The Realities of the College Transfer Experience

This post reflects on his struggles and the ways convoluted higher ed processes can derail students trying to earn a degree. It also provides some general information about the public higher education system in California and tips for transferring. I hope this information will be helpful to many.

The Many Values of Community Colleges

The public higher education system in California is immense. And the complexities involved with moving between institutions are too.  In CA, there are 112 community colleges (CCCs) that serve more than 2 million students. On the four-year side, the California State University (CSU) system includes 23 campuses and the University of California (UC) has 10 institutions.

The CCC system enrolls 24% of the nation's CC students. I'm an advocate and supporter of community colleges. In the 1960s, my father left his impoverished family of fifteen siblings on the east coast and became a resident of California to enroll at Porterville Community College, which was then free to CA residents. He then transferred to San Jose State University (part of the CSU system) and completed his Master's degree and then moved to Iowa State to complete his Ph.D.  The opportunity provided to my father through California community college and the CA Master Plan for Higher Education improved his and my economic and social status. It also produced a healthy stream of educated workers in California, creating a fertile soil for transforming CA into a nexus of innovation. 

While CCCs are no longer free, they are still an incredible financial value. They provide the same lower division coursework that 4-year institutions provide and usually do so in a smaller class environment with instructors whose primary responsibility is to teach, as opposed to research. I plan to have my two boys attend a community college after high school. They are fully aware of this and they understand why.  My boys will spend two years at a CC to explore and figure out what they love to do (assuming they don't figure it out before then). They will transfer to a 4-year institution and complete their undergraduate degree there.  I have also taught in the CCC system, as both a full-time and part-time faculty, for twelve years.

Our family plan will, of course, save my husband and I thousands of dollars too.  Student loan debt in the U.S. has now topped $1 trillion.  If a student completes a 4-year degree within 4 years in the CA public higher education system and the first two years of transferable, lower-division coursework is completed at a community college, the savings is roughly $10,000 if the student transfers and graduates from a CSU and more than $20,000 if the student moves on to a UC. 

That plan seems simple and worth it in many ways, doesn't it? And many families/students follow it with success. Each year, according to the Community College League of California, roughly 60,000 students transfer from a community college in California to a CSU or UC. And 28% of UC graduates and 55% of CSU grads started their higher education journey at a CCC.

The Student Experience

As we consider this data and the critical role community colleges play in the college completion process, let's also consider the student experience. My nephew is in the midst of transferring from a CCC to a CSU. He, and most college students, do not view their higher ed experience through a bird's eye view of institutional organizations.  I know I didn't when I was in college. It took me a long time before I even understood how CCCs, CSUs, and UCs were different and had the potential to function as an interconnected system.  Nonetheless, my nephew has learned that navigating the transfer process is no simple feat.  He completed some of his course work at one community college in CA and then moved to a nearby city and began attending a separate community college, where he completed his lower division coursework.  Both colleges are "feeder schools" for the 4-year institution to which he is transferring.  A counselor at the second college provided him with  list of courses he needed to complete to be ready to transfer.  He completed all of the courses on the list.  However, one of the courses, a math class, was completed at the first community college.  He learned late in the game that the university only accepts that math course from the second community college and not the first.  As a community college instructor, this did not surprise me.  But I certainly saw it through a new lens -- and realized how this convoluted system messes with students' lives and finances.

What did surprise me was the plan his counselor suggested he follow to remedy the problem.  The counselor suggested he enroll in an out-of-state university and complete the math course online. The online course from the out-of-state institution would articulate to his university of choice and he could then officially transfer.

He accepted the counselor's suggestion, as it would not require him to travel hours to the nearest community college at which the math class is offered (with full articulation).  He could also pick up additional hours at work, while completing his class online.  So, now he is paying out-of-state tuition to complete a single online math class to enable him to transfer from a California Community College to a California State University.


This situation reveals how online classes can improve a student's chances for succeeding with their educational goals.  It also reveals the tremendous need for CA's CCCs to continue to be leaders in the online learning space, but also to create fully online lower division pathways for students with the ability to enroll easily in these classes, as opposed to needing to register at each individual college.  This plan is in motion and our students in California, as well as our state, will benefit from it greatly.

Next, I asked my nephew how the online class has been (as the semester was coming to a close).  "Rough," he replied.  He shared that math is difficult for him and he has feels that he learns best in a face-to-face setting.  I asked him if the instructor was present in the online class.  He said, "No. In fact, when I emailed her for help, she gave me a phone number for a support center." I asked him if he experienced interaction with his online peers in the class.  He said, "No.  I just read the book and completed assignments in a Pearson website."

That's unacceptable and demonstrates that, while he is completing the required course to be able to transfer, his learning is suffering due to a poor quality learning experience. How will this impact his success in his future math classes? How does this impact his confidence as a human and as a student? How does this reflect on the general attitudes about online learning? All of these questions, and more, are critical to the future of higher education and often get lost.

Transfer Tips

Research shows that 1 in 10 students who transfer from a CC lose credits because they are not transferable. This extends the duration of the degree, as the courses must be repeated, and wastes time and money (albeit, these courses may provide value in other ways!). If you know a student planning to transfer from a community college to a 4-year institution, here are some resources to help improve the experience.

• If the institutions are located in CA, become acquainted with Assist.org. It provides up-to-date information about which courses at your CC transfer to the your 4-year institution of choice.  CaliforniaColleges.edu also provides a comprehensive set of resources to guide students from high school through the completion of a 4-year degree.
• Create a mobile toolkit. More and more startups are forming around the goal of improving the student transfer process.  Transfer Bootcamp (founded by a former community college student) is designed to improve a student's organization and awareness of the transfer process.  ImFirst is an app designed to support, guide and celebrate first generation college students through graduation.
• Become familiar the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) program if you live in a western state (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, N. Dakota, Oregon, S. Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming). This program provides residents of these states an opportunity to apply for a significantly reduced out-of-state tuition rate.
• Use the tools the counselors use. The site, CCC Transfer, is developed and used by counselors throughout the CCC system to assist students with the transfer process. It is packed with great resources!

