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.

MacArthur YOUmedia Model: The Future of Visual Arts & Community Colleges?

Learning through Creating Content with Digital Media

The MacArthur Foundation continues to lead impressive efforts that explore how digital media is changing the way young people learn, as well as establish provocative examples of next generation learning institutions.  Now, in response to President Obama's "Educate to Innovate," they're teaming up with the Institute of Museum and Library Science (IMLS) to create 30 new youth learning labs across the nation, leveraging a $4 million grant.  The lab locations will be identified after a competitive application process is initiated in 2011.  The model is inspired by a hot new learning space at Chicago Public Library called YOUmedia which transforms young people into content creators, using digital media tools as their palette.  Digital photography, video, and music become critical thinking vehicles and opportunities for expression and exploration of personal interests and passions.  In the process, 21st century skills are fostered.

Robert Gallucci, President of the MacArthur Foundation, says,

"With digital media, learning takes place anywhere, anytime. So we must break free of the old-fashioned notion that schools are the only places for learning and provide young people with engaging and diverse opportunities beyond the classroom. "YOUmedia is an excellent example of 21st Century learning. Bringing the model to other cities will mark an important step in motivating young people to learn and preparing them for a globally competitive workforce.”

Bravo, MacArthur Foundation!  Your innovative ideas continue to bring light to the legitimacy and criticality of engaging our students in learning through digital media, as well as reshaping our vision of what a "learning institution" is.  

A Model for Community Colleges?

What I'm left with are thoughts and wonderment about how this model could be woven into community colleges, as a method of engaging non-traditional, high risk students in the learning process, as well as situating visual arts departments within a relevant 21st century discourse. 

As a former community college art history professor, I have always imagined ways to bring 'the history of art' out of the dusty, marginalized corners of art departments and situate it as the 'history of images,' providing students with essential visual literacy skills for 21st century success.  Our students, taking on the role of content creators, need to understand how to read, analyze, and recontextualize visual information to convey their ideas.  "The history of art" is one discipline that plays directly into this sharpening these skills.  The MacArthur model, to me, implicitly positions the visual arts, typically at high risk for cuts in traditional institutions, as a top priority in the circles of cutting edge learning innovations.  The YOUmedia lab concept also taps directly into a dynamic learning model for the diverse student audience supported by community colleges around our nation.

It will be interesting to see where this goes in 2011.

Come Learn with Me! Building Online Community with Emerging Technologies starts March 1

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Cultivating an effective community of learners is an essential element of success in online education. This is not earth shattering news, as community has been a foundational topic of online learning research for years (Palloff and Pratt, 2007; Clark and Mayer, 2003; Richardson and Swan, 2003; Ko and Rossen, 2008; Graham et al, 2001). However, what is new and critical to the professional development of online instructors, instructional designers and other faculty or program support related positions (and arguably administrators providing the strategic direction of online programs), is the new suite of web based tools that have recently emerged that offer community building powerhouse potential.

On March 1, I will begin teaching a 4-week online class for @One, an organization that is able to offer very low cost professional development training for online educators as it is funded through a grant from the California community college Chancellor's office. The class is titled "Building Online Community with Emerging Technologies" and it is an overview of tips and strategies for cultivating community online, couched within hands-on experience with web-based collaborative technologies that demonstrate potential for bringing students together, sharing ideas, crafting participating learning environments and knitting the foundations of community. Specifically, you'll gain hands-on experience working with your peers in Ning, VoiceThread and WetPaint (a web-based wiki tool). I focus on free to low cost web 2.0 tools that educators can turn around and integrate into their classes, regardless of whether or not their institutions subscribe to them (this one reason why web 2.0 is so empowering for educators -- and you'll learn that you don't need to be a techie!)

@One classes are something to be taken advantage of (!11). The 4-week class is only $50 to faculty and staff of California state supported schools, colleges, or universities (that is an amazing price!!). The courses cost $100 for educators outside the California state systems. Share the word!! Register before Wed, February 28th. Class begins on March 1st. For more information, please visit www.onefortraining.org

Sloan-C Survey Says: US Online Enrollments Strong; Strategic Focus Weak

It's that time of the year for me geek out over the annual report released by the Sloan-Consortium, Learning On Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009. Sloan publishes one such report each year and here are a few startling revelations, highlights, and my own reflections in italics.

As of fall 2009:

• The US saw a 17% increase in online enrollments in higher ed over the previous year, outpacing the the 12% increase announced in the '09 Sloan-C survey (which stunned folks).

• The 17% increase in online enrollments becomes even more startling when we compare it to the measly 1.2% growth overall for higher ed (!).

