Back in August of 2014, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education released a resolution to aid college students to graduate in four years.

The campaign urged undergraduate students to take at least 15 credit hours per semester.

Universities pushed for this by introducing something called banded tuition.

Angela Williams, the director of online and credit programs at IPFW, said banded tuition, if passed, would begin during the fall semester of 2018.

“We are one of the only schools right now that does not have banded tuition,” Williams said. “And with the online courses being the same price, well, that is a huge benefit to students.”

Besides IPFW, only a few other public institutions in the state of Indiana have not switched over to the banded tuition model, Williams said.

Diana Jackson, director of administrative business services at Indiana – Purdue Fort Wayne, explained banded tuition as a flat rate students pay instead of per-credit-hour.

“The band we are proposing will begin at 12 to 18 credit hours, so if you take anything in that band you are going to pay the same amount no matter what you take,” Jackson said. “It is just a set amount of tuition and the mandatory fees that students are required to take.”

Students who wish to take less than 12 credit hours a semester will continue to pay per-credit-hour, while those who would take more than 18 would pay the banded tuition plus per-credit hour for however many credits they would additionally take.

In this proposal, banded tuition will be roughly around $4,120.50, Jackson said.

However, banded tuition will not apply to graduate students or summer courses. Both would be paid per-credit-hour.

Additionally, the proposal is also planning to eliminate the cost difference between traditional courses and online courses. As of spring semester 2017 that difference was $92.95 per-credit-hour.

Under the banded tuition model, the online differential fee will no longer exist. Instead Jackson said a student could take 15 credit hours of just online courses and pay the same as if they were traditional courses.

According to Jackson, the Higher Education Commission had been pushing the banded tuition idea to universities.

“They really want kids to understand that in order to graduate in four years, which is what they really want,” Jackson said, “students really have to take 15 credit hours a semester in order to do that.”

Even though the model is still in the proposal stage and most of the faculty has heard about it, most students were at a lost when it was mentioned to them.

Linnize Richner, freshman biology major, had no prior knowledge of this proposal or what banded tuition meant. Yet, after learning about the idea and what it entailed she said it would be a good thing.

“I know a lot of students, myself included, hate the price difference for online courses,” Richner said. “I feel this could really help with that and stop putting limitations on certain students from being able to take a desired course because of the cost difference.”

Currently banded tuition is still just a proposal at IPFW and will go before the board of trustees in the coming months to make a final decision.

Jackson has no worries that the plan will pass.

“I do think it will happen,” Jackson said. “It will help a lot of students out and they’ll know every semester how much their tuition will be not matter what form of class they are taking.”

IPFW will be offering over 50 hybrid courses in the fall of 2017 ranging from topics over engineering economy to romantic literature.

Hybrid courses are designed to have online interaction while combining face-to-face instruction at the same time.

With 28 percent of students enrolled in higher education taking a form of distance learning, according to Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education Distance Education Enrollment Report of 2016, hybrid classes are becoming increasingly popular for their unusual structure than the typical online courses.

James Hess, a business professor at IPFW, is currently in his fifth year teaching hybrid courses and said he thinks there are both positive and negative attributes of the course.

One of the positives is hybrid courses meet half of the time in a classroom on campus and the other half online.

“Well, one plus is we only have to be here once a week, that itself can save people a lot of rear-end collisions,” Hess said with a chuckle. “The drawback is sometimes it can take more time to really focus on the foundational elements of a class then what we are allotted when we only meet 50 percent of the time.”

Students enrolled in Hess’ International Business Administration class meet once a week on Mondays, and during the class, he conducts a discussion with the students.

Following the meeting, the class is assigned a discussion board due on Wednesday nights that poses a question based off a topic discussed in class, as well as a current event each week.

Tanya Stier, a business marketing major enrolled in Hess’ course said hybrid courses are more beneficial for students than strictly online classes.

“Sometimes with just regular online courses it’s hard to convey a question or fully understand the material,” Stier said. “When you have the ability to see the professor you can ask your questions and have the professor explain it in person, which I think can be clearer than just asking over an email”.

Brittany Akins, another student in the course, said she has to give credit to Hess for how he organized the course and ties the lectures together with the assignments.

“He makes it relevant and worth my time rather than being a monotonous lecture two or three times a week, which can get overbearing,” Akins said. “We have assignments that are actually related to the lecture that we can do on our own time during the week.”

Akins continued to say the cost of a hybrid course did not bother her because she knows what she is getting out of it. However there was one aspect of the class that bothered her.

“I hate that in this class the book was included,” Akins said. “I could have bought the book for a lot less online. Instead they charge whatever the book price is into the cost of the class without giving us an option to buy it for less.”

Besides for the few unexpected costs, Hess recalled a time when hybrid courses first began and how he sees the future for them.

“At first I thought that by going hybrid, it gave universities a chance to experiment with classes that are traditionally meeting face-to-face all the time, a chance to cut back on some of that,” Hess said. “Yet, now I’m wondering if this is just something universities toy with right now and eventually everything will just go completely online.”

 

Presenting his research changed Benjamin Burris’ whole outlook on academics.

