The (Inspirational) Story of an Online Community College Student

I believe student stories hold potential to dispel some of the myths that of shape the mental models that undermine change in higher education.  One of my own online community college students recently shared his story with me.  As I read it, I am reminded of so many others that have inspired me over the past 10+ years of community college teaching -- a student who was severely burned in an accident, several students with cancer, an online student awaiting an organ transplant, a student completing her college degree online to avoid being stalked by her ex-husband, a student with epilepsy who was fighting to complete her first college class, and countless online students who gave birth during the semester.

The student story I share below is now part of me. I will carry it with me and allow it to remind me why I love teaching at a community college and advocate wholeheartedly for their support.  As you read this story, I encourage you to reflect on your own perceptions about community colleges and online learning and discover if this story challenges or supports them.  Enjoy!

The following story is shared with permission from a former online student who will remain anonymous.

"I attended Brigham Young in Utah for 2 semesters as a freshman in college. In my family, attending BYU wasn't so much a matter of "if" but rather a matter of 'when.' My family is deeply rooted in the Mormon faith, so as a High School Senior who secretly didn't share the same faith, I was conflicted but I went to BYU anyway. After my freshman year of college, everything reached a boiling point when the pressure came to serve on a 2-year Mormon mission. I knew I couldn't preach something I didn't believe myself, so I used the opportunity to finally be truthful with my parents. I did not share their faith, I was leaving Brigham Young and I was gay. This marked the beginning of a bittersweet period in my life. On one hand, I was free to live a life of my own. On the other, I was left without financial or emotional support to continue my education. After about 6 months of dead end jobs and living on my own to support myself, I knew I had to make a change. 

As I researched schools to transfer to, I became distraught at the staggering cost of college, expenses I would have to come up with on my own. One day, a family friend told me about how she was attending a local community college and was able to afford it with financial aid and scholarships. I enrolled and began taking classes while working full time. When I arrived on the community college campus, I was ashamedly surprised. In High School, community college has a reputation as the place where "dropouts go" or "a dead-end". However, I saw something very different. I saw a handful of professors that were deeply passionate about their topics and teaching. I saw an opportunity to explore many different disciplines that interested me throughout the humanities and social sciences. I saw a diverse group of students from all walks of life working to overcome adversity and build their futures. I enrolled in the Honors Enrichment Program, and took classes that felt on par (and sometimes more rigorous) than the ones I took at a prestigious private university. Also, I made an important choice that made all the difference while in community college; I sought out leadership roles. Being engaged in student leadership, clubs and extracurricular activities weaves you into the fabric of an institution in ways not possible otherwise. (Sidenote: I'd like to see more opportunities like this for "distance learners". I'm curious how it could be made possible.) 

After 3 great semesters at the community college, I still had little idea of a major or career path. So I embarked on a 2 year adventure with AmeriCorps NCCC, a national service program that sends 18-24 year olds to serve their country building trails, reconstructing homes and doing disaster relief. The federal program awards a scholarship for every term of service (10 months), and is equivalent to a pell-grant (approx. $5,700). I decided to put online education to the test during my service. With a rigorous and demanding schedule, I was nervous I wouldn't be able to keep up. I was also worried that Online Learning just simply wasn't a suitable environment to learn. This is what I discovered: the online classroom has the potential to teach, inspire, and engage in ways I had previously deemed impossible. However, not all online classes are this way. I took two classes last semester, one from an ENGAGED professor and one from a DISENGAGED professor. One utilized new tech, creative assignments, and fostered a learning community while the other used outdated content and did little to nourish a community of student learning (One sign of this may be that I cannot remember even a single name of my peers in that class, whereas in my ENGAGED online class, I remember many names and personalities). 

After completing my service with AmeriCorps in late November, I have returned to Southern California to finish the courses I need for transfer. I am returning to the physical campus with a new understanding and faith in online learning. In many ways, being in online classes while traveling across the Southeastern United States kept me engaged in learning and familiar with the habit of studying and deadlines. All in all, I have been incredibly grateful for my time at the community college, whether on campus or online, because it has allowed me to create an affordable liberal arts education for myself that feels much less like a "dead end" and more like the beginning of something pretty awesome."

