Webinar Transcript:
Megan: Hello and welcome to the Wake Forest University Master of Arts in Counseling and Master of Arts in Human Services online course demonstration. Please note that your lines are muted and you are in listen-only mode. If you have questions during the presentation, please type them into the chat box located in the control panel and click send to submit your question. After the webinar, you will be able to obtain a PDF of the slide presentation in an archive recording. We have three panelists leading today’s webinar. First, we have Pamela Karr who has a Masters in Counseling from Wake Forest University. Pamela has been a Program and Admissions Manager at Wake Forest since she graduated in 1995. Pamela is a national career counselor in North Carolina License Professional Counselor. She has held leadership roles in career counseling state organization such as North Carolina Career Development Association and North Carolina Counseling Association.
Next, we have Adam Hanna who is the student advisor for the Counseling and Human Services Program. Adam’s background entails supporting undergraduate students especially mentoring first year students in those on academic probation and lastly we have Lionel Chambers who is one of the enrollment advisors on the program. Lionel’s background entails seven years of enrollment experience in general management. The agenda for today’s webinar will be Pamela providing an overview of Wake Forest University then history and reputation of the institution. She will also speak about why Wake Forest has one of the best online counseling programs around the residency and their commitment to service while Adam will demonstrate a course looks like and take questions during this walkthrough and Lionel will discuss enrollment requirements and lastly will conclude today’s webinar by answering any additional questions you may have. And now, I’ll turn it over to Pamela who will start by speaking about Wake Forest University.
Pamela Karr: — but I will enjoy speaking to you briefly about the quality and reputation of Wake Forest University in general and the online programs offered by the Department of Counseling in specific. First of all as you can see from the slide, Wake Forest nationally has a national reputation. We are located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. These are some of the things Wake Forest University finds important and this Department of Counseling funds these are important too. First, academic excellence you can expect a rigorous academic environment. Maybe you can get one of those T-shirts are on campus students where that says, “Work for us” on it. We have a small class sizes. Most of the classes you will in will be in — will have few within 15 students. You can expect your professors to know your name and who you are and the academic resources are very large university. Wake was founded in 1834 with a unique educational mission. It’s sought to build not only intellect, but also character. The university believe deeply in its responsibility to educate the whole person, mind, body and spirit and then to help those students find their place in the world following graduation. In fact, there are department has a lead role here of offering mini-career planning courses to undergraduates and we expect to do the same for our online. Pro Humanitate which means for humanity is definitely more than just a motto around here. Our faculty, our students, alumni, our student leaders, advocates and practitioners that is the Wake Forest motto.
For instance, our faculty were present to help in the aftermath of 09/11. They went to New Orleans after Katherine — a hurricane Katrina and they were called by their colleagues at Virginia Tech and they were up there immediately after the shootings. They have been all over the world training and developing counselors. In fact, Dr. Gladding, our chair, is in China right now. The student center of model mindset you will find faculty and staff who truly care about you and provide support to you in many ways to help you survive, thrive and grow as a professional and as a person. The teacher’s scholar idea simply means that Wake Forest is committed to being sure that our faculty is not just researches hidden the way that they actually are involved in teaching as their top priority. Now, when you talk about the history and reputation of counseling programs I graduate in this program myself and I’ve been working here since graduation. I honestly had seen many evidences that would say that this Wake Forest Program is widely recognized one of the top counseling programs. Now, if you look at the list of national rankings we went up beyond it. We are not eligible for consideration in the national rankings because we have no doctoral level program. We prefer to focus our energies on our Masters Program, but we have twice been named the Outstanding Counselor Education Program by Associations of other counselor educators and the employers and doctoral programs recognize the value for degree from Wake Forest and they would for you too. Our graduates are recruited and valued and whenever we go to national conferences people come after and say, “Who are you going to send us this year for our doctoral program” or “Who do you have that I can hire as a school counselor?”
The accreditation by CACREP, Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Program, even if you don’t come to Wake Forest I really think you would do well to pursue your degree at a program that has this accreditation. It is the fastest easiest route for graduates to licensure certification and even further education. The NCE stands for the National Counselor Exam. That is exam is used as the licensure exam in most states. They also can make you a nationally certified counselor. This is in partial evidence to the quality of our program because since 1996 when we first became CACREP accredited 100% of our graduating students sitting for the National Counselor Exam has passed it. the average scores of our group are consistently higher than the average scores of the graduates of all other CACREP Programs. Choosing a top online counseling program, when you choose a graduate school you really want to find the highest quality program to which you can gain admission. If you choose a top online counseling program it can step to set the stage for you future endeavors and will add prestige to your degree. So, a few of the reasons that isolated on why Wake Forest is a high quality program the person you maybe surprise that we live high caliber students that would be potentially you. The admission standards for online students are the same as those for our own campus students. We do require GRE scores above a certain minimum, others don’t. We also plays very heavy evidence on getting to know more about you, your motivations and your fit for this program so they are subjective and objective criteria when we select the members of your class. You have a personal statement, you have recommendations and we also require a tape personal interview.
