Pulling in Tandem

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Technology & the Community College

Pulling in Tandem

4/1/2007

By Susan D. Heid

“We found out early on,” says Chambers, “that it was going to be a difficult task.” The only way to make it work, the team decided, was to form a partnership with a major educational publishing company that could provide the learning objects the courses would need. Shortly after that realization, Chambers met first with execs at Thomson, to share the vision and progress of his group’s work.

“We spent a year going back and forth, meeting with them and with their instructional designers and the people running their labs,” says Chambers. “But after a year, we just couldn’t agree on a partnership.” At the time, he says “the company simply wasn’t ready to depart from the traditional mode of publishing.”

First partner: Pearson. Next came discussions with Pearson, whose execs were interested in an instructional design course called Creating Optimal Learning Environments (CREOLE), which—with local funds and a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education — FCCJ and Virginia Tech had developed jointly over a number of years. In June 2005, a deal was struck. Through its sales reps, Pearson would market the course to the company’s major textbook customers; FCCJ would promote it in the higher ed community. The technology side of the picture was still not nailed down, however, so in September 2005, FCCJ put out an “invitation to negotiate”: a statement expressing the school’s desire to use a technology provider’s learning objects and software to help the school publish its new breed of course material. That generated a visit from McGraw-Hill Education.

McGraw-Hill comes on board. McGraw-Hill had heard about CREOLE and wanted to market it. Although that part of the Sirius Project had been committed to Pearson, the team informed the publisher it was still seeking a partner for another facet of the project: the learning objects development. McGraw-Hill came on board in June 2006. Whereas Thomson had not been ready for the new breed of course material development and “Pearson was ready to try, but only on their terms,” McGraw-Hill was “open to trying new things,” recalls Chambers. Timing, in effect, was everything, and by bringing two different partners with different agendas to the table, FCCJ was able to launch a dream project that may not have gotten off the ground otherwise.

Materials, marketing, and more. The contract with McGraw-Hill lasts two-and-a-half years, says Chambers, covers 28 courses, and is renewable up to 2012. The first four courses will be basic skills reading, basic skills English, basic skills math, and basic psychology.