• While the participating colleges and universities indicated that they had witnessed an increase in all their offerings (all methods of delivery) due to the economic downturn, all institution types agreed that the strongest demand is for more new AND existing online courses as well as online programs.

• Despite the enormous student demand and strong enrollment growths, college and university executives continue to demonstrate a flimsy, at best, correlation between the importance of online learning and the strategy of their institution. This is a point that I hope is rung clearly throughout our nation. I believe there is a strong, clear disconnect between college and universities leaders and the heart and soul of online learning. Online learning is not IT. Online learning is not a strategy to increase dwindling budgets. Online learning is a new, innovative educational landscape that enables institutions to reach more students and different students in new and exciting ways. But it also requires institutions to encourage, motivate, inspire, and support faculty to learn new and sometimes challenging but sometimes amazingly refreshing and rewarding ways of cultivating learning experiences for our students. If this earth-shattering shift in education that has already begun to revolutionize learning around the globe is dismissed as "not strategically important" at your institution, perhaps it's time to refresh the skills of those at the helm. In fact, it becomes concerning to see our country miss out on such opportunities for global learning when our workforce and overall national economy is thirsty for innovative ideas from 21st century-bred leaders with the ability to collaborate, present, lead, motivate and negotiate virtually and face-to-face with multi-generational and culturally diverse teams. This is our mission, this is our job as faculty, administrators, staff in higher education. And this is the texture of the online learning experience...if one approaches it strategically. Is that not critical to the success of our country, let alone your institution, your future? If this isn't a missed opportunity, I don't know what is. And nobody is screaming about it. SCREAM WITH ME.
  

• An exclusion from this year's survey, which is painful to me, is the helpful visual that illustrates which types of institutions are carrying the online enrollments. In past years, I recall learning (and I've cited this countless times, as I believe it's crucial yet completely marginalized) from the Sloan survey that more than 50% of the online enrollments occur at 2-year institutions. I don't see this information included anywhere in the report which I'm quite saddened by. It was the one helpful statistic that I could lean on to leverage the significant role that community colleges are playing in the online learning landscape. Now it's gone. Instead, this year's report simply notes that 82% of the enrollments occur at undergraduate institutions which, to me, dilutes the role of community colleges and inflates the role of 4-year universities. I realize this was not an intentional edit on the part of the Sloan-Consortium, but I do hope they understand how valuable the more specific data provided in earlier years is to community colleges.

• The report also delved into the intriguing question of retention. The respondents were asked, "Is Retention of Students Harder in Online Classes?" Now, keep in mind the respondents for the survey were executives who, according to the survey, aren't terribly strategic about online learning. So, I'm questioning how informed they are about retention issues in online classes. Nonetheless, I digress...what I found particularly interesting about the response was the breakdown of the respondents "by institution type" (AH HA...they DID collect this info!!) that specifies which institutions acknowledge retention in online classes to be an issue. Take a look at the institution type that has the highest percentage of agrees:
  

Is Retention of Students Harder in Online Classes?

• This retention graphic above shows that 36.7% of Associates respondents agreed that retention of students is harder is online classes, while just 19% of 4-year institutions agreed which is a staggering gap in the two types of undergraduate institutions. To me, this statistic alone justifies the importance of researching the trends of online learning at CCs and 4-year institutions uniquely, when possible. Community colleges and 4-year institutions serve two very unique student bodies and teaching online classes at these two different types of institutions raises different issues and requires different strategies for success. I believe understanding where the majority of the enrollments are occurring is a significant item to highlight in a Sloan-C report and now I'm left wondering ... has it shifted?

• Faculty development/distance learning programs within institutions will also be intrigued by the additional question woven into this year's survey that investigates whether or not faculty are provided training to teach online and if so, what are these methods? Unfortunately, the results of the survey reveal a less than shocking mish mash of internal and external training programs and informal/formal mentoring programs (which, to me, begin to get suspicious of like "faculty help each other and just don't get paid for it" types of "training"), they're still interesting. Here is the graphic that breaks down the results by institution type.

Type of Training for Faculty Teaching Online

Thanks Sloan-Consortium and Babson Survey Research Group for another installment of online data fun!

In-Person Institute in SoCal Jan 19-21: Building Learning Communities Online

I will be facilitating a three day in-person institute for @One at Mt. San Jacinto College in Menifee on January 19, 20 and 21st. Details are below and the price is an extraordinary bargain (as all @One trainings are!). Please enjoy the following multimedia "poster" (created with Glogster) and click on the embedded links for more info. Hope to see you there!