Now, you can be assure that your classmates are a divers [ph] group of very carefully selected persons who will enrich your educational experience and can offer personal and professional support to you now and later as a professional. High-caliber professors, I spoke to someone today about another program and they said, “The professors don’t seem to have any other link to this university other than teaching a course here or there” and then we’ve seen that too. That’s one of the reasons we decided to become a player. Online students take the same courses under the same professors as do our on-campus students. Our faculty, our full time faculty members based on campus that we see every day and we talk every day. They are also recognized national leaders in the counseling field. They have served as presidents and officers of all of the national counseling in international organizations including the American Counseling Association, the Association for Counselor Educators and Supervisors, Chi Sigma Iota International Counseling Honor Society and the Association of all the state licensure board. They are among one of the most prolific research and writers in our fields so many of the textbooks used by our program and other Masters Program are written by our professors and they received so many awards. I’m not going to start that, but you could go to our website and read about it.
Okay, now the next list is a few of the focuses and program features that we invite you to compare what we do with what other programs do as you’re looking. First, we have an emphasis on the skill development. You have to take two skills courses, a basic one and an advanced one. Most people just have one, both counseling and human services program. There are a lot of hours of supervised professional experience that you will be guided, mentored, help you choose, make sure your supervisors are trained and properly credentialed. So, next we are just as interested in your personal growth and development and yourself awareness as we are in your acquisition of knowledge and skills because we’re growing with good counselors and we’re watching up for the clients you’ll be working for down the road about all out. So, we and you both would engage in a continuous progress of monitoring your growth and development and learn the opportunities to give and obtain feedback from peers and professors. The emphasis on service comes back from Pro Humanitate. We are looking for students who want to give back to their communities and will help us embody the spirit of our motto. We’d even included a service component and the two residence experience who have during your time with us more about that later. We believe people need to use these practices so you will learn them. You will learn how to find them and you will learn how to evaluate outcomes of your work with clients and the programs that you’re on and then one of the main things we’ve seen about this online program is an amazing support network that is out there.
There are 24-hour help lines, there’s admissions advisors, student support that checks in with you weekly, faculty members, alumni who also help as services practitioner instructors. You cannot fall through the crack fear. Even if you try, we will send out a search party and we will find you. That’s not a joke really, but it makes me smile. So, why did we decide to do the online program? This was not something we lightly chose, but here is basically our thinking. The world needs counselors. When you look at the World Health Organization reports in the United States Surgeon General, at least 20% of the population has mental disorder and none of those figures include those who are just struggling with things like divorce, career difficulties or other challenges and those people deserve the comfort and support counselors can provide. Wake Forest University prepares excellent counselors, we say. We have a history of graduates over 600 of them since 1969 who are serving in schools, community health agencies, nonprofit annuities, hospitals, international settings and many other locations. Broadening into the online market allows us to start to bridge the gap between our abilities to educate counselors and the need for counselors. Up until this point, we’ve had classes of 15 full time students who spend two years completing the 60-hour program on campus that excludes anybody’s who cannot move to Winston-Salem and who cannot afford to forget away just for two years.
So, the online program has allowed us to expand our audience while maintaining the quality of admissions and delivering our very-well established effective curriculum so we can help meet the need. Just a little about our experience this far, we’ve been doing this for a year now. This would be the fourth class entering in the fall so making connections is part of what we’ve seen happen very quickly. The students come from different backgrounds, but they have the same desires to serve humanity and so I’m lucky because I’m the lead instructor for the required student orientation course and I get to meet you first. I watch students connect amazingly quickly on the online environment. This is an example of a quote from some of the forums in that course as, “People meet each other isn’t that neat?” Another one is, “It’s so interesting the different experience that can bring all of us together to this program” and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading throughout these posts and learning information about you fellow classmates. I can honestly feel in the words I’m reading from others that I am amongst people have the same desire to help others through counseling and it’s amazing to feel that sort of connection. I love to watch it happen. Now, the residency experience I won’t go into it very long here, but we have to meet you. We cannot put our stamp on you unless we can see you eye-to-eye, meet you and work with you. It’s just two-long weekends during the three-year program, Thursday night to Sunday morning, yes you have to come. You’ll no long, long in advance. You can meet each other, you can meet us, you’ll make presentations, you’ll attend workshops and you’ll plan your clinical experience. The first one in May was hugely successful beyond what we thought it could be of connecting people and then monitoring personal and professional growth.