Please share your own tips and experiences about transferring from a community college to a 4-year university in a comment.

Supporting Online Community College Faculty

Image by Jim Bumgardner CC-BY-NC-SA. The Center is brought to you by +@ONE 

Supporting Online Community College Faculty

Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 19th

3:00pm Pacific

LIVE - Google+ Hangout on Air!

Click for Google Event

View on YouTube --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9FRP9fAUfE&feature=share

Join The Center's Community for follow-up discussions --> tiny.cc/TheCenter 

Join us for a #CCCLEARN Twitter Chat on the topic --> Thurs, 3/27 3-4pm PDT

California’s Community Colleges are leaders in distance education. In 2011-12, distance education courses comprised roughly 27% of the state’s total student headcount and each of the 112 community colleges in the state offered an average of 10 online degrees (CCC Chancellor’s Office, Distance Education Report, 2013). Supporting faculty with training and resources to teach online is foundational to ensure students have successful learning experiences and persist in their online classes.

In this Hangout, Katie Datko, will share an overview of the growth and development of the resources Pasadena City College has created to support the training and development of their online faculty.  Using the screenshare feature, Katie will provide a tour of some of these resources and discuss the challenges and opportunities the college has experienced along the way.

• The Q&A feature will be enabled during the live Hangout on Air to allow viewers with a Google+ account to submit questions through a web browser.
• The Hangout on Air will also be archived and and shared with a Creative Commons license on The Center Hangout Archive playlist at: http://tiny.cc/CenterArchives

This Hangout on Air will feature:

• Katie Datko - Instructional Designer for Online Learning, Pasadena City College
• Michelle Pacansky-Brock - Community Coordinator of The Center; Associate Faculty, Mt. San Jacinto College; Instructional Technologist, CSU Channel Islands, Author of Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies 

Mainstreaming Academic Innovation with Emerging Technologies

Last spring I moved from being a consultant and part-time instructor to a full-time employee and part-time instructor and realized I really need to stay in the consulting and teaching arena. It's what keeps me passionate, happy, actively connected and learning.  I made that change in August and feel great about it.

However, over a year ago I set up an automated job search using a meta-search job agent called Indeed. It delivers results to my email each evening. Sometimes I look at them, sometimes I don't.  You might ask yourself why on earth I'd bother looking at these job postings when I'm not looking for a job.  Well, because I consider it part of my active learning experience about higher education. I like to see what other types of jobs other colleges, universities, and states are hiring for. This provides a good indication about how other academic organizations are solving problems.  Last night I saw a posting that turned a light on for me. 

Improving educational problems with emerging technologies

I teach online for a community college in California and I am thirsty to understand how to improve some of the big challenges the California community college system faces.  For one, how can we, as the largest system of higher education in the nation -- comprised of 112 colleges serving more than 2.5 million students and more than 50,000 faculty (most of whom are part-time) -- fully harness the potential that today's emerging technologies offer?  With about 25% of the state's headcount coming from online classes, the topic of teaching with technology is a provocative one and so are the topics of student success, retention, and access given the state's financial challenges. 

These are all factors that played into Governor Brown's recent support for MOOCs and the  controversial bill that would grant students credit at California's public institutions of higher ed for completing MOOCs (something that I wrote about here last spring).  All in all, I have been pretty silent about MOOCs through the whirlwind popularity they have experienced in the recent years. Mostly because they have done little to excite me, as a community college educator (read the word educator as "teacher").  I've observed little about a MOOC that can support the diverse needs of community college learners and they undercut the importance and value that student-teacher relationships play in the community college learning experience.

Mt. San Jacinto College, one of California's community colleges and the college where I teach part-time, developed a MOOC titled Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade this year. It was funded by the Gates Foundation and it was designed to support the writing skills of students as they prepare for college level writing courses.  That's a unique and fresh approach to MOOCs at the 2-year level, as it is clearly a self-directed journey through which a student travels on his or her own to success.

But yesterday, I read about Bill Gates' message to more than 2,000 community college leaders at the Association of Community College Trustees' meeting.  He spoke about the benefits that flipped MOOCs could bring to community college students, serving to improve learning and increase access (as there is the possibility of employing this approach to slightly decrease the time spent in class and open more "seat time" for more students).  Ah...now we're getting somewhere.  Despite the intense disdain you'll read in the comments of the Chronicle article about Gates' idea, I think there's merit to this approach.

In 2009, before the word "flipped" was ever used, I followed that nagging "itch" one gets when you know there's something about your class that needs to be changed, that just is not right, that is not reflecting your authentic teaching self.  I think we all get that itch but some of us can ignore it more than others.  Mine keeps me up at night when it gets really bad.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation
It was painful to make the change; I fought it for well over a year.  It's really difficult to put into words how much college professors -- even those who relish risk taking, like myself -- resist the notion of letting go of "the lecture." And encouraging professors to let go of lecturing will be the issue at the the heart of the controversy of embracing the flipped classroom in higher ed.  It will be disguised as many other issues -- but, really, if we look inside ourselves, this will be what's driving the controversy.  I believe we need to address these concerns and talk about them, as ignoring them only makes them worse.  I was scared to death.  I have never felt more vulnerable in my classroom than when I announced to my students I would "not be lecturing...(gulp)."  But as Brene Brown has discovered in her insightful research, vulnerability is at the heart of innovation.  Seems to me we should all be following this itch, not pushing it away if we are truly committed to making changes in teaching and learning.

Despite my deep-rooted insecurities, I decided to give it a try. In the spring of 2009 I finally chose to eliminate all the lectures from my face-to-face History of Women in Art class and had my students listen to (or read them -- they had a choice) before coming to class.  They also had to participate in pre-class formative assessments that I designed in VoiceThread.  There's much more to this model and I've presented on it many times and have produced an entire online ePortfolio about it, and it's detailed in the Introduction of my book, Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies. 