“The first time I gave a poster presentation I thought that I knew my stuff pretty well,” said Burris, senior in chemistry and Spanish.

“But the faculty members at the school that I was at grilled me on every aspect of what I was doing. So it changed how I viewed my research, and also how I approach academics in general.”

Burris won first place for best undergraduate poster in the 20^thAnnual Student Research and Creative Endeavor Symposium, held March 29 in Walb Classic Ballroom.

ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN O’CONNELL, DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS, 2017 WINNERS FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: BENJAMIN BURRIS, EMMA ZOLMAN, LAUREN HOFFMAN, LUNA WAHAB, JINLONG HAN AND MONICA OCHOLA. COURTESY OF JIM WHITCRAFT

The symposium divided contestants into two different categories: graduate and undergraduate. The judges selected three winners for each set.

Over 100 students presented their research via poster and were judged by faculty members. This year, 22 departments were represented.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HaiJ2hfjEMxRIW-T0R9SytR5QB8&usp=sharing

Burris’ poster, “Effects of Portal Protein Primary Structure Mutations on Viral Genomic Packaging Capabilities,” has been an ongoing project since 2013.

“Biologists know how bacteria infect the cell, but they don’t know how it packages the DNA to infect the cell”, Burris said. “What we focused on was a portal protein which is a little conical protein. Its got a channel in the middle and DNA travels through the channel, but no one knows what it does and so we did research in what does the portal do. ”

Before participating in events such as the research symposium, Burris said that he did not actually apply what he was being taught in his classes.

“My first couple of years I studied and worked hard to maintain good grades, but I didn’t actually learn a whole lot,” Burris said. “Once I realized that I wanted to go into graduate school, I realized that I needed to be learning more than just being able to memorize stuff and then put it out. Those opportunities, poster presentations, showed me the kind of approach you have to take if you are serious about actually learning.”

Stephen Buttes, Assistant Professor of Spanish, believes all students can benefit.

 

To participate in the research symposium, students either have to apply and be selected; or a faculty member appoints them and the student has to accept the nomination.

In the past, Burris applied for the research symposium but had his proposals rejected for being too similar to another’s student research. This year, Burris was stunned his advisor selected him.

“I was actually pretty surprised just because in the past we had the experience of having me get rejected because it was similar to past presentations,” Burris said. “I just kind of assumed that that was going to be the trend, but he pushed me to do it and you can’t really say no.”

Students not only have the opportunity to present, but they can also decide to archive their posters for future use in a URL form.

Susan Anderson, director of Library Academic Services, further informs how this can be possible.

 

As a senior, Burris plans on attending Ohio State University. He will continue working on his project, and plans to go into analytical chemistry, to work in drug development.

“It really helps mature you as a student to prepare you for whatever you want to do,” Burris said. “It helps prepare you for graduate school, your job, life in general. You need to be able to have that confidence and that level of expertise in whatever you do.”

 

 

In 2013, the Annual IPFW Student Research and Creative Endeavor Symposium changed from research papers over to poster format, in part to increase attendance.

The 20^th annual symposium was held at the Walb Classic Ballroom at 9 a.m. on March 29. There were a total of 125 undergraduate and graduate students presenting 92 research posters from multiple majors, including biology, chemistry, and visual communications.

Cheryl Truesdell, former dean of Helmke Library and a 2017 symposium judge, said there had been a decline of both participants and attendees for the symposium. The symposium planning committee decided to change the way the research was presented.

Truesdell said the committee went from papers and oral presentations to posters, in hopes of making the symposium more interesting for those in attendance. Truesdell said in the past the participants were separated and grouped by department, in which they presented amongst each other. But that changed too.

 

Susan Anderson, member of the Helmke Library symposium planning committee, said the move to a poster format was a great way to represent the research, and express it graphically.

John Nicklin, Studio M coordinator, said the research is ultimately the main focus of the student’s presentation, but how the poster itself should complement the research. He said the poster is a supporting element that reinforces the presentation done by the student.

Nicklin said the content and poster design and how it is presented to the viewer can be used strategically, to lure the attendants to the speaker. Using design elements that are not ordinary or frequently used can help draw people in. It creates interest and makes the attendant want to stay and listen to the presentation.

 

Nicklin said he assisted students varying in experience with design software such as Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Peter Bella, assistant professor of visual communications and a 2017 symposium judge, said the poster should not be the voice of the presenter. The poster should be tailored to the audience and the experts who are going to be viewing it, because every discipline has their own set of expectations.

Bella said one thing he noticed in a majority of the posters was how they were missing visual guidance. If the speaker cannot convey the main message in under five seconds, the viewer will most likely move on.

Bella advised when the presenter states their topic, introduce it to the viewer in an easily comprehendible fashion, give the facts, and then a conclusion in an orderly manner. This enables anyone to understand the research without having to be an expert in the field.

 

Bella said the visual communications participant that placed this year did everything right when it came to design. Her presentation was executed in an orderly, guided fashion, and she knew how to present her research clearly.

Anderson said all students’ posters will be published and stored in the OPUS scholarly depository at IPFW with its very own link. The research along with the poster can be used to demonstrate students’ skills and abilities in their resumes later when applying for employment.