You can kind of glance that these are actual things they wrote on the posters we had around the room on their reaction to the people who came. They felt appreciated, they felt connected, didn’t want to leave and it was wonderful. We ask them for one word to describe their experience and here’s some of the one words, “connected, unexpected, wonderful, captivated, illuminating, proud, uniting and elevating.” So, that was a lot of fun and then my life flying out turn it over to what it looks like to be in a course back to Pro Humanitate again, but I just wanted to say that one of the ways I can say we really mean this is that we had it a service learning component into the residency where teams went out into the community and established accomplished various service projects then we all got together to process the experience. And here were just a couple of their comments about the service learning that they did here, “Wow, what an expected gift to me. I was fed by this experience and surprised by the amount of application to counseling that this service opportunity provided. Thank you.” “Awesome, absolutely powerful experience professionally and personally. Bonding moment. Learn to celebrate small successes and here’s my favorite. Life has no script. Counseling won’t either. Got to be flexible.” So, that’s our last Pro Humanitate more than just words for sure and that’s all from me from now, but I’ll be around throughout to answer questions, thanks.
Megan: Thank you, Pamela. Now, we’ll turn it over to Adam who will walkthrough Sakai your learning management system. Give us one moment while we switch over to the learning management system.
Adam Hanna: Hi, everybody. So, Megan said Sakai is our learning management system here at Wake Forest. So, inside of Sakai you will see your courses as well as some general information. Like Pamela talks about, we do have a student orientation course so that will also be found inside of Sakai. So, inside of Sakai once you call up the actual learning management system this is what you will see. So, you will see messages. You will also see announcement and so those announcements will be your announcements for your different courses you will be in. So, that will be pulled up on this initial page. You will also see announcement from the [inaudible] and we’ll go into a little bit more detail about [inaudible] a little bit later, but [inaudible] is where this sort of orientation help course-based house. We will see that when you log into your course. At the top as you can see the tabs for different courses so once you log in to your Sakai platform you will see your course at the top so you will be able to toggle from your my work state to your course. So, all you need to do is click on the course and we’ll go in track in a minute here and that will show you what our course will look like, but something else to note which is really important here inside of Sakai in terms of being communication with your peers is the profile option. You’ll be able to set up a profile so that you can communicate because we do have group projects and assignments that you’ll need to complete so it’s just another way to communicate with your peers as well as Pamela and myself with any questions and concerns you may have and we’ll go to a little bit further what a profile will look like more towards the end of the session. So, if we go into our course here, 740 is what the course is.
As you can see, it’s the professional orientation to counseling course. You, as a student, would be a little bit different and your advisor is here to assist you so I’ll also have access to get in and go to the course with you and so I’ll be here to assist you with any questions or concerns. We can definitely walk through them together being that we’ve also have accessed to the course. So, as you can see once you log into the course initially you will see a course description so you will have this ahead of time, but just as a refresher once you get in you’ll be able to really remind yourself about what these courses. So, as you can see CMS 740 is our professional orientation for counseling course. You can be a little bit further up what a course description looks like, but I also want to point out some other important features up in your course. So, some other important features are the announcement tab. So, we spoke a little bit before once you log in to Sakai you’ll be able to see announcement from [inaudible] as well as your course, however, inside of your course we’ll actually be able to see the specific announcement for that course. So, as you can see we have an announcement listed from our instructors. Now, we have two instructors in our courses and we’re going into a little bit further in that in just a minute here, but you both see announcements from both of those instructors. So, both of our instructors they are the practitioner instructors to full year section and then we also have a lead faculty member who will be in charge of multiple sections. Another thing which is really important here for our course is that you will also get a message from your lead faculty member so it will give you your check in to give you what everything looks like so you’ll be able to get — and you’re welcome to that course once you started.
So, going from the homepage of our professional orientation counseling course as we move in to the instructors tab once you go in and I would definitely recommend once you’re in courses to take a look at this before you get started before it’ll get you familiar with your instructors prior, like I said, prior to getting stated. So, we have our two instructors here, like I said, we have a lead instructor who for this course is Dr. Philip Clarke and then we also have a practitioner instructor or your inspection instructor and so they are also within here. So, this is very important because you’ll be able to make the connections with instructors prior to getting started throughout the course. So, I really like to tell students can fill that report with the instructor because you never know either one [ph] have a question and if you build that report they’ll be able to understand that question a lot quickly — a lot more quickly because they know exactly who you are so you may have this instructor later on in another course so that’s another reason to build up that report early. As you can see, our instructors do offer live office hours so we’ll definitely go into that a little bit further to some specific questions, but what they do they’ll go over any questions or concerns in the office that you’ll have and we’re using WebEx program to do those office hours so you will log in and speak with them live as well as video conference with them.
