By ALICIA FEYERHERM
Tiger Media Network
The Online Student Government Association met on Monday and discussed the Online Student Survey.
The survey aims to gather information about the priorities and struggles of online students.
“We are basing the categories on what we know the university is already working on, and then historically, year over year over year, what the online community has asked for,” Public Relations Officer Eileen Moore said.
Last year’s survey results were presented at John Heinrichs Scholarly and Creative Activity Days (SACAD) in April 2024 and covered a few of those topics.
This year’s survey questions were crafted not only by OSGA, but other entities that wanted input.
“This was in concert with the regular student government and in concert with the school itself, because everyone had some questions and some information they wanted to extract,” Student Relations Committee Chair Kurt George said.
For example, the Faculty Senate asked to add three questions to the survey. One question regarded the efficiency – or lack thereof – of Workday, feedback on student satisfaction with their advisors versus their faculty mentors and then a question targeted at adjunct professors.
Some of the other survey categories include input on open education resources, outdated learning content, video lectures, Fort Hays State’s course catalog and timely grading.
While the survey is 10 pages long, the questions are focused on multiple choice and ranking questions which makes the survey faster to take and gives OSGA more useful data.
“We didn’t want a lot of free-flowing of ideas, because you can’t quantify that, and we as an Online Student Government Association and an online student body want to be able to go back and say ‘72% of respondents in this age group of this major said this’ because if you get too anecdotal, it doesn’t have a lot of teeth and a lot of weight behind it,” George said.
The survey will be sent out to online students within the next few weeks. Everyone who participates will be entered into a drawing for Fort Hays Swag, and OSGA President Heather Flick is looking into other ways to incentivize participation.
George emphasized the importance of online students participating in the survey.
“Online students are not traditionally seen, but we most certainly want to be heard,” George said.
Other items covered at the meeting:
- Four new senators were sworn in: Johnathon Ornelas, Jules Turpin, Elizabeth Ortiz, and Allyson Baloga.
- Moore discussed the design of an OSGA logo which is currently being reviewed by University Marketing.
- The next Tiger Talk, which is open to everyone in the online community, will be on at 6:30 p.m. on November 14 via Zoom. Amy Schaffer with the Health and Wellness Department and Anthony Fox from the Tiger Fitness Center, will cover how to take care of yourself while juggling multiple priorities (such as work, school and family).
The next OSGA Meeting will be on at 6 p.m. CST on November 18.