EdTech@VCCS

Check out Tidewater business faculty member Linda Williams, along with Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Daniel DeMarte and Associate Vice President for College Readiness Dr. Kim Bovee talk about open educational resources in a new video created by Lumen Learning.

TCC is the first college in the nation to offer a degree–called a “Z Degree”– that students can earn without incurring any textbook costs.

The annual Chancellor’s Innovation Fund (CIF) Grant provides colleges with an opportunity to apply for and receive funding for innovative projects aligned with Achieve 2015, particularly those that support the goals of access and student success. Selected projects can receive up to $75,000. Past CIF projects include the multi-college Teaching Online Program (TOP), PHCC’s HOPE: High-demand Occupational Programs for Employment (nominated for a 2014 Bellwether Award), and NVCC’s OER Based General Education Certificate Program.

This year, there were a record number of submissions, which made the task of selecting the best projects from so many worthy ones incredibly challenging. Grantees were selected by a committee of workforce and academic staff using a rubric aligned with the CIF criteria outlined in the request for proposals.

The following very worthy projects are the 2013-14 CIF grant winners. Congratulations to this year’s grantees!

College	Project Title	Award Amount
BRCC	BRCC Welding, Machining, & Fabrication Program	$74,537
CVCC	Preparing for the Virginia Placement Test	$24,000
DSLCC	Reaching Out with Expanded On-Line and Summer Enrichment Activities	$28,859
GCC	GCC Podcast Partners in Regional Workforce and Economic Development	$11,092
ESCC	ESCC Mini-MOOC: Orientation to Online Learning	$7,200
JTCC	Increasing College and Career Readiness in Future STEM Workers	$30,250
LFCC	Conceptual Exploration of a Virtual Environment in the Student Development Classroom	$7,500
LFCC	Principles of Accounting II OER Content	$10,200
NRCC	Innovative Course Development: From Manufacturing to Gaming	$53,000
NVCC	NOVA ELI OER-Based General Studies Program	$26,000
NVCC	TOTAL: Mainstreaming the Innovation	$24,955
NVCC	Advancing Education and Career Pathways for Veteran Students in Northern Virginia	$47,000
PHCC	Innovation Engineering: Create, Communicate, Commercialize	$16,500
PVCC	Homework System for Chemistry and Biology Classes at PVCC	$12,110
PVCC	Sharing the Wisdom and Methods of Master Teachers	$15,489
TCC	Pathway to OER: Embracing Open Content in the Classroom	$4000
TCC	Virtual Employment Academy (VEA)	$75,000
VHCC	Developing OERs in STEM-H Courses to Increase Student Access	$36,810
VWCC	Connecting Advisors to Improve Student Success	$21,586
VWCC	Creating a Bridge to Success–VWCC Quick Connect for Manufacturing Production Technician (MPT)	$25,116

The new Virginia Education Wizard mobile app is now available. The Wizard app enables users to quickly access information on careers, colleges, and paying for college. The app also assists users in reaching the Wizard website to further explore personal values and interests, college majors and programs of study at Virginia’s colleges and universities, and transferring from a community college to a four-year institution.

You can get the iOS app for iPhone available here. The iPad link is available here. The link for the Android phone and tablet is available here.

You can download the app using the links above or by searching for “Virginia Education Wizard” in the Apple or Google Play store.

franken_durbin

U.S. Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Al Franken of Minnesota have introduced legislation called the Affordable College Textbook Act with the goal of making college textbooks affordable and openly available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Bill S.1704 does 5 things, according to Senator Durbin’s press release:

Creates a grant program to support pilot programs at colleges and universities to create and expand the use of open textbooks with priority for those programs that will achieve the highest savings for students;
Ensures that any open textbooks or educational materials created using program funds will be freely and easily accessible to the public via a CC BY license;
Requires entities who receive funds to complete a report on the effectiveness of the program in achieving savings for students;
Improves existing requirements for publishers to make all textbooks and other educational materials available for sale individually rather than as a bundle; and
Requires the Government Accountability Office to report to Congress by 2017 with an update on the price trends of college textbooks.

In its own press release about Bill S. 1704, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) noted several existing open textbook programs that have proved successful in lowering costs for students, including Tidewater Community College’s “Z Degree” Program in Business Administration, the first degree program in the nation with zero textbook costs.

Also, last week at the OpenEd Conference in Utah, three OER projects from Virginia’s Community Colleges were included in the closing keynote: the Chancellor’s OER Adoption Grant, Tidewater’s Z Degree, and Northern Virginia’s OER General Education Certificate. The calculated cost savings to students from these 3 projects as well as other OER projects across the nation were tallied at $1 million dollars. (see related post on OpenEd 2013).

These are exciting times, and there is some real momentum developing around textbook affordability and OER. Virginia has a foot in the door. I hope the Commonwealth, and the VCCS, will continue to be a big part of these important efforts.

The_Future_of_Higher_Education___With_Good_Reason_Radio

The public radio show With Good Reason broadcast an episode this weekend on The Future of Higher Education and featured the Minding the Future/OpenVA conference. The episode is embedded above, in case you missed it. Below is an excerpt from a WGR press release about the show:

The program will feature the panel of David Wiley, Kin Lane, Alan Levine, Gardner Campbell, and Audrey Watters, moderated by Professor and Chair of History and American Studies at UMW Jeffrey McClurken. Experts from Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia State University also will discuss the challenges and opportunities of digital learning. The two-day conference was sponsored by the State Council for Higher Education and the University of Mary Washington.

Carol_Ann_Childress

A few weeks ago, VCCS colleague Carol Childress passed away unexpectedly. Her death is a significant loss for the VCCS, both in the Information Technology Services unit where she worked as well as in the rest of the community college system. Carol assisted with enterprise and other centralized technology systems. She was close to fulfilling 30 years of state service, having worked at Virginia Western Community College and then with VCCS ITS at the Greenfield facility. She was truly dedicated to the Virginia Community College System, and kept ITS grounded in the mission to serve students first.

To remember and honor Carol, the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education has setup a scholarship fund in her name. Carol generously supported the mission of the VCCS through her years of service and also supported the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education (VFCCE) through the CVC Campaign.

If you wish to contribute to this fund, you can send a check payable to the VFCCE to the address below. Please indicate that your contribution is for the Carol Childress Scholarship Fund. You can also donate on-line at www.vccs.edu/giving/.

VFCCE
101 N 14th Street, 15th Floor
Richmond, VA 23219