote users to power on or off hardware devices without losing their Internet connections. The current prototype has an 8-port APC master switch and allows eight hardware devices to be manipulated by remote users at the same time. This project will be expanded to allow at least 64 hardware devices to be accessed simultaneously. The web interface is to be enhanced by embedding the video feed into the website there by eliminating the use of Wimba. 152

5 The resulting framework and courseware of our Remote Lab can serve as a model for IT online courses requiring hands-on components. Though the hands-on exercises developed in this project focuses on Information Security and Networking, the system architecture and technologies generated from this project will benefit online curricula in any scientific, engineering, or technology discipline. The release of the Remote Lab system will make both the development efforts and the experience gained in this project available to online instructors who need such an infrastructure to offer hands-on training to their students. Furthermore, the Remote Lab would provide real hands-on experience in in our WebBSIT program, a complete online degree program in IT, collaborated with five universities in Georgia through a WebBSIT Consortium. 10. CONCLUSION We believe that our BASIT program is a model that can be used in many other states. By creating clear articulation agreements that spell out the responsibilities of each party, states can allow students to move seamlessly between institutions. Enrollment, has been good, and we are starting to see the first students graduate from the program. Since the start of the program, we have graduated 7 students, one of whom is about to successfully complete a Master s degree in Information Technology, and we are expecting another 4 to graduate before the end of the year. 9. REFERENCES New England Association of Schools & Colleges, Commission on Institutions of Higher Education. Transfer and Award of Academic Credit, nsfer_and_award_of_academic_credit.pdf 3. Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges. Transfer of Academic Credit, A position Statement, ramsservices/clll/credit_transfer.pdf 5. ansferrng_credit.asp 6. h-2+2programs.htm ditation-credit-transfer-education-fraud.asp 10. Creating a 2+2 Information Technology Degree Program-the Bachelor of Applied Science in Information Technology, SIGITE 10 Conference, Midland, Michigan 153