Pulling in Tandem

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Technology & the Community College

Pulling in Tandem

4/1/2007

By Susan D. Heid

In Part Two of our special report on vendor partnering, we look at two community colleges and their unique approaches to software challenges: multiple vendor partners for an online learning materials initiative, and the vendor as scientific study partner for an online collaboration tools pilot.

Technology & the Community Finding the perfect vendor partner for any campus initiative takes more than patience and planning; it takes an open mind. In the case of the two institutions and their software initiative leaders profiled below, a careful assessment of need—coupled with a good deal of out-of-the-box thinking—led to innovative approaches to vendor partnering for project success. Got an upcoming software initiative that could use some help? Throw out preconceived ideas and look for a win-win in the technology vendor community.

Multiple Partners May Be The Answer

Jack Chambers is the executive director of organizational learning services for Florida Community College at Jacksonville where, two years ago, he and his team dreamed up the Sirius Project—the development of lowcost but highly interactive course materials to assist the large number of students involved in online education. Of FCCJ’s 46,000 students, nearly a third take courses online on a regular basis. In addition, the college has sizable contracts with the US Navy, which have the potential to add an additional 24,000 students to its rolls. The school has to date placed about 100 courses online, including every general education course it offers. Prior to the Sirius Project, each online course used standard textbooks and was developed internally.

The thrust of Sirius, however, was to develop courses that didn’t use the standard textbooks; via Sirius, the faculty would write their own. In fact, they would be challenged to develop the entire contents of the course—not just the textual content, but interactive components as well. The goals: to limit each textbook to 150 pages, price it at $60 (including shipping), and include both a CD and an online element for access to additional materials such as discussion questions and interactive tools that don’t require a lot of bandwidth for downloading. (The CD was intended to benefit students who don’t always have internet connectivity.)

“The idea,” says Chambers, “is that [Naval] students at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine can still study, because they have a CD and a book. When their tour of duty is over or they have internet access, they can catch up with discussion questions.”

A sizable undertaking. Still, as simple and straightforward as the Sirius initiative may sound now, that’s how overwhelming the details behind the venture soon became, after the project was launched. Fact is, if Chambers hadn’t persisted in his search for just the right textbook publishing partner, the whole thing might still be just an idea.