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.

Online Learning: Are We Doing It Wrong?

Tomorrow, I will be making two presentations to two very different audiences. One is a free webinar I'm doing for the TLT Group (register here) -- the audience will be primarily college instructors and instructional designers. Another is for the California Community College Online Education Initiative -- the audience will be a diverse group of stakeholders collecting input about the important characteristics for a statewide LMS for California Community Colleges (for classes that are offered through OEI initative).

Both of these presentations will incorporate my experiences and my students' experiences with using VoiceThread as an asynchronous discussion tool since 2007. 

"Experiences" is the key word here. This is not about a tool. It's about how teaching with a tool not typically found within an LMS toolkit can create a learning environment that impacts the student learning experience differently.  It's about the importance of relationships and affective learning in an online environment.  It's about the power of the human voice when a person is trying to figure out a new idea or delivering feedback. It's about supporting and inspiring students to be vulnerable.  It's about what gets lost if online instructors rely only on the LMS toolkit.  It's about how LTI integration with web-based tools saves faculty time (and money) and lowers the barrier of adoption of emerging technologies by providing embeds with a click, secure activities, grading from the gradebook, and automatically generated student accounts (with a single sign on), and the ability for students to generate their own creations that can be shared with a public audience (or secure to just the class registrants).

Below is a presentation you may review that provides the current (through Spring 2014) results of four consecutive semesters of anonymous online student surveys about how using asynchronous voice/video conversations impacts their experiences.

As I reflect on these findings, I am left with one question: Are we doing it wrong?  What are your takeaways?



To be clear about my relationship with VoiceThread, I am a college instructor and instructional technologist who has taught online and face-to-face with VoiceThread since 2007.  I supports faculty with the effective pedagogical application of the tool. The community college at which I teach has a sitewide license with LTI integration of VoiceThread into Blackboard and so does the university where I work as an instructional technologist. In the past, I was a paid higher education consultant for VoiceThread (to develop a higher ed webinar series) from 2012-2013.  In 2013, I authored a self-published eBook with compensation from the last months of consultancy at VoiceThread.  This eBook is available at no cost to VoiceThread site license holders and it is available for sale or rent to the general public. I receive royalties from the sales of the eBook.  I am a doctoral student working with VoiceThread as my research site to explore how the use of an eBook as a faculty support resource for a web 2.0 tool impacts faculty perceptions about the tool. Currently, I receive no income from VoiceThread.

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 

Archive! Humanizing Online Grading with Voice & Video

View this video on YouTube.

Yesterday, I spent an hour in dialogue with +Dan Barnett and +Tracy Schaelen about one of my favorite topics ... humanizing the online learning environment for students. Despite a major fail on the part of Google+ Hangouts on Air (grumble) to stream half of our live conversation, we persevered and, fortunately, the archive of the Hangout turned out fabulous.  I am sharing it below and hope you will find time to view, reflect, share a takeaway about the conversation, and pass the link on to your own networks too. 

 

Reinforcing Research Findings

I intended to end the Hangout with a reference to the findings from online teaching research, which, more or less, reinforce all the insights and findings shared by Dan and Tracy in the Hangout conversation. Unfortunately, I forgot.  So, here is the graphic I intended to share in the Hangout.

 

The Center is brought to you by @ONE.

Join The Center's Google+ Community.

Follow The Center on Twitter.

"How do you know when they've learned online?" Hangout today!

CC-BY-NC-SA Jim Bumgardner

Monday, November 18th

3pm-4pm PST

Online Assessment Roundtable - Hangout on Air

http://tiny.cc/assessmentRT 

Today at 3pm PST I will be moderating a public Hangout on Air for The Center, a learning community that connects California's 112 community colleges, that will feature a dynamic panel discussion about online assessment.  This event is geared towards all educators who teach online or who are preparing to teach online.