The flipped model is good teaching

For those of you unfamiliar with the flipped model, it's fairly simple. It is based on the concept of making the time that students spend in class with their instructors more active and less passive. Active learning has been at the core of effective learning research for decades. This is key. The flipped classroom fundamentally embraces many of the tenets of good, effective teaching.  Classroom time is spent applying, analyzing, critiquing -- moving up the pyramid of higher order thinking skills.  The lower order thinking skills are fostered outside of class by building a foundation of background knowledge through listening to the lectures and completing a brief online assessment prior to coming to class. The assessment is really key, as it serves to ensure students completed the lectures and also gives the instructor a picture of the class's overall knowledge of key topics and concepts prior to the start of a class.  In the end, class time is spent digging into the topics that are not understood, while those that have been more fully mastered can be filtered out -- this makes all the difference.  Why teach the same thing to everyone everytime?

Uses technology to support needs of diverse learners

The flipped classroom also puts technology to good use by having students view brief videos, curated around key topics, prior to coming to class.  The format of video is important, as it provides students with the ability to pause, rewind, and replay -- features live lectures do not offer. These features are like built-in accommodations for students with learning disabilities like dyslexia, which are more common in student populations at public 2-year institutions. 

I would advocate for these videos to come along with a text transcript, as well.  When I provided my students with the option to view a visual enhanced podcast or read a transcript, my evaluation of the students' learning at the end of the semester revealed that 40% chose to read the lecture, 15% listened to the lecture, 30% did both, and 15% toggled between reading and listening throughout the semester. What amazed me here is that 30% of the students chose to listen and read at the same time (view video of student data results overview here).  I noticed some of my students doing this before class and when I asked them why, they shared that it really helped them to remember the content when they could hear my voice and highlight the text or make notes in the margins simultaneously.

As I reflect back on it, the results of this experiment were dazzling.  Not only did I feel more engaged with my class and passionate about my teaching than I had in many years but my students reported significant gains in deep learning and the multiple methods of representing the content (reading or listening to lectures and students completed formative assessments about the lecture content prior to class in VoiceThreads that were visual and supported voice commenting) helped students to meet the learning objectives more effectively. You can listen to a 20-minute audio interview with me and three of my students here.

Moving from experimentation to focused pilots

But little traction has been made to systemically research the effects of flipped classrooms at the community college level in California and, admittedly, expecting community college faculty to develop their own online lectures would be rough.  Few community colleges I know of are equipped with the instructional design staff needed to support faculty through this time of endeavor.  And there are benefits to curating a collection of existing videos from different subject matter experts for students to view.

What does this discussion about my flipped classroom experiment back in 2009 have to do with looking for a job?

Well, yesterday in my Indeed job search results I saw a posting for a position at Maryland University College's new Center for Innovation in Learning for an Online Learning Innovation Scientist. Key responsibilities include:

• Take responsibility for conceptualizing, proposing, and directing innovation pilots and/or assisting in collaborative multi-unit pilots. 
• For each pilot assist with a research and evaluation framework tied to adult learning and use scientific principles to support  (a) learning innovation, (b) technology tools to improve the efficiency or quality the learning experience; (c) evidence based non cognitive improvements for the comprehensive learning experience.
• Document and disseminate the results of research and/or development projects through publication and presentation.  Publication includes peer-review journals, peer-review conference proceedings, patents, books and book chapters, and other print media. Presentation may be at international, national, or regional conferences, and internal audiences.
• Create a culture of understanding learning science throughout the pilots and those collaborating units.

As I reflect on these two methods of improving education through the use of emerging technologies (the example shared from Maryland and MOOC bill in California), there's a big difference between creating a center for learning innovations and staffing it with high quality researchers and educators who are dedicated and trained to examine and study the effects of emerging technologies on learning, while collaborating with regional/statewide constituents to collect, evaluate, share, and reflect on metrics than having politicians react to a national trend, create a bill at the state level, and expect institutions of higher education to follow suit.

Thanks for reading. What are your thoughts about flipped MOOCs for community college students?

The Underbelly of CA's Community College MOOC Bill

As an online California Community College (CCC) instructor who has worked hard to promote practices for cultivating high quality, high touch, humanized online learning, I am watching the news about Steinberg's proposed bill (SB 520) to allow California's community college students to complete MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) offered by third party vendors to complete high demand courses that the students are unable to access through California's community college system. 

The concept is rough but is being applauded by open educational resource (OER) supporters and certainly makes significant strides to support a mission of the CCC system which is to promote access to low cost higher education to Californians.  And Steinberg has been quoted, "This is about helping students. We would be making a big mistake if we did not take advantage of the technological advances in our state" to do so.

But is it high quality learning (another thread of the system's mission)?  This is the question I want to untangle here. 

The concept at the heart of SB520 is driven by the exciting work of Simon Thrun, who received a 2012 Smithsonian Ingenuity Award for "transforming the way people learn around the world" and Daphne Koller, co-founder of the MOOC-hosting site Coursera.  Thrun and Koller have become to popular pioneers of MOOCs (but are by no means the founders -- scroll to "The Forgotten History of  MOOCs" by Audrey Watters here) which are massive open online courses.  MOOCs are online classes that have lots of students -- lots of students, like over 1,000.  This is why the model in California would promote alleviate the road blocks that students have hit in recent years as the system has cut classes in response to the state's devastating budget deficit.

To date, there is no large scale effort in the uS have an entire system of education grant college credit for the completion of a MOOC.  If SB 520 is approved, California's community college system, the largest system of higher education in the nation which serves roughly 2.6 million students, would make a huge precedent in higher education and MOOCs would make quite a foray in formalized learning.

The Problem

I agree that MOOCs will find a place in the future of formalized learning.  But I also believe figuring out how, where, and to what extent is a fragile venture and the leap that is proposed in California is poised to fracture the foundation of community college student learning. 

The problem lies in the demographics of the students that are served by the MOOCs.  Thrun and Koller are Stanford professors.  They do not teach community college students.  Those of us who teach community college students understand the unique blend of needs our student demographics bring into our classrooms and how these unique needs tie into our pedagogy -- whether the class is face-to-face or online.  When teaching a community college class, you (the teacher) are pivotal to the success of the learners.  That is true regardless of whether the class is face-to-face or online. 

