With the commencement of distance learning or e-learning, it has become easy for students to study and acquire knowledge at their own pace and which help them to better understand each and every aspect of a particular subject. If the student is working somewhere, he doesn’t have to leave it for his studies and even help him to acquire an additional qualification.
E-Learning is studying utilizing computers and educational curriculum outside of the traditional classroom. It plays a major role in higher education, as it gives students the opportunity to choose their career early and also continue their studies. This is possible because of the various universities and colleges have opened the door of opportunities i.e. distance education.
The State Authorization
For offering distance education in the United States, institutions like university and college need to get authorization from the US Department of Education. The state authorization regulation requires the state to authorize the institution in which it is physically located. If an institution is not physically located, then also they need to meet state requirements to legally offer distance education in that state. Authorization gives legal authority to an institution to operate in a state. The state requirements include activities in the state, application process, and the compliance cost, which vary greatly from state to state.
An institution generally has a physical presence in the state when it operates a campus, branch or an administrative office in a particular state. But this varies from state to state, especially when an out of state institution seek to offer distance education in other states. The institutions which get authorized to offer distance education needs to manage the business, employment, advertisement, instruction and recruitment activities according to the offered program.
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The Authorization Standard
The state authorization reciprocity agreement has created a uniform standard of physical presence in the US. It takes place of the conflicting state laws but does not affect the existing state laws for institutions offering distance education in other states. It has revealed institution from the earlier process of obtaining state authorization from various state and agencies individually.
Institutions not only have to obtain authorization for the online program but also needs to maintain these details, as the authorization is annual, biannual and so on. For the renewal of their online program authorization. Without a proper solution, the university or college would not be able to track the approval or renewal date of their authorization and that too for various online programs in various states. Maintaining and keeping track of communication and documents exchanges with state agencies could also be a mess. Generating reports and providing it to administration can be a mammoth task. But the web application offers the best solution for managing all these data.
Benefits of the web application in state authorization
Here are a few benefits of the web application that ease the state authorization process:
- Web application comes very helpful for university and college to manage all problems in the state authorization process. Besides, it also helps track the current status of authorization by each state agency to whom authorization is applied.
- Web application comes helpful in maintaining online programs, teaching faculty and student’s data.
- It helps in direct integration of institutions student information system. Institutions can easily track and manage student enrollment data and analyze the number of students enrolled.
- It also helps to provide distance education syllabus to students in various states.
- The web application can help in managing licensure requirements as per the states, state agencies, and programs.
- The best part is web application helps to remind institution about renewal process and other things by auto-reminders and to-dos.
- Web application helps the administration to gather information and derive insights.
- Institutions can track expense for each authorization and licensure.
- It also helps to maintain contacts information of state agency key persons.
- Web application helps to manage activities related state authorization like a business, employment, advertisement, instruction and recruitment activities in a particular state.
- It helps the institution to virtually create all units, departments, schools and colleges delivering online programs to get a holistic view of the institution’s resources and expertise.
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Conclusion:
It is might not be difficult to obtain state authorization. But managing the state authorization data is difficult without a web application. Keeping all the above points, and with an efficient web application offering e-learning compliance, the institution can effectively manage the state authorization process.
This article is written by Swapnil Darbe. He is working as Senior Data Analyst with Inknowledge Inc., providing solutions designed to increase the efficiency and success of educational institutions.
