Strategic Revitalization Of Student Counseling Through Six Sigma

Academic advising is an important but tedious task in a conventional university, bit it takes on a whole new meaning when the student to faculty ratio is sometimes 400 to 1 in a predominantly distance learning university. Students are, more often than not, seeking advice from more than one academic staff member with regard to the same issues of concern. The main reason behind this phenomenon is that students would like to have a definite answer that is cross-checked by different staff. Unfortunately, this might not produce the expected consistent results on consolidating their study path because different faculty members could inadvertently give slightly different advice such as on a student's study pathway. A project team was established to resolve this problem and aim at achieving results through six sigma methodologies. This paper shares the experience of two different academic teams in developing, deploying, and evaluating an online course selection and planning system (the Open Advising System with Interactive Support — OASIS) to help students select and sequence future courses. With the future presentation schedule of courses in mind, this system suggests appropriate courses to undergraduate students based on the intended programme they are in and the courses they have taken. It also provides study pathways for graduate students in the Master of Science programme based on the number of semesters the student would like to take before completion. This system saves academics' time by reducing the repetitive advice given to different students, helps to eliminate the possibility of having students taking more credits than necessary by mistake, and reduces the possibility of academics giving inconsistent advice. The system assists students as well as academics 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The feedback from students and academics has so far confirmed the system's usefulness. In this paper, we shall delineate how we apply six sigma methodologies in academic advising.