Ways to Get Brick & Mortar U's to support their online students

I'm a grad student at a brick & mortar university out of state that is offering a degree program entirely online. It's in a subject that's unusual in the online world, so I'm very glad it's available.

But I'm finding that they haven't coordinated too well (it's hard to find out what classes will be offered, there's no organization for online students to have a voice, hard to get good advisement). I think the problem is both logistics (they aren't used to a non-traditional setting) and a simple lack of consideration for what online students need.

I'm thinking of setting up some sort of organization for online students. It could be both a discussion forum and a way to have a more collective voice when addressing faculty/administration. For instance, if there's a class that hasn't previously been offered online and there are many people who want it, we could find that out and contact the university with more clout to hopefully get it offered.

Has anyone out there had any experiences with doing this? I don't want to re-invent the wheel...

 

Before the EBS MBA went online many students felt the same way you described, so someone started an unofficial online discussion forum. In fact, it is still going strong today. It is called the "Watercooler", like the watercooler in the office that people hang around and talk. It is hosted by a free service called Delphi Forums.

It's a good place where students can talk about the program, ask questions, etc. The forum because so popular that even some professors from the university started monitoring it.

You could easily start a similar forum for your programs using Delphi Forums. To see an example, you can check out the watercooler at http://forums.delphiforums.com/hwmba/start.