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!

General Reminders for CCCOnline Instructors

Greetings! Today, Terry Reeves, CCCOnline’s Dean of Academic Instruction, has a few reminders for instructors as we begin the semester.

Hello,
I hope this message finds you doing well. As we’re starting spring session 2 soon, here are some “fyi” updates:

· Spring session one enrollment is up about 4% from last spring; spring session two is currently 3% above from last year, but it may pick up a bit more before the second session starts.

· A great resource is our “Who to Contact” page if you need help within CCCOnline. Please see http://at.ccconline.org/faculty/wiki/Policies_&_Procedures_-_Who_to_Contact.

· For CCCOnline related business, you must use your CCCS email address; do not use your personal email address. For confidentiality purposes (e.g., FERPA) personal email is not secure.

· CCCOnline is conducting a search for an Executive Director. We hope to have someone on board soon and look forward to sharing that news with you.

· Course Signals is coming soon. Course Signals is software developed by Purdue University as an early alert system using Data from D2L and Banner to allow an instructor to set criteria for early alerts. More information will be forthcoming, but wanted to give you all a heads-up as this will help us to further help our students.

· Maria Schnell recently joined our Training Team as our eLearning Specialist; we’re happy she’s here! If you have questions about training, please contact Maria at maria.schnell@cccs.edu. If you would like to know more about her, please see http://cccoexcellence.blogspot.com/2011/12/introducing-our-new-elearning.html.

Thank you for being a part of CCCOnline and for the teaching expertise you offer our system students. I know many of you also do course development and training work with us. Please know your efforts are noticed and appreciated. I wish you all a smooth-going and successful semester.

Best,
Terry

Thanks to You

All of us at CCCOnline send warm wishes to our instructors and their families for a happy Thanksgiving, and we’d also like to thank you for your ongoing dedication to student learning.

Enjoy your holiday!