Each semester, in my online class, I work to support students with a variety of needs.  For example, many have cognitive disorders like ADHD and I often identify students who I suspect have dyslexia but have not yet been tested.  I have a student now who is about to give birth -- her due date was yesterday and we have made arrangements to support her through her delivery.  And I have another student this week who I needed to set up a special quiz for to accommodate his ADD.  I understand that by reaching out to understand and support the needs of my learners, I will increase their chances of success. 

That's just one of my roles.  I also must design learning activities that support a range of cognitive levels and differences.  Using tools like VoiceThread and blogs, in addition to traditional assessments creates scaffolded learning spaces where students receive personalized voice and video feedback from me and their peers.  My teaching and social presence resonates with my students. Dyslexic students have accommodations built in and more proficient students take roles as community leaders in our participatory learning environment.

 MOOCs are teacherless.  That's why they are so efficient.

The Issues

Taking the teacher out of an online community college class is a bad idea for students.  The active presence of a teacher in an online class has been validated as an essential element of a student's success for decades (Anderson, 1979; Paloff & Pratt, 1999; Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000;  Richardson & Swan, 2003). And when the the mix of learners in a class becomes more diverse, the demands of the teacher to work more closely with the learners to understand and facilitate their understanding and comprehension of the mastery of the objectives becomes more critical -- not less. 

Some studies have noted that MOOCs have a success rate as low as 20%.  A strategy Udacity is using to improve this is to hire "human mentors." 

I could not agree more that we have problems in California's community colleges and that students are feeling the pain of an ugly financial crunch that has landed on our community college system.  But the problems that we are disregarding pertain to the value of high quality community college teaching.

To start, more than 300,000 students have been turned away from California's community colleges because our state has elected to cut programs and classes and get rid of teachers.  And this solution replaces them with MOOCs developed by third-party vendors that are teacherless.

Moreover, out of the roughly 58,000 faculty members that teach California's community college classes, Jonathan Lightman from FACCC shared that only 31% of them are full-time.  Even though state law mandates California to maintain a 75:25% ratio of full-time to part-time faculty, this has been deferred in recent years because the budget has just been too weak.  I find it interesting that the system's proposed increased funds this year may go to support teacherless solution.

The solution proposed by Steinberg is not good for community college student learning.  It does not support the diversity of student needs that are critical to success in community colleges.  Community college learners need teachers who are held accountable to high standards to foster high quality, community-oriented learning experiences.  Motivation, engagement, morale, and ultimately cognition will not thrive in a MOOC environment with most community college learners.  Some will do fine, yes.  But most will not. 

Alternatives

In the future, learners will have no shortage of access to free, open content.  So what will the function of a community college be in society?  That is the question.  I think we are in the midst of re-envisioning the role of the institution from an access provider to a facilitater of learning.  In a lifelong learning society, individuals need to understand how to master their own learning and this will continue to play and increasingly critical role to both the success of the lives of people in the 21sst century and the relevance of educational institutions.

To put this more clearly, learners -- with all their learning differences in tow -- will come to community colleges because they will need teachers to inspire them, to help them understand and master new skills, and to help them create digital content that will demonstrate their mastery to the outside world.  Access to the content will not be the issue.  It will be how to learn the content.
 
Community college leaders today should be funding the creation of centers of innovation in teaching and learning -- empowering hotbeds of research and experimentation where instructors are incentivized to understand what it means to teach effectively with emerging technologies in their discipline and how to foster high touch learning environments that demonstrate ways to develop students into critical, mindful users and creators of digital media.  From these sites, resources would flow to other colleges through an interconnected, open sharing system that would empower faculty to learn together in community. 

In contrast, as an instructor in California, it's devastating to experience how disconnected I am from my 55,000+ faculty peers at the most connected time in human history.  We should all be learning in community from each other, sharing with each other, and in a constant dialogue with each other.   A new online instructor at a college in Chico should be able to locate an experience online instructor in Palm Springs in a moment and develop an informal mentor-mentee relationship.  A simple online commons, like the Academic Commons developed by CUNY, would foster a space for sharing and connecting across the state.

Innovations in teaching and learning is the area in which California's community colleges should be leading the way.  We have tens of thousands of committed, bright, passionate educators who teach because they are dedicated to their students.  Instead, we're sending our students to third party vendors and applauding the use of technology to deploy content to them.

Wanted: A Vision for California Community Colleges

"If organizations can sense and respond to emerging opportunities, there is a good chance they will endure. If they can sense and respond to each new opportunity with greater ingenuity and speed—that is, if they can get better at getting better—there is a good chance they will bloom." (Conner and Clawson, 2002)

Today, I read once again of the horrific budget cuts looming for California's community colleges which is the largest system of higher education in the nation serving roughly 2.6 million students (down from 2.9 million a few years ago, as a result of the budget losses).  The situation is dire and I, for one, am saddened and dismayed to see the great Golden State lose sight of its commitment to providing free and low cost college education to its citizens.  This commitment is what laid the foundation for the state's Master Plan for Higher Education and is what provided access to education for the Baby Boomer generation (including my father who emerged from poverty to a PhD thanks to Porterville Community College) which, in turn, provided for a highly skilled workforce in California to cultivate the world famous Silicon Valley.

As a California community college educator since 1999 and a parent, I find myself wondering what the future of California will look like.  And I find myself searching for the vision that will carry the legacy of the CCC system forward.  I believe it's critical that we must turn our eyes from the budget mess and realize that without a vision, there are a world of opportunities that are passing us by.

Fellow California Community College educators, we are amidst the greatest information revolution ever.  47% of US adults have a smartphone in their pocket right now that connects them to a world of content, the opportunity to foster relationships with like-minded individuals anywhere in the world, and even shape our own digital profile into becoming a subject mater expert, author, and creator of rich media content.  Learning is wide open.  For decades it has been our mission to deliver open access learning -- well, that mission is changing and buried within this change are opportunities for us to redefine our future.  But we will continue to miss these opportunities if we do not look for them.

