SBCTC has secured one large grant covering four separate projects under the heading of Washington State Student Completion Initiative. All four projects are tied together under the heading of Retention and Student Success. From the eLearning perspective we fit into the first project – Online Course Access and Success. The goal is to redesign 80 courses to use Open Educational Resources (OER) to improve affordability, accessibility, and student success. The courses were selected on the basis of High Enrollment and Low Completion, with predominantly young students who are from lower income households. That is who the Gates Foundation is most interested in helping. He has targeted Community Colleges in four different states with similar programs. There is a list of 81 courses, 80 existing courses and 1 proposed course. Money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will fund the first 25 courses, Ford Foundation and State money is being used to add the additional 56 courses. That list may be modified between now and the end of the calendar year.
The basics = redesign these 81 courses so that they are taught using digital resources available for little or no cost to the students. Those redesigned courses will then be made available to the world-wide web. Instructors and students from anywhere in the world will be able to access these course materials to use as they see fit. Our own faculty members within the state of Washington will be able to access these course materials and use them as they see fit in online, hybrid or F2F classes.
There will be room for instructional designers, librarians, eLearning staff, bookstore administrators and others to participate in the redesign project alongside the faculty members who are chosen. The process for determining who will participate in the grant has not been finalized. There will be a series of informational sessions held via Elluminate over the next month. These sessions are open to whoever is interested in listening and/or participating. (If you have not ever used Elluminate please review the information posted by Scott and take advantage of a little advance training.)
Washington State Student Completion Initiative – Course Redesign Project “town hall” meetings:
- Wednesday, November 4: 3:00 – 4:30pm
- Monday, November 9: 10:00 – 11:30am
- Tuesday, November 17: 1:00 – 2:30pm
- Friday, December 4: 2:00 – 3:30pm
Elluminate recordings for all meetings: Open Course Library Wiki