So, the useful tool even if you don’t have questions there are often students who go in who have questions themselves so you’ll be able to sit in and see of those questions so it may not be something that you have had a question. It’s useful because you’ll be able to get an answer to further your knowledge. Now, office hours are also great because you can also just interact with the instructors. So, outside of the course really talking about how this course or the profession in general will help you. So, I definitely like I said building that rapport with the instructor is really important. So, also contained on the instructor page is their contact information. So, it’s really unique being that this is an online program you will going to give instructor outside of just email. So, like I said we have the office hours, but we also have the phone numbers of instructors. So, a lot of you just feel more comfortable having that one-on-one time with the instructor similar to the ground campus when you’re going to an office you can give the instructors a call and you’ll be able to communicate with them that way you can feel personal on communications a little bit easier for you. So, now like I said, you will have a link to go into the WebEx program for the course and that link is always contained under the instructors tab. So, all you need to do is go in and have the conference, write in password so that you can go in.
Now, just another note about our instructor which is really nice on this page is that they have the educational background as well as your interest as it pertain to accounting profession. So, if you have a particular area really interested in this is a good reference point to get in contact with instructors about their experience with the different areas inside of counseling. So, this is definitely a good resource moving forward to connect with a counselor or accounting professional to see what their experience is in the different section. So, just an important note on our instructors we always like to keep open lines of communication. We want to make those connections like I said because there will be more apps to get back to you quicker because they know who you are and they know that you’re genuine when you’re asking for a question you have a response to them so just keep it in mind moving forward if you want to build that rapport with your instructors. Now moving forward, we talked about the announcements that will be located on your homepage, but you can also pull up all of the announcements from the entire course.
So, here you can see all of the announcements that are posted and like I said you will have postings from the lead instructor as well as the practitioner instructor so if you have a question about an announcement that maybe went out early you can go ahead and just click on to the link to that specific assignment, excuse me, announcement and then it’ll take you to that reference that having the specific question. So, this is just a good tool if you like to go back and remind yourself of what the instructor has touched based with throughout your time in the program so just another area that you’ll be able to find it, like I said, it is posted in the home tab, inside of your course as well as the home tab of Sakai itself so many locations to see the announcement is definitely a good way for the instructors to communicate with the students on any questions or concerns that big class has a group. So, I just want to toss it back to Pamela a little bit to talk about why we have that lead in practitioner instructor set up the way it is. So, Pamela if you could just talk a little bit about why we have that set up for two instructors.
Pamela Karr: Yes. The lead instructor is the one who developed the course. They are the ones with the doctor, PhD and a full time faculty members here so they may be in charge one semester of multiple sections because we want to have you groups — in groups with cohorts of no more than 15 and as much as possible leave you with the same people as long as we can from course to course so that you’ll get to know each other. All other practitioner instructors from Wake Forest so far and I believe we’ll continue are actually graduates of the program and the reason I call them practitioners is their practicing counselors out in the field so they had some experience, they’ve been through the course, they understand the culture and I just sent out invitations to 10 of them for fall and I got, “Yes, yes, yes, yes can I do more than once?” So, it’s been so much fun to have our alumni active in this role.
Adam Hanna: Thank you, Pamela. I really appreciate that. So, as you can see, tons of report like Pamela talks about before mentioned from the reassurance to know that you have additional academic resources outside of the student support of roles that I have as well as the role Pamela plays with the continued support throughout your time in the program. So, as you can see, there also is syllabus tab so again another key point in your course. So, we will pull up a PDF file here. So, just I don’t want to go through the whole syllabus, but I do just want to touch on a couple of important points of our syllabus. So, as you can see, a pretty lengthy document, but it’s a good point of reference when you’re going through some of the important information for the course and kind of what is expected. So, what typically contained in the syllabus? The course description located in many places in Sakai, like I said, in the main home tab, but it’s also located in inside the syllabus. So, if you’re wondering what I’m going to learn from this course or what I’m expected to learn because it’ll help you set those goals for the end of the semester and for the end of your courses you’ll be able to go to the learning objection portion and really able to concentrate on what you’re looking for out of this course.
