Mid-Biennium Report (Spring 2016)

May 12, 2016 | News

Introduction

In the spring of 2015, the Oregon Community College Distance Learning Association (OCCDLA), voted to increase the budget for Operations and Support, bringing the half-time Operations and Support Administrative Assistant position to full-time and upping the materials and supplies budget to match. This position and corresponding materials and supplies is funded by the Office of Community College and Workforce Development via IGRA 0831. As denoted in the project proposal, this report reflects on the outcomes of the funding as well as the overall OCCDLA budget, statewide savings through consortial licensing, and participation in professional development.

Year 1 Accomplishments

In the first year of the 2015-2017 biennium, OCCDLA has made gains in all of its strategic initiatives and focus areas.

Statewide Collaboration

Since the start of the biennium, OCCDLA has hosted a summer retreat and two quarterly meetings as well as roughly 20 workgroup and subcommittee meetings. Our collaboration at these meetings, mostly virtual, has centered around our strategic initiatives as well as the topics of student retention and completion, best practices in online learning, online student on-boarding, accessibility, and learner analytics.

Increased statewide collaboration has also been achieved in our work with and for affinity groups around the state. In addition to adding members of the Council of Instructional Administrators (CIA) to each workgroup. We have dedicated time to consider and align with the goals of Student Success Oversight Committee (SSOC) in our own meetings and through OCCDLA liaisons to SSOC. We have reached out to Oregon President’s Council (OPC) as well, both directly and through CIA members. As part of our spring quarterly meeting, we will conduct a joint session with Oregon Community College Library Association (OCCLA) at Mt. Hood Community College. OCCDLA members also led a session at the Student Success and Retention Conference this February.

Savings Through Consortial Licensing

OCCDLA continues to save money and provide state-of-the-art technology to colleges large and small with consortium pricing. Our estimates for this year’s savings are:

Films on Demand: $58,000
AST Captioning: $4,580
Quality Matters: $24,200
Kaltura: $33,850
Blackboard Collaborate: $115,000

Emergent Technology

The Emergent Technology Workgroup (ETWG) reviews new educational technologies and makes recommendations about adoption for our consortium. This biennium, OCCDLA chose to dedicate funds to a part-time ETWG Coordinator. So far ETWG has initiated a pilot of Zoom, helped create a website (integrated into OCCDLA.net), developed a technology evaluation form, clarified the workgroup scope as being technology from the faculty perspective, piloted OfficeMix, and evaluated Portland Community College’s AST simulation for accessible car mechanic education.

Professional Development

Our Professional Development workgroup this year has been focusing both on tried and true Quality Matters training as well as some innovative approaches. This January, three colleges were recipients of $1000 grants for projects to enhance course quality; Klamath, Central Oregon, and Oregon Coast. Flexible professional development funds have also been made available to each campus for QM training outside of the Oregon-based online courses. Numerous OCCDLA members and faculty from around the state attended NW eLearn this year in Olympia as well with CCWD dollars and the Professional Development team is ready and waiting for the QM National Conference which will be held this coming October in Portland.

New approaches have also been exercised in our Quality Matters training this year. We offered the Applying the QM Rubric (APPQMR) course again this fall and spring.  These were collaboratively led and attended by Oregon’s online community college teachers and supporting online learning departments. That training was complemented this year by two sessions of QM’s Improving Your Online Course (IYOC). These intensive two-week courses gave participants the opportunity to:

  • Recognize QM’s foundational concepts.
  • Use their own online or blended course to which they will apply the essential Standards of the Quality Matters Rubric.
  • Describe the alignment of at least one module/unit in their online course.
  • Prioritize improvements to their online course.

The Professional Development Workgroup will also again send two nominees to the Instructional Technology Council Leadership Academy to be held in Summer 2016 in Asheville, North Carolina.

Open Educational Resources

For information on the OER project, the Operations workgroup defers to the corresponding OER Librarian Position Year 1 Report submitted by Amy Hofer.

Year 2 Expectations

The second half of the biennium will look very much like the first as we will grow and maintain our existing projects. Unique to 2016-2017 will be our participation in the Quality Matters national conference in Portland. We will also look ahead to the next biennium to develop and approve our next game plan. Evaluation of our current projects, the evolution of our student success work, and collaboration with our statewide affinity groups will be key to our long-range planning.