Students come to community college for all kinds of reasons but, arguably, the number one reason is because they're affordable.  This is a result of our committment to providing open educational access to all.  Well, today learning is free at the Khan Academy and even at Stanford and MIT.  This isn't news.  What is news is the fact that these open learning approaches are now beginning to dabble with new forms of certification in the form of digital badges.  This is a future pathway that will replace community colleges for some students, but not for others.

I know, the ivory tower will scoff at the concept for years to come but, yes, digital badges will change the future course of community colleges.  I believe buried in the depths of digital badges and open education lie the early whispers of a paradigm change.  You see, there are skills that one may demonstrate her proficiency of very effectively in an online environment with a digital badge coupled with an ePortfolio and recommendations from clients (on LinkedIn or a simple blog created with WordPress or Blogger, for example) -- and this type of digital credentialing process will shift the sands of college enrollment.  We won't get there tomorrow but we will get there. 

Remember, smartphones were non-existent five years ago.  Five years ago! Today, half of all US adults own one. Change happens quickly today.

Moreover, there are "different flavors of learning for different types of learners" (taken from a tweet sent by @Bio_prof).  Many learners who come to community colleges for a low cost education would do just fine in an open course provided by many of the open courseware providers.  And once those courses are paired with a credentialing process that is socially valued those students will make a different choice in where they will go for their learning experiences -- and that is terrific.  Because what's important is that people -- all people -- have access to education. 

But what's also critical to understand is that many learners will not succeed in a Stanford or MIT-type open courseware class.  The students who will continue to come to community colleges well into the future are the students who are the first in their families to go to college, the students who speak english as a second or third language, the students who have struggled since birth with cognitive learning differences (many of whom are not diagnosed).  These students will rely heavily upon community colleges because it's within the community colleges that great, committed teachers work.  It is in community colleges where students are empowered to see that they too are capable of learning.  It's in community colleges where stunning teaching innovations are occuring not because faculty have institutional support and funding for new technologies but because there are professors who see the value, the critical role of using emerging technologies in a student's learning experience to make an online class more human, more connected, more collaborative, more inspirational.  Innovations in teaching and learning -- in the classroom and online and in between -- is the future of community colleges. 

And I hope our system leaders can see that the future of California Community Colleges hinges not just upon funding but also upon re-imagining what the mission of the community college is in the context of a global, digital, open learning society.  For if we can create a vision, we will create opportunities and we will bloom, rather than wilt.

Online Learning: K12 and Higher Ed Collaborations

I attended the @One Online Teaching Conference at San Diego City College last week.  This is the fourth year that I've attended the conference and this year it had a new flavor...which I really enjoyed.  @One is an organization funded through a grant from the California Community College's Chancellor's Office.  I am currently working for @One, to be transparent about my personal interests in supporting their endeavors, but long before I began my working relationship for @One, I benefited from their terrific training opportunities:  I learned how to podcast from Donna Eyestone and I attended many of their free desktop seminars that showcase new ideas and national presenters in one hour synchronous (and always archived) sessions using Elluminate (actually branded as CCC Confer via the CA community college systemwide license).

The Online Teaching Conference (OTC) has become a tradition for many California community college instructors to network with colleagues, understand how other campuses are dealing with challenges and opportunities around online teaching, and pick up some hands-on experience using emerging technologies.  But this year @One joined forces with CUE (Computer Using Educators) which is primarily a K-12 national organization that has many of the same focuses of @One.  The results were quite compelling.

Allison Powell, Vice President of iNACOL (a non-profit organization of 3,100 members, focused on advocacy, support and professional development for online learning), presented the keynote on Thursday.  The keynote was refreshingly different.  For the first time, I had the pleasure of listening to students from K-12 and higher education reflect on their experiences as online students.  Wow. Why is it that hearing a student request more student interaction and instructor feedback in their online learning experiences resonates on such a more profound level than reading it in a journal?  I loved the panel and I loved hearing how focused and driven the students are to drive their own learning.  Most of them noted a frustration with slow instructor feedback, explaining that asynchronous questions usually had resolved themselves by the time the instructor got back to them with an answer.  They also sounded enthralled and motivated by learning experiences that allowed them opportunity to share thoughts, reflections and debate with other students.  Again, not surprising but so much more powerful when spoken in a student voice.

After the panel, I attended a concurrent session presented by Powell which showcased a perspective of online learning at a global level.  What did I learn?  That the US is lagging behind most all other nations in leveraging the potential of online learning to break down barriers to education, provide a reliable option for educational continuity in the face of impending disasters, engage our digital native students, and produce skills relevant to a 21st century global economy.  Why are we lagging?  Sadly, our policies and regulations are disabling our ability to collaborate.  Powell, for example, shared that 100% of teachers in Singapore are trained to teach online.  The nation has implemented a one-week per year "learn online" experience for all teachers and students, to ensure teachers continue to teach online and are prepared for dealing with disasters that could interrupt off-line learning (a new term I'm proposing in contrast to "face-to-face" learning which, I'm convinced, denigrates the personalized nature of an "online" learning experience).  Also noteworthy is the use of online learning India to education a 70% rural population that speaks 23 different languages!  Powell noted an extreme need, here in the US, to integrate online learning training into pre-service teacher curriculum to ensure our educational system is prepared to meet the continued growth in K12 online learning...which is inevitable.  27% states currently have state "virtual schools" and this number reflects a 30% growth each year since 2000.  And 75% of K12 districts use online learning for AP classes.

Effective online learning is anchored in student-centered learning with instructor-guided interaction between peers.  Imagine the potential this has to transform our nation's educational system if it becomes embedded in the foundation of our teachers' professional development.  An online classroom has no walls and invites opportunities for global collaboration, introducing paths into learning about different cultures and unique perspectives about a particular topic (or image or video).

