Evidence of Good Things Happening in "The Center"

What is The Center? from Michelle Pacansky-Brock
Go to The Center Guide 

Why use Google+ and Twitter for Professional Development in Higher Ed?

Last October, I began my journey as the Coordinator of The Center, a new social online learning community, part of @ONE's suite of  professional development services designed to support California's 112 community colleges. It has been an amazing ride! In June, I will be leaving my role as coordinator, but I will remain a contributing community member.

The Center was very much an experiment.  Utilizing social technologies to cultivate a professional development environment for higher education institutions is not exactly commonplace today. Yet, the need for educators to understand how to foster relationships through social tools, create value through collective exchanges, and realize how much more we learn together, as opposed to being individual people, organizations, districts, states, regions, nations, etc. is quickly becoming essential to our shift into the social era.

Fostering relationships through social technologies (which is distinct from using technology -- as anyone can learn to use a tool) will continue to define leaders in the future. And in the social era, a leader is not a position. In the social era, everyone is a leader.  And this is one reason why cultivating one's own professional online presence and developing a professional learning network (PLN) is essential for educators. If we aren't actively engaging, learning, and sharing to understand how social technologies transform the nature how knowledge is constructed and valued in the 21st century, how are we to model this essential skill to our students?

 

Outcomes

The primary outcomes of The Centery are to improve sharing and increase innovation across California's 112 community colleges. The Center attempts to achieve this goal through inviting members to join a Google+ Community and/or follow The Center on Twitter.  Google+ Hangouts on Air are held every two weeks, featuring faculty, staff, and/or administrators from CCCs who volunteer to share innovative practices using technology to improve learning. All Hangouts on Air are archived and shared on @ONE's YouTube Channel.

• Click here for a brief Guide to The Center

Joining The Center's community or following The Center on Twitter is open to anyone, as is viewing the Hangouts.  Therefore, The Center has the potential to be a global collective, while showcasing innovations from within the CCC's 112 campuses -- aiming to dissove the physical boundaries of campus walls.

A sampling of the Hangout on Air topics have included:

• Humanizing Online Grading with Voice & Video
• Faculty Websites: Why They're Important & How to Make One Now!
• Active Learning with Google Drive: Tips & Strategies
• "Presentain" for Mobile, Engaged, and Archived Class Sessions

The Center's Spring Survey Results

This spring, I shared a link to an online survey in The Center's Google+ community and Tweeted it from The Center's Twitter account (@Center_Ed).  At the time, we had about 220 members on Google+ and 250 Twitter followers.  50 people responded to the survey. That is about a 22% response rate.

Here is a summary of the some of the findings from the survey:

• 75% of respondents are employed at a California Community College 
• 52% are a CCC faculty members
• More than 3/4 (80%) of respondents strongly agree or agree that The Center improves awarness of innovations occurring on campuses other than their own.
• More than 3/4 (78%) strongly agree or agree that The Center improves the sharing of ideas across campuses.

The open ended prompt, "Share a specific improvement or benefit that has been an outcome of your experiences" with The Center," generated some exciting qualitative data.

• "I started a Google Hangout for a campus club meeting. Planning to use for online office hours, as well."
• "I have changed the way I respond to student work (using video) as a result of several hangouts and the resulting discussions."
• "Having a topic active for several days has led me to spend enough time thinking about it to feel comfortable trying something new in my classes. Also, having a channel to share how it went with others encourages me to do it and improve upon it."
• "With my new awareness of what colleagues at other colleges are doing, I am helping my college to revise our Distance Education policies and training programs. I could go on and on -- The Center has had a huge impact on my teaching life!"
• "I'm so impressed with the use of social media that is displayed. It is a great way to build community among educators."
• "I've been inspired to do more videos and screencasts with my online classes for more instructor presence."
• "I have created a personal faculty web page. I have started using new programs like Haiku Deck and introduced new programs to colleagues."
• "Have found the thoughts of other faculty very helpful to my online teaching and my work with our Committee for Online Learning..."

I don't know about you, but when I read these statements, I get pretty excited. I see evidence of more faculty willing to take risks in their teaching. Today, fostering a culture of experimentation in which pushes college professors into vulnerable places.  A social community built with free tools that offers ideas, support, and reflection opportunities for instructors, staff, and administrators -- both part-time and full-time, regardless of one's physical location -- seems like worthy initiative. I look forward to seeing what continues to develop with The Center and am grateful for this opportunity!