You are invited to view the live online video conversation, which will stream inside the Google Event, and ask questions through the Twitter backchannel (using #CCCLEARN) or the new Google+ "Submit your question" button, which we'll be trying out today.

The panelists for today's Online Assessment Roundtable include:

 

+Kathy Damm - Instructor of @ONE’s Designing Effective Online Assessments Course; Assistant Professor of Psychology, Saddleback College

+William Doherty  - Instructor of @ONE’s Designing Effective Online Assessments Course, Former Director of @ONE; Owner, Third Star Consulting & Education

+Sandra Haynes  - Professor of Art History, Pasadena City College; Mentor for the @ONE Online Teaching Certification Program; 2009 Winner Blackboard Exemplary Course Award

+Kara Kuvakas  - Adjunct Physical Geography Instructor, Hartnell College; Adj. Professor of Chemistry & Environmental Science, Brandman University; Adj. Professor of Geology & Environmental Science, American Public University; Course Developer, Brandman University; Co-Founder of Connections Co-op for Homeschooling; Doctoral student at Brandman University; and Homeschooling Mom at Dehesa Charter School.

The Center is brought to you by @ONE

Google+ Community:  gplus.to/TheCenter

Twitter:  @Center_Ed

 

The Center: Supersizing the Online Learning Sweetspot!

CC-BY-NC Jim Bumgardner

The Center: Increasing Innovation in California's Community Colleges   

brought to you by @ONE

Google+ Community:  gplus.to/TheCenter
Twitter:  @Center_Ed

As Community Coordinator for The Center, I have the awesome job of harnessing the power of Google+ and Twitter to increase collaboration, sharing, and innovation throughout California's 112 community colleges (the CCC system). How cool is that?

Two community interests are showcased each month as a combined dialogue that starts with a Google+ Hangouts on Air, extends into a Center Challenge, and wraps up with a Twitter chat.  The Hangouts on Air are live video conversations in which I engage in casual conversations with CCC educators about innovative practices pertaining to the topic. The Hangouts stream live to the web and viewers may submit questions via Twitter using the hashtag #CCCLEARN.

The week after a Hangout (every other Thursday at 3pm PT), a Twitter chat is held, giving community members an opportunity to engage in an interactive exchange of sharing (in addition to the broader public who is welcome to join in), discussion and Q&A. The two events are bridged with a Center Challenge which is like a call to action to encourage individuals to share deeper reflections, ideas, or strategies related to each topic through blogging, Tweeting, and the Google+ community.  The Center leverages the hashtag #CCCLEARN.

Supersize the Online Learning Sweetspot: Hangout on Air

Here is the 30-minute video archive of the Hangout on Air, 

"Supersize the Online Learning Sweetspot."

Last week, I was joined in a Hangout by +Katie Palacios (@katiepala) an instructional designer from the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD), and +Samantha Hurst (@sammhurst), an anthropology instructor also from SDCCD.  Katie shared a conceptual framework of her own, which she describes is an effort to encourage online instructors to, "Supersize the Sweetspot of Online Learning."  In her model, she explains the importance of embracing the full potential of active learning when designing and facilitating an online class and stresses that most new online instructors gloss over the need to consciously build in active learning, because these types of learner engagement opportunities often occur spontaneously in face-to-face teaching (think "socratic teaching" style).  Therefore, Katie proposes a model to "supersize this sweetspot" which involves "mushing" content, interaction, and assessment together into a fabulously, messy learning experience (picture making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich). 

After Katie's brief, engaging, and information presentation, Samm joins in to share a teaching innovation of her own that was inspired by Katie's supportive instructional design efforts.  She shares with us how she is using Video Everywhere, a building block for Blackboard that enables students and instructors to post communications using a webcam (videos are recorded to YouTube, posted as Unlisted, and then they appear in Blackboard where students and the instructor may view them).  Samm has her anthropology students share video blog posts to describe an experience using non-verbal communication (body gestures, for example). Fascinating! In the Hangout archive, you have the opportunity to see two examples of fantastic videos shared by Samm's students (who provided permission to allow us all to view them -- thank you!). 

