WCET Annual Meeting: What We Learned

Recently, the annual WCET (WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies) Annual Meeting was held in Denver, and some of the CCCOnline staff attended. Below are a few thoughts about what we learned. 

At the conference, it was emphasized in more than one presentation that national surveys of online students strongly indicate that students desire extensive engagement with their online instructors (good feedback in grading comments, active discussion participation, etc). This supports the emphasis of CCCOnline administrators on instructional quality.

-John Ragan

The stand out topics for me were moving whole programs to competency-based learning format and accreditation standards for working with vendors.  

-Monica Falk

I was struck by the idea that many hiring managers consider recent college graduates unprepared for the workforce, as was explained by Vernon Smith (Portmont College at Mount St. Mary’s). It was particularly interesting to me that the graduates themselves perceive they have a better mastery over certain soft skills than their managers think they do; this survey from Chegg shows the skills with the greatest gaps between the graduates’ and the managers’ perceptions. In a similar vein (i.e. thinking about lifelong learning and preparing students for what comes next), I enjoyed the closing keynote, “Social Learning Revolution,” by Jane Hart; her website, the Top 100 Tools for Learning, is worth exploring.

-Liz Dzabic

Also . . . this holiday week, we all would like to thank you for your ongoing commitment to our students, and we wish you and yours a happy Thanksgiving!