So, other important confirmation contained in here that you want to take a look at is the textbook information and other materials. So, what do I mean by other materials? Other materials that are used for instruction. So, we offer videos and DVDs. So, for this current course we have a video crash that students needed to watch and do an assignment. So, the instructors will give those films that are needed that you’ll need to get yourself to you and they’ll often provide different resources where you’ll be able to locate those, but definitely here to answer questions about how [inaudible] once you’re in the program we can help you find those as need be, but just note that in addition to text we do also require some additional resources and typically we’ll let you know how to locate those like I said. So, moving forward at some other important information here towards the bottom we are person of information about the grading policies as well as some of the rubrics so this is just an important place to really know what to — how to expect your performance to look throughout your time in the course. So, you want to meet these standards and so when you go through the syllabus you really want to make sure you keep note if it’s a great policy as well as the rubrics because it’ll really help you formulate those assignments and moving forward because often times there are question and there are definitely supports for you, but I would say this is your first point of reference for any questions as they relate to the course. So, that’s the syllabus. They are able lot more information in detailed information in depth, but just an overview of what a syllabus would look like for you.
So, now moving on to another important and probably the most important tab is your modules tab. Now, the modules tab really shows what you need to complete from week to week. So, if we reference on the most recent week that we completed here in this course, this term was the creativity and wellness opportunity in [inaudible]. So, if we go in here we can see that for this unit we have an overview of what this week’s unit going to look like. So, we have on the lead instructor overview of what you’re looking at in terms of learning from this, this week. So, our units typically will run from week to week and then you’ll have the different assignment. So, as you can see at the bottom here we have the creativity and wellness lesson so all you’ll need to do to give those lessons is click inside those. So, we’ll look at those in a minute, but another important aspect of this tab is the learning activities tab. So, as you can see, the week three learning activities and if we go into this tab it can points everything that we need to complete so we can see that we have the different reading assignment, we have different articles needed to complete as well as journal entries and then we have different forms we’ll need to post to. So, this is another great resource when planning on your time and looking at time management you will look at this from week to week to ensure that you give yourself enough time, like I said, to do these readings or to post this journal entries.
So, that’s just a quick overview of what that will look like in terms of learning activities. So, we’ll take a look at lesson one of creativity from week three. So, if we go in it really separates it out on, like I said, you have your introduction for every lesson so we really pinpoint what we need to learn. So, you can also see a couple with that is the learning objective and like I said before we have the week’s overview of what we will need to complete, but as you can see in lesson one we have specifically what is related to the topic. So, this first topic for lesson is creativity and we can see that we have different readings. So, as you can see, we have chapters 10 through 14 listen here so it really breaks it down so there are multiple locations that you can look to find the assignment. So, going through you just want to go to this process and you’ll developed different processes that work for you and that’s what I’m here for to develop — help you develop those processes so that you can really be distinct and precise on when looking at different locations. So, as you can see, if we scroll down a little bit further we can see some supplemental material for this week. So, as you can see, we have different music videos and clips from different videos that will help you out. So, as I’ve said, this unit is creativity so this instructor has utilized videos at where creativity was found inside of everyday life so it’s really about applying that knowledge and not just having it be more than abstract thing. So, as you can see, this is really showing where we see it in the world. So, as you can see if we scroll down, we go into the assignments so it really pinpoints out what you need to do because often times students will have to take an online courses are worried about missing a tab or making sure they complete everything and submit everything on time.
So, following through with each lesson and really going through and going step by step what you need to complete will really help you complete these assignments. So, now like I said, you’ll have group assignments and we did have a group assignment for this course this week so like I said before we have a profile and we’ll touch a little bit more in communication on how that will help you in completing those group assignments later, but just note that group assignments are part of your assignments from week to week. So, now we’ll move on outside of specific course information so that’s really the most important information I would say to help you with your everyday assignments and really going through what of course would look like and completing those materials. Now, once you get a swing of thing they’ll know which day for fast review to complete reading because like I said we have those office hours for instructors so you want to wrap your week around in those different office hours or your work schedule so it really helps going through prior to completing assignments and rally planning everything out going through the module to have I can talk about the syllabus tab and all of the other important tabs moving forward so that you really know that you, like I said, submitted all the assignments on time and really completed all of the important information for that week.