Supersize the Online Learning Sweetspot: Twitter Chat

After you view the video, if you'd like to continue the conversation about Supersizing the Sweetspot of Online Learning, join me and other CCC educators for a #CCCLEARN Twitter chat this Thursday, October 31st at 3pm PDT!

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.

Community Colleges: A Defining Moment

Each month, I write a sponsored blog post for Cisco's GETInsight blog, which is part of the GETideas community.  Each post delves into a topical conversation about transforming education, particularly through the use of technology.  This month's post isn't focused on technology but it is one that will shape both the future of the United States and affect the lives of millions of people for generations to come.  And you or someone you care about may very likely be one of those people.

The topic is the historic commitment that community colleges have made to open access to higher education.  That commitment is being threatened as colleges across the nation, particularly in extremely deprived economic states like California, struggle to imagine how to serve students with pennies instead of dollars. 

Community colleges are always there for us. We have come to rely upon them to serve an array of functions in our lives.  As a result, the array of ways that community colleges have supported students' academic and personal success and contributed to local and regional economies is immeasurable. 

I hope you'll take a moment, first, to read the post, and two, to share your story in the VoiceThread about how your life has been touched, helped, transformed, or improved by a community college.  The VoiceThread is embedded below and also appears on the GETInsight blog.  You are warmly invited to leave a comment by following the instructions at the bottom of the slide.

Please share this VoiceThread and encourage your friends, family, colleagues to share their story. Thank you!  Use this link to share: http://voicethread.com/share/2927210/

Click here to read "Community Colleges’ Commitment to Open Access: Sharing Your Story at a Defining Moment." 

Community Colleges: What's Your Story?

For generations, community colleges have served as the gateway to higher education for millions of Americans.  Their commitment to open access coupled with financial support from local funds have stimulated local economies and made dreams come true for people who would have otherwise never imagined college to be a reality.  The same holds true today -- but for fewer students each year.  Budget cuts across the nation are resulting in a rationing of enrollments and who will be admitted to community colleges in the future is a hot topic today.

A report released yesterday from the Center for the Future of Higher Education, Closing the Door, Increasing the Gap, stresses the importance of critically examining who could be left out if access to higher education is rationed and what encourages us to ponder the effects that the rationing process would have on society longterm.  The report states, "We are living in a time of growing gaps between the rich and the rest – gaps that have not been seen since the Great Depression. Since the largest growth in traditional age students is among lower-income, first-generation, students of color, and immigrants, they will be impacted the most. Rationing college by social class and ethnicity results in a higher education system that will increase the gap between the 1% and the rest in ever more extreme ways."

I invite you to share your story about how your life has been affected by a community college.  If you're new to VoiceThread, it's easy.  Just follow the instructions typed at the bottom of the slide or listen to them by playing the first comment.

Please share this VoiceThread using this link: http://voicethread.com/share/2927210/

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.

A Historic Day for Community Colleges

Today was a historic day.  The first ever White House Community College was held in Washington, DC.  The veil that has been cast over the vital role community colleges has been lifted.







Read the transcript of the entire speech here.

My Community College Roots
I am proud to have seven years of experience as a full-time faculty member at a community college.  My former students still serve as inspirations to me.  I work at home now and keep letters, cards and artwork from former students nearby.  They were given to me as "thank you" gifts -- for being an inspiration in their lives.  Today, those objects of gratitude motivate me every day.  I miss my students. And days like today make me miss teaching at a community college tremendously. 

I've shared this story before on my blog but think it deserves to be shared again.  My father, now a retired research chemist, came from an impoverished immigrant family in New Jersey.  He was the only child, out of fifteen siblings (yes, I said fifteen), to go to college.  In the 1960s he began his college experience after hearing a story about magical institutions of higher education in California that admit anybody ... for free.  He left New Jersey on his own, drove across the country and enrolled at Porterville Community College.  After completing his associates degree, he transferred to San Jose State where he completed his BS and MS and then went on to complete his PhD in Chemistry from Iowa State University.

