Innovations
July
2017
Flexibility is the new black, or so it seems. We want products and services when we want them—no matter when that is. Online shopping is a 24/7 endeavor. Instructions, forms, explanations, and often the ability to pay electronically are the norm for everything from federal taxes to hotel reservations. Higher education institutions are joining this limber game to make going to college as barrier free as possible.
One concept that is gaining much national attention is competency-based or personalized learning. Anyone who engaged in what used to be called an independent study course knows the...
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Today’s employers know that skilled workers don’t grow on trees. Sometimes, you have to grow your own talent.
With rapid advances in technology, job titles like Smartphone Application Developer and Patient Care Technician simply didn’t exist a decade ago, so qualified candidates are few.
Employers scrambling to find workers with the right stuff often turn to Norwalk Community College (NCC) in Norwalk, Connecticut. That’s because NCC tracks industry trends and readily deploys associate degree and certificate programs to produce workers who can hit the ground running.
Employers serve on the...
As part of the reaffirmation process of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, Wake Technical Community College launched a Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) initiative based on best practices in eLearning. The goal of the eLearning Preparedness Initiative across the College (EPIC) is to remove learning barriers and better support online student learning, persistence, and success. A broad cross-functional and multidisciplinary team of faculty and staff developed and implemented eLearning Quality Standards, an online student orientation, and a faculty...
We live in a digital age, so we may assume that digital is always better. But that isn’t necessarily the case when it comes to audio recording. The new recording studio at Volunteer State Community College is state-of-the-art analog. Another room has home studio equipment. That may seem strange at a college with yet another studio that is fully digital and fully automated. The reason is simple: learning.
“The vision for our process is to have three different recording environments,” said Entertainment Media Production Director, Steve Bishir.
The original studio has a fully-digital, fully-...
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June
2017
Clutter is a topic that divides people much as mustard on hot dogs or catsup on eggs. We have camps of believers who rarely even attempt to cross over to the other side to look for mutual ground. Some claim a cluttered office calms them and helps them think. And other see clutter as a mess that wastes both time and energy. I fall into the latter group—I’m sentimental about homemade gifts my grown children created as youths and a few old photographs, but even those are rather well organized.
I don’t do clutter, but I know a lot of faculty who do, and I’ve theorized as to why academics often...
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Communication faculty often have a unique opportunity to hear students’ own stories. These stories permeate the work of learning public speaking. Faculty members at Pellissippi State Community College recently launched In Our Words, a public forum in which students share their stories with audiences beyond the public speaking classroom. Public speaking generally benefits both speaker and audience, and In Our Words certainly does that. Benefits also extend to the Communication Studies department and other areas of the college.
Process
Pellissippi State has, for years, had a robust faculty...
Marlie Burt was 75 miles away from fellow classmates when she worked on a group project last semester. Burt, who lives in La Harpe, Illinois, and attends classes at Carl Sandburg College’s branch campus in Carthage, collaborated with her classmates via a telepresence robot located on the Main Campus in Galesburg, where the other students in her police administration and management course met.
Burt attended the class by controlling the robot—affectionately named Sheldon, after The Big Bang Theory character—while sitting at a computer station at the branch campus. With Sheldon, distance was no...
May
2017
Free is good. We all like getting a free deal. And free college education is all the rage right now. In fact, it is one of the most exciting, interesting, and confounding topics in higher education at the moment. Now everyone knows that free in this conversation doesn’t really mean free free, but the thought of shifting the cost associated with all or part of college to someone/something else riles people up nonetheless. Students and parents may see this proposal as a way to receive crucial educational credits without the burden of lifelong debt; while educators and legislators are attempting...
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May
2017
Technology is not exactly a necessary evil. We all use it, and we all need it. Regardless, it isn’t going away—that train left the station quite some time ago. Admit that up front and life is easier. As Hamlet reminds us, “There is no thing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Milton probably gets closer to the mark regarding our love/hate relationship with technology in saying, “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
We all can make our own use of technology heavenly or hellish. And nowhere is this juxtaposition clearer that in higher...
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May
2017
Some ideas just seem so solid—an effective use of our time and resources. Who can argue with plans such as cooking all your healthy lunches for the week in one enjoyable and efficient cooking session on a Sunday? Or ironing all your shirts as they come out of the laundry? That these best laid schemes don’t always materialize is the challenge. Great ideas are often fraught with possible detractors.
Higher education has some of these great ideas—plans that are truly sound and effective—if everything works out. The concept of stackable credentials is one such idea. Having students work toward...