So, other important information that will help you not only on this course, but all of your courses moving forward is looking about other resources outside of like I said your instructors, Pamela and myself to help you along. We also has some other academic resources. So, in each course you will have an academic resource to have to help you out and so when you’re doing your writings you really want to have our students to be precise in doing your citation so we have helped here to help with you the [inaudible] formatting. So, if you ever have to do that just remember that you have these references to go back to. Like I said, you also have other support, but I would also start with these as a primary source because then it may answer a lot of your questions and you wanted to go to the hurtle of contacting multiple people on how to do things. So, in addition to the citation resources we also have the library resources. So, even though you are an online student and you do have access to a library and you’ll be able to access to different databases that we utilized you to look at the assignments of supplementary material as well. So, you’ll also have assistance to the online learning library — of the librarian, excuse me. So, you’ll definitely be able to have support if you’re not sure how to quite use an online resource for the library or the different databases you have multiple opportunities to seek help so don’t ever hesitate to reach out if these link are helpful.
So, just moving forward if you’re ever looking at you say I’m not sure how this learning environment work for me because I have a learning disability and so we do accommodate those students as well. So, if you have a learning disability and you know you need special accommodation that’s why we have this learning assistance I’m in. So, if you have those disabilities or just a process that we need to dealt you to document that so that we can get you the proper assistance and we definitely want to be here to provide that assistance so you’ll go to the learning assistance center where you can do this all online and speak with the staff that you can make sure that you get your appropriate assistance or you can have the accommodation. So, don’t be shy about using those resources because want to make sure that all students are successful no matter what resources they do need to be successful. So, in addition for that Pamela did touched on some other supports that we do have for you. So, what she talks about we have a 24-hour technical support and so if you’re ever having any technical issues of uploading anything now generally a lot of the questions about how to upload things or answered in our student orientation course, which as Pamela said, she is the instructor for, but if you ever have any questions outside of anything covered in that orientation you’ll be able to communicate with our technical support team. Now, they offer a live chat option as well as number to phone and then call.
So, sometimes it’s just easier to get a quick question to answer for your chat and sometimes it’s just a little bit easier for students to just call, walk and have a staff member walk them through step by step of what they need to do. So, definitely don’t hesitate to use that resource. Students who utilized those resources and have question are the most successful I would say because they know how to give those different tricks on how to upload things and there’s no road block in their way. So, like I said, don’t be shy so that there’s no road block moving forward and then also if you ever need to contact me and you’re unsure of what my contact information is you haven’t been able to find an old email from me, you don’t know my phone number, you can also go to this technical and academic support tab and then they’ll give you my information so that we can connect and I can help you with any outstanding issues. So, just moving back it’s been more specific within Sakai talks about you can send before where our student orientation course is housed and it will be a tab on top just like one of our courses. So, [inaudible] is really the essential hub of the information as it relates to the program in general and also your cohort schedule. So, you want to go if you can send and check these announcements in addition to your course announcements because they’re really good information about, like I said, the program as well as your cohort as it relates to the residencies that you’ll need to complete with a lot of information will come out there.
So, I just want to make sure that your checking [ph] needs to have — you’ll become more familiar as doing an orientation course for reference once you entered the program and so you’ll go in and there’s an introduction to the [inaudible] tab as you can see on the left-hand side underneath the home tab on the left. So, when you go inside there on the [inaudible] it’ll show you how to complete the student orientation course in which I’ll have Pamela speak a little bit more about in a minute here, but there’s also a forum section of what Pamela has an app Pamela section which is a great resource as well because if it’s something that you don’t need a specific answer to right away, but it’s a general question maybe that she can help you out with that’s a great place to go as well. So, I’m just going to toss it back to Pamela to touch on just a little bit of what a student orientation course we’ll go over and then if you could speak a little bit about how you utilize the app Pamela tab as well.
Pamela Karr: Alright. So, we’re looking at — this actually has a module just like the other places do. You work through this in about two weeks. They suggested deadlines, but they are not hard and fast deadlines. It’s a complete or not complete. As far as possible, we wanted to make the student orientation course kind of low anxiety, but give you a chance to learn more about Wake Forest in our mission and our vision and more about the tools you’re going to be using because the next course has hard and fast deadlines and it is graded. So, this — if you complete this first — first of all you’ll get to know your fellow people in your cohort and you should learn and practice successfully or not, unsuccessfully I am the best person in the whole world to learn by doing it wrong the first time so I can pretty much tell people, “I bet you’re doing what I did and we can fix it so that it is much more smooth sailing.” So, it’s required that you complete, but it’s not grade. It won’t appear anywhere.
Adam Hanna: So, moving along to — thank you Pamela. I really appreciate that. Just what a Sakai profile would look like. So, what we have here is what your profile will look like inside. So, like I said it’s a great tool to make connections with students and so throughout the this profile you want to put information that’ll help you going through and connecting with students so I’m going to give you the opportunity to put a file down as well as some of your other information so you can also upload a picture which I would definitely recommend because like Pamela said at residency you’ll be able to connect with your peers. There’s great opportunity to start that connection with other students and so you’ll want to get that field out and then moving forward what you can do inside of that profile once you created it. If you’re familiar with other social networking platforms you can connect with students somewhat to like a friend more connection some various other problems like I said, you’ll be able to make those connections inside Sikai which appears and so in addition to that you’ll be able to send the messages.