Thank you +Micah Orloff for supporting this leap. 

Learn with The Center This Summer

• The Center's Hangouts on Air are now on summer break but will reconvene in the fall.
• Learn more about The Center here, includes links to all Hangout video archives!  Archives are a great way to learn this summer! And the Google+ community and Twitter are always open!

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.

Advocating For "Online" Student Success Strategies

If anyone out there has been following the recent statewide dialogue in California about identifying strategies to improve the success of California community college students, you may be interested in reading the "Draft Recommendations Report" which was recently made public on the Chancellor's website.

I've just begun trudging through it and have been a bit stunned to see that due to "time restraints," the task force did not directly address "distance education" in the report (p. 11).  I feel compelled to take a step back right now and point out that the continual lumping of online courses in with our face-to-face courses continues to hurt California community college students.  Online classes are unique and the strategies necessary for increasing the success of students in online programs as well as those who enroll in both online and face-to-face coursework needs to be addressed directly. 

General communications from the Chancellor's office shared in articles throughout the year with the public typically report important data, like enrollment, in lump figures and the data for distance learning is traditionally reported in a separate report every two years.  This reporting process, in my opinion, makes the realities of the impact that online learning is having on the landscape of the CCC system murky, at best.  And, as a result, the significant role that online learning plays throughout California's 112 community colleges -- which support 2.6 million students, more than any other system of higher education in the nation -- is not positioned as a statewide priority and the unique needs that online learning brings to the system are often not realized. 

The 2011 distance education report can be found here and in it you will see some information that may surprise you.  It surprised me and I consider myself pretty well informed about online learning in California.  The graph below illustrates the past four years of enrollment changes -- distance education is represented in blue and traditional, face-to-face, classes are represented in red. 

As the data illustrated above makes clear, the future of California community colleges is a blended future.  Between academic years 2006-2010, traditional enrollments remained relatively stagnant year over year or declined, while online enrollments have soared, even in the face of severe budget cuts. 

Lower Success Rates for Online CCC Students
The report also provides evidence that online course success rates trail traditional success rates by 10-12% over the four year period measured in the report (course success defined as the % of enrolled students who end the term with an A, B, or C).  This isn't groundbreaking news but is certainly a significant point to consider.  These success rates can be improved significantly with the proper strategies but will not be improved if online classes are not understood and valued as unique.   Online students who learn in solitude with little to no human connection are at a greater risk of failing -- especially when they're academically challenged and/or their courses are designed with cold, text-based information and void of a sense of relatedness to one's instructor and peers.  One of the most important elements of supporting student success online is professional development and faculty training. 

An intriguing recent study at Cabrillo College has revealed that online success is even lower for Latino students.  The online success gap for Latino students is 44% greater than white students, according to the study.  This may be due to the strong role of human-to-human contact and relationships in the latino culture that are undercut by flat online course design.  Raymond Kaupp, director of workforce development at Cabrillo argues that the low success rates for online Latino students is likely rooted in Latino attitudes toward education. “Relationships are important to Latino student learning."  Community colleges need to foster online community, just as they foster face-to-face community -- within a class, within a department, across a program, and an entire campus.  In our mobile, interconnected world driven by video technologies that are now free to low cost, it's a failure to create cold, isolating online learning experiences.

Online classes can be vibrant, dynamic and highly personalized if they're designed effective and integrate pedagogies that support active and constructivist learning through the application of emerging technologies, and faculty are supported to ensure content is accessible to all students.  One model that has been proven effective at increasing online student success is the Human Presence Learning Environment used at Santa Barbara Community College.   

Warm, High-Touch, Community-Oriented Online Learning
In the teaching I've done over the years for @One's Online Teaching Certification Program, I've seen hundreds of faculty be inspired and amazed at what they can do for their students to create more social, community-oriented learning experiences for their students with a higher sense of social presence -- through the use of technology that would otherwise be absent from their teaching approaches.  When the framework embraced for evaluating student success does not view online as a unique entity, these essential pillars of online student success are rendered absent (and they aren't, by any means, the only pillars). 

I look forward to watching the lively discussion about the report evolve and am hopeful there will be more advocacy from faculty, staff, students, and the community about the importance of stressing the uniqueness of online learning, the central role it will continue to play in the future of California community colleges and our students.