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Technology & the Community College
Pulling in Tandem
4/1/2007
The training, of course, brings its own rewards: After all, it prepares faculty to tackle the development of their own course materials. Once trained, teams of four are assigned to the development of a given course, with eight courses in development at a time. Initially, the team leader receives $4,500 and each team member gets $3,500. If the team completes the entire course within four semesters—including teaching it in beta form, then modifying it based on the results of the beta—each person receives an additional $500. As added motivation, three outside academicians familiar with different areas of higher ed will form a judging panel during that phase, to rate which one of the eight courses is the most creative and best engages the student. The winning team will receive an additional $500 per person.The initial funding for the program came from several grants handed out by FCCJ’s Strategic Planning Council, a group of 35 individuals who represent administrators, faculty, students, and other campus constituencies. The council meets quarterly and manages a budget of a million dollars a year, says Chambers; it doles out those funds to worthwhile proposals, in increments of up to $150,000.
For other schools looking to enhance their own online programs through similar course material development projects, Chambers offers these words of advice about building successful partnerships: “Stop thinking the way you’ve been taught to think in an institution,” he warns. Instead, “You have to start thinking more creatively, and take more risks. The biggest problem I see is the lack of risk taking—saying, ‘This is the way it’s been for the last 500 years and this is the way it should always be.’ If you start with that thought, then you won’t do these things, which are very high-risk.”
The Vendor as Scientific Study Partner
At GateWay Community College in Phoenix, AZ, Lisa Young is program director of water resources, and also serves as eLearning coordinator for the institution. Young evaluated a number of companies before settling on a partner vendor for an online collaboration service she envisioned setting up within her district. Even now, she says, her decision isn’t final—that is, unless results from her study of the implementation help her to conclude that it’s worthwhile.
Special challenges. Young has a unique set of students at GateWay Community College (one of 10 schools that make up Arizona’s Maricopa Community College District). They’re signed up to take her hydrology or water treatment courses, yet they frequently work in water treatment plant jobs where their shifts change on a monthly basis. That means that Young’s students may not work the same days each week. One month, a student might work a graveyard shift; the next month, it might be a daytime shift.
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