So, it’s a more to an email format and they will get those messages inside of Sikai they will also get information in their email so those show that there’s a student who have a message or maybe I send you a message to your profile you’ll also get that information. So, just going forward in terms of the profile or if not required it’s definitely another tool, like I said, you’ll have a group assignment and so this is a great tool to be able to communicate and speak with them further on what you needed to complete and be able to work together. So, definitely other options to communicate, but this is a great option inside of Sakai when sending messages because if you’re already logged on and you’re in your profile with you you’ll be able to see that a student has sent you a message. So, that’s just some of the general information for our — about the profile. We hope that this is very useful to you. We’ll definitely take some questions here in a minute, but I just want to toss it over to Lionel Chambers who will go over to some of the requirements.
Lionel Chambers: Thank you, Adam. This is especially more on what Pamela said earlier just like our ground program had requirements. Our online has enrollment requirement as well. We do require that individuals applying for the program actually have a Bachelors Degree from accredited institution. A GPA of 0.5 or higher when taking the jury on the new scale we ask that you have a score of 300 and then a writing score of three. You would need to obtain three letters of recommendation, a personal statement and application fee of $75 and a webcam interview with one of the advisor peer at this school.
Adam Hanna: Thank you very, Lio. If you have any specific questions please go ahead and type them in the chat box. We’ll go ahead and get those answered for you. We want to make sure that it is useful to you as possible. So, any questions you have as it relates to the enrollment requirement or anything inside of the platform, please let us know so that we can go ahead and get those answered for you. So, we’ll just take a couple of seconds here look at some of the questions we’ve gotten in. So, I’m going to talk this one to Pamela if you could. So, if we have a question from the student, “Will this course help me obtain the licensure in my particular state after graduation?”
Pamela Karr: Even with our own campus students we stat right away talking to them very early in the program and instructing them to research the licensure requirements of their particular state. So, we do that for everyone and we know pretty much what they are, but we also would help you do it and help you guys through it if they require a course that you’re not taking now, yes, your advisors will help you with licensure along the same ways as we help you get the proper clinical site so that you can meet the requirements of your state.
Adam Hanna: Thank you, Pamela. So, another question we have, “Is the online program approve for the LPC licensure in Kentucky?”
Pamela Karr: I believe so. We have a complete database and an expert who isn’t an attorney, but I think she deserves an honorary degree. We would need to get back to you on that because that’s not at the tip of my tongue. We have to meet the requirements of every state, we’re working through them and I’m pretty sure Kentucky is approved, but I would like a person to get back to this person once we confer with the expert.
Adam Hanna: We can definitely do that so we’ll take names on that and we’ll definitely follow up with you on that specific question. Now, we also have some additional questions about course load, “So, what is an average commitment for an online student?” This person also asked about part time and full time course load so I do just want to let all students know that the online program is a part time program so will be taking one course at a time. There will be two courses in a semester, but they will not run simultaneous, but Pamela if I could toss it back to you if you could speak about on what some of the requirements would be in terms of time commitment per week that we’re seeing from students.
Pamela Karr: I’ll advice people during the course that you really need to know that you can find about 20 hours a week even though you’re just taking one course we decided that base motto was seven and a half weeks on one thing and seven and a half weeks on another thing. You take two courses every semester, every fall, spring and summer for three years and then you’re done and in some semesters it’s not exactly six credits because sometimes it’s an eight credit semester, sometimes it has internship running across the whole semester while you’re taking courses, but it has been developed for people who are also working. You can’t do it full time basis. It doesn’t really work well. That’s not the market we’ve designed it for. I’d say until you know how fast you can do it allow 20 hours on a specific time that’s your time to study. I know it doesn’t work great if you’re trying to do homework with your kids and you have to keep down and, “Be quiet, mommy is studying” we found out. You need to hide and have your own time.
Adam Hanna: I’m going to send this next question over to Lio, “I have not taken the GRE, but I will be taking it in the future. Is there a chance I can still take it and apply and attend the school in the fall?”
Lionel Chambers: Yes. Most definitely for the specific deadlines we require that all students have a GRE or file and then they are able to move forward with the application process.
Pamela Karr: Do you think they can be — the completed deadline of June 15th for fall if they have not taken the GRE yet?
Lionel Chambers: One more time Pam.
