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The history of educational badging is incomplete without mentioning the visionary work of founders and distance learning administrators of the Chautauqua Institution in 1874 and, more specifically, the Chautauqua Literary Scientific Circle (CLSC) in 1878. The CLSC is one of the oldest continuous distance learning programs in the United States and has, from its founding to the present, incorporated a number of badges--known by its founders as "features" and "devices"-- to acknowledge progress and completion of its participants as a cohort or community of distant learners, of which many would never meet in person. The following badges (known as "features" and "devices") used by CLSC administrators are identified described: badge, class name, motto, Memorial Days, flower, button or pin, song, yell, banner, banner pole, certificate, diploma, mosaic, seal, guild, and stole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) has available for research a large data warehouse of enrollment and graduation information from 1993 to the present for nearly all postsecondary students in the United States. In this most recent academic year, 18 million currently enrolled students alone were added to the database. Some of the following research questions were answered by administrators at the Brigham Young University (BYU) Salt Lake Center using this data warehouse: How many of the students actually graduated? How many institutions did they attend before they graduated? How long did it take for them to graduate? This information in the hands of a distance and continuing educator can help inform strategic planning, marketing, and retention efforts for their institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the best practice of using “big data” reports to help distance learning administrators better understand their own programs and represent them to stakeholders. The authors examine five reports: (1) the number and percentage of graduates from the main campus who also take classes at the branch campus; (2) an understanding of how enrollment patterns can aid in decisions to cancel or retain classes; (3) an analysis of the number of non-matriculated students who eventually matriculate; (4) a comparison of the number of students who retake classes at the branch and main campuses; and (5) the correlation between courses offered and courses required for the main campus majors and minors. The reports are designed to answer specific questions and to dispel inaccurate assumptions by creating data to use in evaluating programs and their effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a follow-up to a previous article, "Six Ways to Increase Enrollments at an Extended Campus," published in this journal (vol. 17, no. 4, winter 2015), wherein a seventh best practice to increase course offerings and increase enrollments at an extended campus is presented. This best practice seeks to identify those areas of greatest student demand in which courses are not consistently offered across all four university semesters. Once identified, these gaps in course availability on the main campus can be filled by offering the courses on the extended campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a "best practices" article focused on sharing six new academic scheduling strategies recently employed by the BYU Salt Lake Center to optimize course offerings and increase enrollments. These strategies are generalizable to other academic programs that help extend academic programs at a distance, including online courses. The Center is an extended campus in Salt Lake City, Utah situated 46 miles to the north of the main campus of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The distance between the flagship university and its Center pose unique challenges in relation to course and enrollment optimization. Some of these strategies are made possible with the help of new software tools recently licensed by the university to help mine "big course and enrollment data" (current and historical) of a large university with 30,000 students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for a reliable strategic planning framework for distance educators and their institutions has never been greater than it is now. Increased government regulations, accreditation standards, and competition are converging with decreased funding from federal, state, and private sources, and administrators require better strategic planning. A strategic planning model known as the Balanced Scorecard has met with widespread adoption and sweeping success among the business community, but, surprisingly, has not been widely adopted among institutions of higher and distance education. In this article the authors share what they have learned about this strategic planning model through a review of the available literature and their own early efforts to introduce it to their institution, the Division of Continuing Education at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those in distance education are faced with a formidable challenge to ensure the identity of test takers and integrity of exam results, especially since students are physically removed from the classroom and distributed across the globe. This news digest will provide distance educators not only with a better understanding and awareness of issues surrounding cheating but also suggest solutions that might be adopted to help mitigate cheating in their programs. While technologies, including "braindump" Web sites and cell phones, are associated with the more common cheating behaviors today, the problem of cheating will always beleaguer distance educators; it is their responsibility to stay current on latest developments in the field of academic dishonesty, employ fitting interventions to mitigate cheating, and do everything possible to preserve the integrity of distance education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration Reaches the 10-Year Mark: A Look Back at Its Collaboration Network Using Social Network Theory.