Linda Smarzik an Administrators View

00:47 – WHY CBE?

• New demographic – 36-37 years old, very busy, have jobs and many have degrees, wanting to “re-career” or career up
• Another demographic – younger, underserved, not degreed, using 600 computer ACCelerator and tutors
• Finally, have Women In It program – using CBE to get more women into Computer Science and Information Technology careers

02:58 – HOW TO START A CBE PROGRAM

Different for every college, but for ACC:

• Started out with strong team – Administrator, department chair, very interested adjunct faculty member
• Met every week
• Built a giant timeline with tasks to do
• Very time consuming for first several months
• Strong project manager required
• Grew the team – added project manager, multimedia specialist, instructional designer, student support specialist, recruiter
• Once team built, Administrator took more of a background role

Faculty buy-in essential

CBE not new, but using for Distance Learning is new

Important to present to upper administration and at conferences

05:22 – HOW TO GET FACULTY BUY-IN

Western Governors University came in 4 times and gave workshops covering

• CBE in general
• Assessments
• Student Services

Understand that you will have early adopters, somewhat interested and those never interested in CBE – this is normal

Department Chair was good about

• parsing out information about status of grant
• revealing that money was available as incentive to
• ensuring faculty received training so they knew what to do

By end of program at ACC, enthusiasm was so strong that many faculty members changed their traditional courses to a CBE model

07:35 – THE IMPORTANCE OF STUDENT SUPPORT

In the beginning, CBE team did not think Student Support Specialist was needed. Now have one and can see need for several more

The ACC Student Support Specialist

• Understands the program
• Acts somewhat as an advisor to the students, guiding the students through registration, course expectations – is an anchor point

ACC is trying to build on this idea of a Student Support Specialist by having the general advisors specialize to advise in certain subjects – to have a niche.

09:22 – USING AN ACADEMIC COACH

Western Governors University uses a model of a coach and a student support specialist. Due to funding, ACC has one person fill both roles.

• Gets students into the program
• Advises them
• Acts a coach to remind students how many courses left to take, apply for graduation, etc.

Some coaches at other colleges might help students who need help with a particular area of their curriculum

10:43 – REGULATORY CONSIDERATIONS

Accreditation in Texas is through Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) and Texas Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) – These are ACC’s regulatory boards

When you want to set up a CBE program, immediately contact your accrediting agency and let them know

Because ACC’s CBE courses are credit-based, SACS and THECB had no issues. Both agencies just needed to be able to measure that the courses were CBE rather than traditional in class or distance learning

11:57 – THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “CREDIT-BASED” & “DIRECT ASSESSMENT”

Credit-based uses same credit system as regular courses

Direct Assessment strips away the credit hour system

ACC chose not to do Direct Assessment because it would be too disruptive to the back-end systems

13:20 – BACK-END CHALLENGES

Front-End entails:

• Building the curriculum
• Recruiting the students
• Marketing
• Helping students get jobs

Front-End tremendous job but much easier than Back-End

Back-End challenges include:

• Registration
• Financial Aid
• How to pay faculty
• How to Load faculty

Would be nice to simplify registration process – organize course offerings by degree/certificate programs instead of having student wade through entire list of CBE courses each semester (ACC has 41 courses which students can choose to take in 16 weeks, 12 weeks or 8 weeks)

Faculty Loading – need 14-16 students to make a class. Gets complicated when enrollment does not make a class and classes need to be combined. Need to figure out how to pay faculty per student, rather than class.

16:53 – THE FUTURE OF CBE

Other universities have been able take distance learning nation-wide and even internationally. This could increase funding streams

CBE organizes course work in such a way that may not reflect the textbook but enables the student to understand competencies needed in a career

Departments at ACC want to have accelerated, online options for their programs

As population moves toward being more mobile (using phones, tablets, laptops), many students no longer want to sit through a traditional 16-week course

19:55 – THE IMPORTANCE OF INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIPS

ACC has alliances with about 140-150 industry specialists in Austin area relating to computer information technology, some of whom have agreed to:

• Interview ACC students
• Look at the competencies
• Work with faculty

Industry input one of the most important aspects of ACC’s Accelerated Programmer Training (APT) program – makes students realize they have the potential to be employed when they finish

21:29 – CBE CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES

Challenges include:

• Building a team that is strong enough to understand and build a CBE program
• Funding – ACC is very happy with APT program and is helping to sustain the team

Successes include:

• APT program has doubled it’s degree and certificate seekers in the last year
• Success rate has gone up 5%
• More women have found success in Computer Information Technology field
• Have seen students who have been able to move through, re-career, and find employment
• Close to 900 students since inception of program – new students to ACC who might not have otherwise had time to go back to college

24:00 – SUSTAINING A CBE PROGRAM

When funding runs out, how do you sustain the program?

Other areas of ACC now want to have CBE programs so CBE is growing organically

With one team (leader, course designer, multimedia person, student support specialist and person placing students in jobs) ACC can build about 8 courses a semester. As the team grows, can build more courses

ACC’s grant came through so fast (8 CBE courses online in 8 months) that only now being able to build strong policies and procedures and spread out to rest of college

26:24 – STUDENT REACTION TO CBE

78% of students take 1-2 courses a semester and now see hope that it’s not going to take 6 years to get through a 2 year degree

27:51 – MARKETING CBE TODAY

Marketing today is very different than marketing of the past – education does not have the funding for radio, television and film marketing routes to get a student to understand CBE

• Instead need a really strong website
• Go beyond the flyer and poster and talk to Chamber of Commerce
• Do recruitment sessions
• Chamber of Commerce promotes program and sends people to recruitment sessions that brings in 50-100 people showing up to a session every few months
• Use social media
• Capture email addresses from website to product such as Salesforce. Emails can be put in categories such as “Interested,” “Not interested,” “Not qualified,” “Contact in future.” Then build recruitment database. Go back and contact people

Sitting back and twiddling thumbs and thinking “you have built it, they will come” is a thing of the past