The New Year started off with a bang for the Open Learning Division of Thompson Rivers University which serviced hundreds of student inquiries on its first day of operations for 2010 – a positive indication of student interest in Open Learning for the year ahead.
On January 4, 2010, the first day of 2010 that TRU-OL opened its phone lines to hundreds of inquiring minds, the Admissions and Enrolment Services department responded to 375 phone calls, 21 face-to-face student visits to the British Columbia Centre for Open Learning and approximately 70 emails. Combined, that means a total of 465 student inquiries were addressed in one single day.
The sheer volume of calls alone represented a record breaking day for TRU-OL as the Admissions and Enrolments department answered 23% more calls in a single day than it ever had before. These telephone inquiries represent an impressive 28.5 hours of phone counselling by the Admissions and Enrolment Services team.
TRU-OL’s realized virtual growth of interest in its website as well.
On Jan. 4, 2010, 5,074 individuals visited www.truopen.ca, which represents an 18.44% growth over the same day last year. These hits may have been a result of the 27.24% growth over the same day last year, of web users who were directed to TRU-OL’s website through Google searches. The number of users who visited the Open Learning website directly and intentionally grew by 3.71% over the same day last year.
Overall, the statistics are in and they say it’s going to be a good, good year for Open Learning.