I see online learning in K12 continuing to grow steadily with the support of national advocacy to transform our educational system and, as a result, this will have even more profound implications for higher education than the surge in online demand that we've seen in past years.  In California community colleges alone from 2007 to 2008, "off line" enrollments dropped nearly 10%  while distance education headcount grew 23%.  We cannot deny these trends and we need to be examining the shrinking enrollments in our "offline" classes, as we stress the growth in online (this conveys a different message).  With the move to online learning in K12, the "off line" college lecture classroom will need to be transformed or it will contain empty seats and one lonely professor.  It will be irrelevant to students who have been born into a digital society and educated through personalized online learning environments.  While the higher education landscape has been impacted deeply by growth in online enrollments, our pedagogical foundations haven't seen sweeping changes.  That, I believe, will the difference as we move forward.

I felt moments of energy and excitement as I saw K12 and higher education come together at this conference.  Collaboration is essential, across the board, to resolve the tensions that exist around us today as we've moved from an industrial to a global, digital society.

In a World of Openness, Doors to Higher Ed Close

Dear Californians,

The future of your state is currently being dictated through the devastating budget cuts to higher education.  The writing has been on the wall and administrative decisions have been in the works for well over a year now but now we're starting to see the tangible effects of these cuts.

Back in October 2009, I shared a post titled, "I Want to Learn. Please Let Me In, California," that shared a personal story about my father's plight from poverty to earning a PhD.  If you were to ask him what made this "dream" a reality, he would tell you it was California's rich opportunities for open access to education.  As I shared in that post, my father traveled across our nation to earn his AA at Porterville Community College before he moved on to earn both a BS and a Master's degree at San Jose State and then proceed to Iowa State for his PhD in Chemistry. 

That was the 1960s.  This is the 21st century.  What has changed?  Well, ironically, today we relish in a society of open learning opportunities provided to us through the internet's access to content.  As an example, Einstein's notebooks may be searched and viewed in high resolution reproductions by anyone with an internet connection.  MIT's Open CourseWare shares courses with the world for free -- go learn, today.  In 2008, Pew Foundation shared that more than half of Americans had accessed the internet wirelessly and they predicted that by 2020 most people on earth will be using a mobile device as their PRIMARY connection to the Internet.  Accessing content is not an issue.  Educating our citizens is. 

The cuts to education in California are unprecedented (and I write specifically about California because I am a Californian and I am deeply invested in the future of this state as a parent and an educator, while I humbly recognize the severity of the cuts to the rest of our nation as well).   The San Jose Mercury News reported that more Californian youths are applying out of state in an effort to pave a future in higher education for them.  They can read the writing on the wall.  In February, California Community College Chancellor, Jack Walsh, verified that the enrollment in our great system of 112 community colleges has dropped by 21,000 this year.  I promise you this is not due to lack of student demand. Students continue to try to add into classes that are overly full and professors continue to do their best to accommodate those demands without jeopardizing the pedagogy of their classes, which is always directly tied to class size.  The California Community College system is the largest higher educational system in the world, providing access to college to 2.9 million students...and dwindling.  Next year, CCCs will close their doors to 200,000 more students.   

How's it going in the CSU system?  Not so pretty there either.  The system, comprised of 23 campuses across our beautiful state, will slice out 40,000 students over the next two years.  Before these drastic cuts began, the Public Policy Institute of California estimated that our state would suffer a deficit of one million college graduates by 2025.  By this year, it is anticipated that 41% of jobs in CA will require a college degree (undergraduate) but only 35% of Californians will have one.  Again, this statistic was written prior to to current mess we're in.  I have yet to see the refreshed projections of this deficit since the most recent state cuts to higher education.

In recent months, I've met with close personal friends who have enthusiastically shared new lifetime learning goals with me.  "I've decided to go back to school and get a degree in ...!"  I have responded with an encouraging smile and felt my heart break on the inside as I've pondered the realities ahead of anyone in California who has dreams of pursuing an affordable college education here within the state.  And I've reflected solemnly on the future education of my own children, as well.

And now for some final reflections about K-12.  California ranks 47th in state funding for K-12.  According to childrennow.org, the state’s K-12 budget for 2009-10 is $66.7 billion, down from $71.2 billion just two years ago.  Last year, the class sizes at my own childrens' school were increased to 30 students: 1 teacher.  My childrens' classrooms are crowded and hot and none of the standards, of course, were modified as these class sizes were increased.  I empathize with teachers and I am direly concerned for the educational well being of my own kids.  My son has been denied speech therapy because his test scores are not below average.  There is no attempt to integrate any form of 21st century skills into the curriculum and making this suggestion seems futile in a context as detrimental as this.  Fourth graders are encouraged to leverage the internet to do research, but not taught how to validate any of the content they find.  We are not educating our children for life in this digital, content rich society in which they must live their lives.


As Curtis Bonk wrote, "The World is Open," but until our state budget can effectively support the educational needs of our future citizens, our colleges continue to close doors.


Please support public education.


Resources:
Save the CSU: http://savethecsu.com/
Foundation for California Community Colleges:  http://foundationccc.org

Keeping the Community in Community Colleges through the Budget Crunch

The writing has been on on the wall for awhile now and, currently, community colleges throughout California are grappling with the realities of implementing multi-million dollar mid-year budget cuts.  Some have eliminated a summer session, some have dramatically reduced offerings throughout the academic year (equating to part-time faculty layoffs and decreased classes for students), others have been fortunate to be healthy financial situations and not feel the hit so hard.

The districts that are feeling the cuts the worse are those that have been scraping the budget bucket for years now.  This article from the Sac Bee paints a picture of how Sierra College, which just happens to be my former "home" up until last May, is taking out the cutting sheers and trimming the programs and services they have offered to their community.  In a fiscal sense, maybe this seems logical.  But what's hard for me to delineate is the line between the legally mandated function of a community college, to "offer academic and vocational instruction at the lower-division level," and to serve the needs of its local community.  Sierra has served up a number of programs on the trimming block and along with the cutting of these programs come the elimination of classes (futures, dreams) for students and careers for employees.  The programs on the cutting block, according to the article, are automotive, agriculture and construction.