Pamela Karr: I’m think though, I may have heard the question wrong, the person wants to know the deadline for fall is it June 15th completed files?
Lionel Chambers: Yes. They were saying in general, though.
Pamela Karr: Okay.
Lionel Chambers: But if an individual has the GRE before that deadline we would work with them so we can move forward.
Pamela Karr: Right. But if you haven’t taken the GRE yet you probably aren’t going to meet the deadline for this coming fall?
Lionel Chambers: Yes, it is correct.
Pamela Karr: But you can made it for the coming spring and that’s one of the beauties of this program we’ve taken three times a year instead of just one.
Lionel Chambers: Absolutely. Thank you, Pam.
Adam Hanna: Thank you, Pamela. So, we have another question, “I’m having problems with the LMAT [ph] which an international system who should I call?” So, like I said, we have the technical support team, but I’m also here to assist you so if you got a specific question maybe about how to submit an assignment or you’re not able to log into the online library, please give me a call. I’m definitely willing to assist you and screen sharing session and definitely walk you through step by step on how to complete those things. We also have a question related to the courses and what an office hour would look like and how do you get in and what’s an instructor expecting? So, for an office hour like I said you’ll go and then use the WebEx Program to answer those questions. We will be able to speak audio as well as video to the instructor, like I said, to be able to build that rapport and see the instructor before getting into the course, but once you go in, like I said, it’ll just — the office hours will just be a chat with the instructor so I’m talking about what maybe your goals are moving forward or maybe what you expect to get out of the program so I think it’s really something that if you bring something to the table the instructor is definitely going to speak with you about it. So, if you don’t have specific questions I would say if you want to speak to that and learn a little bit more definitely go into those office hours so that you can be more familiar with your peers as well as just feeling comfortable in this online setting so just another option to move forward and being able to connect with peers and instructors as well as myself. Our next question, “I’m currently a college counselor at a K-12 independent school. Would I be able to do my internship or practicum experience at my school?” And Pamela if I could toss this over to you.
Pamela Karr: Okay. We have decided that we will decide such matters on a case by case basis instead of saying no. I try to work with the student on what’s the best for them and find out the difficulty sometimes with dong an internship at your workplace is making sure that you can have clearly different responsibilities than you day-to-day job that allow you to do what you need to do to get experience and to learn that your sight will let you put on that different hat for the hours that you’re doing it so that’s a case by case basis, but it’s not unknown.
Adam Hanna: Thank you very much, Pamela. We had another question in terms of the platform and how user friendly it is, “So, Sikai match in the Windows friendly?” It definitely so you’ll be able to go in. It may have a different fee in terms of what it looks like when it loads, but you’ll definitely be able to use the program with both apple and PC.
Pamela Karr: We had a student who didn’t have like the word packages on their Mac and some of the submissions were required to be in word and our tech specialist sent her a free download for the software so I didn’t know we had that, but we do.
Adam Hanna: Thank you very much, Pamela. And our final question. This is more related to the program and the program itself, but our counseling and human services to different degrees and how do they differ and Pamela if you could speak a little bit more on that as well. I do just want to say that in terms of credits they are different, but I’ll have Pamela speak in terms of what that will look like if you were a go with human services.
Pamela Karr: I hope that these facts and figures you guys can check me on them because I’m doing it off at the top of my head. They are two different degrees. They have 10 courses in common. The counseling degree takes three years and its 60 hours. The human services take two years in a semester and I believe its 39 hours. It has three courses of its own that are business related so we can put that how to write grant, how to work with the board and volunteers and those kind of things that you need on top of your exceptionally good communication skills you’ll have. Counseling are for people who want to work one on one with clients or groups or families as the therapist. Human services is for those who want to help people, but want to help people more as the management person directing the therapist, directing the work of the institution. Human services particularly appeals to those who are already working in a human service or nonprofit organization and may feel that they need a Masters Degree to reach that next level of leadership and authority responsibility in their organization that’s some of the primary people we see interested in that degree.
Adam Hanna: Thank you very much, Pamela. I appreciate it and we’re going to wrap up our webinar now.
Megan: Thank you again for your patience and for your questions during the Q&A session of this webinar. If your question was not addressed during the Q&A portion of this webinar, an enrollment advisor will reach out to your directly. I would like to remind you about some important upcoming dates. The fall term application deadline is June 15th and classes begin August 27th. The spring application deadline is November 1, 2013 and classes starts January 14, 2014. For more information on the Masters of Art in Counseling and Human Services Program you can speak directly with one of our enrollment advisors at the number listed on the screen. Thank you for attending today’s webinar. This concludes the session and enjoy the rest of your day.
End