Virtual interactions with faculty and administrators

Posted by Jen Zeman on March 30th, 2009

I rarely had interactions with administrators or instructors at UMUC outside of the classroom. Within the classroom, questions for instructors in each of my classes were responded to quickly, whether the question was posted in the Class Announcements section or via email. One time during my two and a half years at UMUC required interaction with the administration.

I was receiving financial aid while attending UMUC and during one semester, my aid was not applied to my tuition balance in a timely manner. This created a series of phone calls and emails to the director of financial aid and then to the vice president. The error was not mine – someone had dropped the ball in the financial aid office. It took about two weeks to resolve the issue, but ultimately my account was corrected and I went on my merry way. The only difference with this interaction and any I may have had at the community college I attended was the inability to visit the financial aid office in person. However, I didn’t find this to be a problem. The phone calls and emails I sent to the UMUC financial aid office were answered promptly and I never felt like I was being ignored. I credit this to UMUC’s administration and faculty being accustomed to communicating with students at a distance. UMUC does have a traditional campus as well, but the largest portion of its student body is students attending online. Because of this, I believe faculty and administrators go out of their way to maintain lines of virtual communication.

If you do encounter a problem as an online student, here are a few tips to help resolve the issue quickly:

• Send an email as soon as a problem arises. Sometimes online classes move at a faster pace than traditional classes, so time is of the essence.
• Be clear and specific in your email or phone call. Instructors and administrators deal with a large amount of students and issues on a daily basis. Being clear and specific from the start means the issue will be resolved quicker.
• Keep accurate records of the issue/dispute. Hopefully an issue will not go on for an eternity, but helps to maintain a record of what has happened in case an issue escalates.
• Be persistent, but professional. Again, because faculty and administrators deal with hundreds of students, you don’t want your issue to get lost in the mix. Be persistent (if you don’t receive a response within 48 hours, email or call again), but don’t be a jerk! Trust me, after years of working in the customer service field, nobody likes to deal with or help a jerk.

Read more of Jen Zeman's blog.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Administrators and Faculty Members Online, Student Voices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.