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May
2017
Students must display personal responsibility and autonomy in their pursuit of a college education. We do students no favor by pretending otherwise. These character traits are critical to a successful, fulfilling life. And yet many students come to college needing guidance, encouragement, advice, and direct instruction in how to transform their vague notions of career and life goals into concrete, demonstrable skills, knowledge, and credentials. Fortunately, they’ve come to the right place. At San Jacinto College, every decision we make revolves around student success. In formal meetings and...
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May
2017
Can you teach creativity? That question opens up many debates that resound throughout all levels of education. Some claim that individuals either are or are not creative and that no amount of exposure, practice, or direct instruction will make those nons more creative. In fact, it may frustrate them to the point of quitting all together.
Perhaps you’ve heard the possibly apocryphal stories that Einstein wasn’t brilliant in grammar school, Disney’s first drawings were rejected, and that McCartney wasn’t allowed to take music in school for an apparent lack of talent. So if these titans were...
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In 2012, the League established the John & Suanne Roueche Excellence Awards to celebrate outstanding contributions and leadership by community college faculty and staff. These awards are open to League Board and Alliance member institutions, and each year’s recipients are recognized in a series of activities and promotions, and honored at special events at the League's Innovations Conference each spring.
The 2016 Excellence Award recipients were recognized at the Innovations Conference in San Francisco, CA, March 12-15, 2017. Special events included an exclusive Excellence Awards...
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April
2017
One way to encourage tenacious behavior is to create opportunities for students to use metacognitive and self-regulatory strategies. Carol Dweck, Gregory Walton, and Geoffrey Cohen, describe a few of the psychological interventions from various research studies that support these behaviors. However, I believe that for the interventions to work, more instructors need to adopt strategies that promote effective learning habits across the curriculum. We all need to provide students with instruction that moves them from passive learners to active learners.
In addition to Dweck et al., there are...
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Arapahoe Community College (ACC) has accepted from the Castle Rock Town Council the investment of $3 million in infrastructure reimbursement to construct a Collaboration Campus. The campus will bring together education, business, and the community to create a unique resource for delivering seamless education and workforce training to Castle Rock. Educational partners Colorado State University (CSU) and Douglas County School District (DCSD) will articulate with ACC to create a smooth pathway from high school diploma to associate degree to bachelor’s degree.
ACC will continue its commitment to...
April
2017
At the end of 2016, I received several emails shouting the headline, “best books of the year”. Usually, I don’t read through these lists because I think I don’t have time to read for pleasure or can’t afford the “distraction” from grading, planning, etc. However, with the winter break fast approaching and wanting to leave the challenges of the past semester behind me, I decided to check out the lists.
First, the lists include a wide array of options for any reader. I didn’t realize there were so many different lists out there. I’ll highlight a few and pick something from each one.
First, and...
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April
2017
This semester has been a challenge for me. Typically, students are engaged, curious, and have the desire to learn. However, this semester, I’ve experienced a class like no other in my recent memory. I never assume the classes or students will be the same as past experience. However, one of the classes had such negative energy, that was troubling to me and I did not know how to deal with the discontent. Something similar happened early last semester, but I was able to turn that class around and the semester ended well. You may be thinking, what does my experience have to do with the third...
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Midland College (MC) has been named as a Cadre 1 community college to participate in an integrated statewide approach to student success. For the past two years, MC has been designing and implementing a pathways model with clear, educationally coherent program maps that are aligned for program completion, quality credentials, workforce skills, and transferability for baccalaureate and graduate degrees. As a result of MC’s efforts, the college has been recognized as a leader in the Texas Success Center’s Texas Pathways initiative, and the MC developmental math program has been named as...
April
2017
One useful, practical, and sensible concept in the pursuit of a college education seems to be a well-kept secret and certainly is not something students dwell on while thinking about attending college. That concept is the presence, or more often absence, of articulation agreements between different schools.
Articulation or transfer agreements are formal statements two institutions enter into documenting the transfer policies between the two schools. The specific departments and divisions at the schools carefully review the degree requirements and establish a checklist of sorts. If students...
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April
2017
Just as filing, dishes, and laundry can pile up and become dreaded tasks of epic proportion, the recordkeeping, assessment, and reporting elements associated with the traditional college reaffirmation cycle can cause a sense of panic in even the most seasoned higher education veterans.
Reaffirmation to maintain accredited status typically comes around every ten years. Regional accreditation agencies (ours is called the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges or SACSCOC, but there are others across the country) are tasked to liaison between educational institutions...
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