After college, my dad had a very successful career as a research scientist at IBM's Almaden Research Lab.  His story plays a role in fueling my passion for learning.  He is seventy one now (and still learning, by the way). If you were to ask him today to reflect on his college "successes," he would credit community colleges with granting him the opportunity to explore his dream -- to learn.  But that rarely gets highlighted, as one continues with his/her life crediting their terminal degree granting institution, not the one that got them on the road to success.

A New Society Calls for a New Learning Paradigm
What's dramatically different today is the fact that the internet extends opportunities to learn to anyone with web access.  We need to be rethinking the relevance of the college learning experience in the context of our digital, information society while we're strengthening our community colleges. I believe that is key to this dialogue and I sincerely hope it played a major role at the summit today.  I believe the learning environments faculty, administrators, and staff create and support for community college students play a significant role in ensuring student success.  Dyslexic students, students with other forms of learning disabilities, english as a second language students, international students -- these are just some of the demographics of a community college classroom.

Faculty, administrators and staff need to be supporting their learning by crafting inclusive learning environments which can be supported through the use of podcasting for "presenting information" and saving precious class time for applying the information, fostering higher order thinking skills, engaging in debates, sharing unique perspectives, working in teams and presenting projects.  Lecture is an exclusive learning environment.  Some students can succeed just fine through listening and taking notes but most cannot.  The human brain cannot listen and take notes at the same time -- even without a learning challenge.  When you're taking notes, your brain is processing the note-taking and is not listening to the lecture, creating gaps that the brain then needs to simultaneously fill in order to follow a presentation.

Moreover, students don't feel confident enough to raise a hand and ask for clarification once, twice, three times in a lecture setting.  Podcasting provides opportunities to for students to receive the lecture content before of the classroom, stop/pause as necessary, and even learn mobility (on the bus, in the gym, etc.).  Moreover, podcasts (audio alone or video) can be accompanied by a text-based transcript.  When I shared lecture podcasts with transcripts with my students, only 15% of them chose to "only listen" to the podcast.  In a classroom, listening is your only option! 30% of my students chose to listen and read at the same time.  I believe this is significant and changes the way we frame "learning" in a college classroom.

Once the content is delivered, classroom time is spent on applying it through a variety of engaging activities and addressing questions along the way.  The lecture still plays a role but this model enables the freeing of classroom time to make learning relevant and community-based.  Students understand that they need to come to class so they can learn -- rather than passively receive information.  The YouTube generation  has high expectations for face-to-face time.  They'll tune out or -- worse -- never come back.  If the classroom experience can be replicated online then it should be.  It makes sense.  Spend face-to-face time on activities that cannot be replicated online.

I realize this shift rocks the traditional foundation of higher ed, considering lectures have been the method of college learning since the Middle Ages.  A new society that requires new skills calls for a new learning model.

New Opportunities for Community College Innovation
The day of dialogue included the announcement of several new innovative programs, offered to bolster student success and increase the completion rates for community college students.  Here they are (the following is excerpted from "Building American Skills by Strengthening Community Colleges," publicly shared on the White Houses Community College website).

Get ready -- grant funds will be allotted through a competitive application process.  The time to innovate is now! 

Gates Foundation: Completion by Design

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will announce Completion by Design, which aims to dramatically improve community college graduation rates by building on proven, existing practices to implement model pathways making the college experience more responsive to today’s student’s needs and education goals.  The competitive grant program is a $35 million investment over five years to 3-5 multi-campus groups of community colleges in nine states serving the largest populations of low-income students (Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington).  Completion by Design supports tough-minded campus- or college-based analysis to learn where along the education journey students are being lost and to design an intentional educational pathway that employs proven and promising practices at every critical moment from enrollment to credential completion. 

Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence
The Aspen Institute, the Joyce and Lumina Foundations, and the charitable foundations of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have partnered to announce a new, $1 million annual prize to recognize, reward, and inspire outstanding outcomes in community colleges nationwide. The Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence will shine a spotlight on outstanding performers and rising stars that deliver exceptional results in student completion rates and workforce success; distill and share successful practices; and contribute to the development of high-quality, consistent measures and benchmarks for assessing community college outcomes. By focusing the field on a clear and bold definition of success, honoring excellence with prizes and prestige, and accelerating the spread of successful practices, the prize aims to galvanize the work of reform-minded educators, governors, employers, and community college presidents across the nation. The Aspen Prize will launch in the spring of 2011 and celebrate the first winners that fall.

Skills for America’s Future
On October 4, President Obama announced the launch of Skills for America’s Future, a new initiative to expand innovative strategies and improve the skills of America’s workers. Skills for America’s Future will build high-impact partnerships with industry, labor unions, community colleges and other training providers in all 50 states, all in support of the President’s goal of 5 million more community college graduates and certificates by 2020.
Skills for America’s Future is in response to a key recommendation by the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which spent the last year surveying employers about their workforce needs and development strategies.

Skills for America’s Future will be spearheaded by Penny Pritzker, Chairman and Founder, Pritzker Realty Group, and Walter Isaacson, CEO, Aspen Institute. Together, they will advance this effort by recruiting additional private sector leaders; providing a national voice for effective public/private partnerships in workforce development; developing a “certification” for best-in- class partnerships; and leveraging new opportunities for online learning, measuring program impact and sharing lessons learned. Several Fortune 500 companies, including PG&E, Gap Inc., McDonald’s, United Technologies, and Accenture, have already committed to support the Skills for America’s Future initiative and will work over the next year to expand their training partnerships to provide American workers the skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

Use Google Sites to Increase Online Success and Retention

As an online instructor, I always felt that one of my goals should be to strive to ensure all the students enrolled on day one are students who are informed about the class requirements.  When we teach in a classroom, there are always students who attend day one, read the syllabus, and then decide, for a range of reasons, the class simply doesn't work for them.  These reasons could range from, "I'll take this next semester when I have a lighter load," "just too much work,"  "I'll take it with someone else," "don't like this instructor," "sounds like a bore."  How do I know?  Because I used to do it as a college student too (come on, fess up). While budget cuts may naturally be forcing students to stay enrolled in classes they don't "prefer," I believe all students should be informed ahead of time about what to expect in their learning experience.  This strategy is an effective and realistic way to foster a culture of student success in a class and, even more powerfully, at an entire institution.

Improving retention and success in "offline" classes is important too.  But I am focusing on the online learning environment because our online classes in higher education have consistently trailed in success and retention rates.  And the demand for online classes continues to go through the roof.  I would regularly turn away up to 40 pleading students in each online class, unable to accommodate their desire to enroll.  And then in the first week of class, a flock of students would drop, leaving me feel frustrated and disappointed about all the students I turned away.  Sound familiar anyone?

Offline?  The situation wasn't nearly so bad.  Sloan-C recently cited tracked our nation's overall higher ed enrollment growth was at around 2% (including offline and online enrollments in both 2 and 4 year institutions) and our online enrollment growth was about 17% (22% in community colleges alone). Our students are naturally leaving the offline classroom in search of more online learning opportunities.  So, let's prepare them ahead of time so the learning can begin on day one. 

Here's a simple strategy to try.  Create a Google Site, using one of their new and improved templates, and use it to share a video introduction, detail course requirements and clear expectations, and upload a class syllabus. The key is to weave the site into your enrollment process so students find it.  How about creating a link in your online class schedule, connecting your class description to your Google Site?

So, students...would this help you succeed?  Instructors, what are your thoughts?  Here is my sample Google Site (which was used in this way, only in an older and less aesthetically pleasing Google Site template) to demonstrate the idea.

Note: I am no longer employed at Sierra College and I use the materials on my sample Google Site in an effort to share my own course strategies to help other online instructors improve their instructional approaches.

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.

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?

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.