The sad, sad reality is that Sierra is required to cut 10 million dollars from an already depleted budget due to the further reductions in the California state funding for higher education.  In my seven years at Sierra, I taught in classrooms where water dripped down the walls on rainy days and students bundled up in gloves and scarves due to insufficient heating; my attempts to use technology in the classroom were frequently derailed due to poorly updated equipment and lack of IT support; I struggled in a department with a full-time: part-time faculty ratio of 1:5 resulting in increased curriculum work, faculty evaluations, and committee responsibilities; and I taught online with no instructional design or multimedia support.

You may think to yourself, "Wow, that sounds horrible." Well, what's amazing about Sierra College is its spirit and it's ability to work together collaboratively.  To me, Sierra College is the perfect example of a community -- a group of people who work together towards a common goal, support one another and reward one another for each other's efforts.  The Sierra College community is comprised of the most amazing faculty, staff, administrators, students and community members that I could ever imagine.  And the current budget cuts are now slicing and dicing this community, cutting into its roots that shape it into a unique, much loved Placer County family member.  Again, while these cuts may seem logical and essential at the superficial level of "numbers," my heart goes out to my former family and all the students who are and will be affected.

How do we keep the "community" in "community college" through these difficult budgetary times?

CA Law Requires Digital Textbooks by 2020 - good? or bummer?

Well, in light of recent news regarding the condition of higher ed in California, this is exciting! Senate Bill 48 has just been passed which will take effect on January 1, 2020, requiring all textbooks used in public and private postsecondary institutions to be available in electronic form. Senate Bill 48 states that "the electronic version of any textbook shall contain the same content as the printed version and may be copy-protected."

James Schwab, aid to Senator Elaine Alquist who authored the bill, noted that the law holds the potential to "encourage professors to integrate technology into the classroom; spark more student interest in science, engineering, and math; and give students marketable skills in using technology."

Now what we have to realize is that this concept (having a book available in electronic form and possibly with copyright protection) will very, very likely be as outdated as an 8-track player is today by the time it's implemented in 2020. Why must there be such 9-year delay before implementing a law that would tremendously improve options for students, have the potential to reduce costs for students, and increase the ease of learning online?

Senator Alquist, if you're truly interested in encouraging professors to integrate technology into the classroom, we need to encourage educators to transform the way they're teaching which means moving away from relying upon textbooks for learning. And explain to me how an electronic version of a textbook will spark more interest in science, engineering and math? Finally...and this one really, really, really is important...using electronic version of textbook is not how higher education should be integrating technological skills into our students' learning experiences. Integrating collaborative learning activities through the use of social networking and other forms of participatory learning environments is how we begin to cultivate not only technological skills but skills that are necessary for success in the 21st century: collaboration, global literacy, digital citizenship, innovation.

Is this the best we can do to stimulate change in college learning in California?

OK, I'm not so excited anymore. Bummer.

How are Californians Feeling about Higher Ed?

I just learned via the @One blog that the Public Policy Institute of California released new survey that shares concerns and opinions of Californians about the status of higher education in their "golden state." Below you will find my excerpts from the report including some brief overview information and a few highlights of the findings. I strongly encourage you to download the full report (in PDF) to review its entirety on your own.

How do your thoughts compare? Do you think Californians have gauged the severity of this issue realistically? Could a bond measure solve this issue? Will the hallmarks of higher education survive the deep-seated innovation that would be necessary to rethink and retool this system for 21st century success? Are we seeing the higher education "problem" as a "21st century problem" rather than just a "deficit" problem? What do you think?

The PPIC Statewide Survey provides policymakers, the media, and the general public with objective, advocacy-free information on the perceptions, opinions, and public policy preferences of California residents.

Higher education is guided by a 1960 master plan that calls for making a college education available to every qualified California high school graduate. Currently, about 3.6 million students use publicly funded higher education, according to data from the three higher education systems, the California Community College (CCC), California State University (CSU), and University of California (UC). Higher education faces immediate challenges—including significant state budget cuts, the rising costs of a college education, and continued weakness in the state and national economies. It also faces long-term challenges: projections of increased need for college-educated workers in the state and rapid population growth.

The report presents the responses of 2,502 California adult residents, including 1,488 likely voters and 973 parents of children 18 or younger.

Californians place more importance on a college education than do adults nationwide.

The majority of Californians place a very high or high priority on spending for public higher education. Given this priority, what are Californians ready to do to offset state spending cuts?

68% are unwilling to increase student fees.

56% are unwilling to pay higher taxes. (How does this breakdown along party lines: 56% of Democrats are willing to pay higher taxes, 58% of Independents are willing and only 26% of Republicans are willing.)

53% would support a higher education construction bond measure on the 2010 bond ballot.

50% believe that major changes are needed in higher education.

59% are very concerned and 29% are somewhat concerned about reducing the number of students admitted as a way to offset budget cuts.

The same, 59% are very concerned and 29% are somewhat concerned about cuts in course offerings.

48% are very concerned and 32% are somewhat concerned about reductions in faculty and staff pay.

89% of parents with children 18 years or younger hope their child or children will receive a bachelor's or graduate degree. Latino parents are more worried (67%) than white parents (38%) about being able to afford to send their children to college.

I want to learn. Please let me in, California.

I have only shared a slice of myself through my blog posts through the past couple of years. I've shared my passion for learning and my belief that technology can effectively foster more active, critical experiences for our students than the types of experiences they too frequently encounter in higher education today. In this blog post, I wish to hone in on a more focused issue that is the cornerstone of higher education in the US and, perhaps, the most vulnerable of all in some of our 50 states today -- affordable access to all.

I am a Californian. I grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley, in south San Jose in a beautiful area near the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains area known as Almaden Valley. My father was a research chemist for more than 30-years at the IBM Research Lab and my mother raised me and my two sisters and was actively involved in our schools (I have a memory of a friend in elementary school asking me if my mom "owned the school" -- just a taste of how "involved" she was). Needless to say, the importance of education was instilled in me from early on. But what my parents actively instilled in me was more than just the importance of getting an "education."

My father came from a very poor family in New Jersey in which he was one of fifteen children. His mother died suddenly before he completed junior high and his father pushed him to work early to make money for the family. My dad grew up with a relentless passion for reading, one that has never ceased. He tells me stories about how he would be scolded for "wasting time" if his father discovered him reading a book, rather than "working." So to fulfill his passion for learning, he would take books from dumpsters while nobody was looking and read them under the covers by flashlight at night.

After high school, he tried diligently to get a college degree in New Jersey but it proved too challenging and expensive. He couldn't seem to work enough hours during the day as a mechanic to still have time and energy to go to school and study at night. And then something magical occurred. There was a football coach who was spreading a magical story about schools in California giving away college educations for free. These magical wonderlands were referred to as "community colleges."

My father gave up everything in his home town -- he quit his job, said good-bye to his friends and family, and left town in his car with only dollars in his pocket. He drove across the country to a small town in California called Porterville where he attended Porterville Community College. He began taking classes there, for free. He was the first in his family to graduate from high school and now he was the first to be attending college. He fulfilled the requirements for his AA degree and then moved on to San Jose State, part of the now 23-campus CSU system, where he complete both an undergraduate degree and master's degree. Then he proceed out of state to Iowa State where he successfully completed his PhD in Chemistry. My dad is, to me, the greatest community college success story that exists.

Rarely do we think of a community college contributing to a college student's success when we hear of him earning a PhD. But if you were to ask my dad which institution was the most critical to his success, he would tell you it was Porterville Community College, no doubt. In fact, just a couple of years ago, he returned to the campus with two classmates, roughly 50 years after they graduated, just to pay homage to the campus that granted them access to education. If it wasn't for Porterville CC, that PhD would have been nothing other than a day dream in the mind of a tired car mechanic in New Jersey. My dad's story reminds me everyday why community colleges' commitment to affordable access to higher education by all is so very crucial to supporting success to the future of our country. And I think of his story each time I read a story about the current California budget cuts, respond to a former student who wants me to write a letter of recommendation for applications, or look into the eyes of my two young children and wonder about their own futures.

Imagine, just imagine, how many students in the next few years alone will be squeezed out of the higher education system in California due to the current budget crisis. Just this year, public higher ed institutions have coped with over $1 billion in budget cuts. Over two years, these cuts are projected to reach the $3 billion mark -- it's going to get much worse, folks.

Community colleges in California are already stretched beyond their current budget capacity. The public needs to clearly understand that a crowded community college does not receive the money from student tuition. This money is returned directly to the California general fund. CCCs are funded based on a growth formula determined by the state. If a college exceeds the growth they are allotted, they are serving students they don't have money to support. In other words, community colleges do not financially benefit from crowded classrooms. That's the harsh reality of community colleges.

CSUs and UCs seem to be in dismal situations as well for the near future. CSUs are squeezing out students for the 2010-11 academic year. Applications are currently being accepted for Fall 2010 but marketing efforts clearly suggest that students should expect the application doors to close early due to the large volume coming in early and the reduced number of seats available next year. Fresno State students organized a walkout in mid October to protest the cuts to the CSU system and higher edu, overall. According to the blog of Diane Blair, Communication Professor at CSU Fresno:

For the first time in Fresno State’s history all admissions, including transfers, have been canceled for the spring semester. In Fall 2010, the university announced that it will reduce enrollment by approximately 400 eligible students. The CSU system-wide is calling for a reduction of enrollment by 40,000 students over the next two years. High school students who have been told that if they do well in school they can earn a college degree are facing a broken promise because meeting the minimum eligibility requirements will no longer guarantee a student a place in the CSU.

Do they look angry? You would be too if you were potentially now being squeezed out of a higher educational system that has raised your tuition 182% since 2002. Not quite the "golden state" anymore, is it?

I can't say that I fully understand how we got ourselves into this mess but we need to understand what we're doing to our future, to the future of our children, by cutting educational funding. No cost to low-cost higher education, which is the type of learning community colleges provided in the 1960s in a face-to-face environment, offers everyone an opportunity to learn, to broaden their opportunities, to challenge their minds, and reach for a life beyond the social confinements they identify as their only "reality."

Pat Morrison's public radio broadcast, "State of the State," featuring interviews with Bonnie Rice, UC Regent and partner in the Pegasus Sustainable Century Merchant Bank, and William Hauck, current member and former Chairman, Board of Trustees, California State University and President, California Business Roundtable, is an excellent resource for understanding the magnitude of the cuts to the future economic situation of California -- although, listening to it was more bone chilling than any halloween movie I've seen yet this year. According to Hauck, recent reports indicate that the budget cuts are projecting that the state of California will have a deficit of 1,000,000 baccalaureate degrees by 2025. The natural result of this will be for businesses to leave California and begin to prosper in other regions of the nation that appropriately invest in producing an effective workforce. This really does affect all of us in California.


I began this post with a local slant and I'm going to finish it there too. I am concerned about the future of country and my state and, more specifically, the amazingly innovative fabric of Silicon Valley that I love so dearly. I wonder, are the CEOs of the high tech giants in our region concerned about the pinch on higher education in California? Or not? Are you concerned enough to foster partnerships with higher education to offset these unprecedented budget cuts? Clearly, moving forward, in the best interests of our students -- and the future of our state -- will take an innovative mindset and, really, isn't Silicon Valley the mecca of the world for entrepreneurial thinking? Can't we utilize the strengths of our own community to get us through this challenge? Every great entrepreneur understands that within turmoil and tragedy there lies tremendous opportunity. Can't we find a better way within this train wreck to collaborate, to partner, to serve the needs of the future generations of this amazing state that has so much to offer? I can't bear to see California, the state that symbolized the pathway to learning and opportunity to my own father just forty years ago, begin to crumble away.

Students, hang in there. Don't lose your passion. You will achieve your dream. Please feel free to share your stories. We need to hear them.