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 During
Fall of 2009, MPICT initiated a pilot project to test a new
distributed ICT education delivery model.
This hybrid course delivery model allows students to
participate in the class "live," either by being physically
present in class, or by joining the live, interactive Internet
delivery of the class through the CCC Confer version of the
Elluminate platform. It allows all students access to archived
lectures and demonstrations any time via the Internet, and it
allows access to a closed-captioning record of what went on in
each class, creating the opportunity for new strategies in
student note-taking. Students have remote access to professors
through online office hours, and they can do lab exercises on
real equipment remotely.
This model has great potential.
Currently, most community college ICT-related programs
independently develop their courses, certifications, degrees,
business and other relationships, with relatively little
coordination with other departments at their college, or at
other colleges.
Rationally, ICT-related department chairs develop programs,
courses, degrees and certifications to optimally meet student
and employer demand. They offer courses in which they can
routinely or periodically fill the seats - and for which they
can justify required investments. If it costs a lot of money
for laboratory equipment to be able to teach students a
particular technology, they need to be able to fill a lot of
classes in order to justify that investment.
Individual ICT programs and departments do a good job serving
the high demand, center areas of a standard bell curve
distribution of demand for ICT education. However, there is
demand for more specialized and advanced courses which is
currently unmet by public education.
Many similar courses are offered at most colleges, which
enroll lots of students, but those students run out of choices
as they advance in their studies, and many
who want to come to community colleges to learn new
technologies do not find the courses they want.
For example, a new technology emerges. Progressive companies
are adopting it and hiring or developing employees to
implement and manage it, for strategic reasons. People inquire
at local colleges about relevant courses to develop knowledge
and skills for those jobs, but there are not enough inquiries
to justify the required faculty development and $100,000
equipment investment for hands-on labs. Those people are out
of luck, and economic growth is perhaps slowed as a result.
In other cases, timing of course offerings and student demand
for courses are out of synch. Students want to take a course
in the local curriculum in a semester in which it is not
offered. Not being able to take the course then slows their
academic and economic careers – and the corresponding economic
benefits at all levels.
In more rural locations with limited local employer demand for
various ICT knowledge and skill sets, often, local colleges do
not offer education services around those ICT knowledge and
skill sets. Students who want to get those knowledge and
skills sets locally to enable a move to an area with demand
for those knowledge and skill sets are often out of luck.
Many people choose to take ICT-related offerings at community
colleges, because they are affordable as a way to get
knowledge and skills that lead to new or better employment, or
that allow them to develop, grow and prosper in their careers
when companies will not pay for their training. Opportunities
to do so are limited when community college offerings are
limited.
As a society, we would be better off if we could find a way
for public education to affordably meet these currently unmet
demands for more specialized, esoteric, advanced and/or
non-local ICT knowledge and skills.
 In
many cases, while there is not enough local demand to justify
an academic offering in a specific program or semester at one
college, there is enough demand across the entire MPICT
region. MPICT has been looking at these problems in ways that
do not make sense for individual local programs or faculty.
MPICT’s vision is to create a system in which one or few
colleges can develop ICT programs, courses, degrees and
certificates to serve adequate regional demand, which they
could not justify on the basis of local demand – and in which
students can get desired educational services from the
community college system non-locally, which they cannot get
locally.
  This
Fall, MPICT piloted a course delivery model using CCC Confer (www.cccconfer.org),
a grant funded offering of Elluminate (www.elluminate.com,
which is free to California Community Colleges.
Elluminate goes beyond web conferencing with best-in-class
web, audio, video, and social networking solutions that help
create a 21st century teaching, learning, and collaboration
environment.
This model allowed students to:
• Attend an instructor led class in person,
• Participate in the class interactively in real time via the
Internet,
• Participate in the class in real time remotely on the
telephone,
• View archived classes any time on the Internet,
• Review archived, written class transcripts,
• Download classes to computers or mobile devices as audio or
video podcasts,
• Work on lab exercises in person or via collaborative remote
access to real equipment.
• Confer with teachers interactively during in-person and
online office hours
 The
pilot consisted of three courses offered by 3 different
community colleges.
City College of San Francisco’s CNIT department offered
“Operating Juniper Routers in the Enterprise.”
Juniper
Networks is a leader in the core router market, with its M
and T series routers running JUNOS. With its J-series routers,
introduced in 2006, Juniper Networks entered the Enterprise
market and created the
Juniper Networks Academic Alliance (JNAA), offering
courses through colleges to teach people the knowledge and
skills needed to install, manage and maintain Juniper
Enterprise routers.
City College of
San Francisco (CCSF) was one of its first members.
Many other colleges, in less densely populated areas, would
not be able to justify the $100,000 equipment investment
required to operate Juniper labs. For the first time, students
in those areas had an opportunity to take this course
affordably from a community college.
 MPICT
Regional Partner Cabrillo College, offered CCNP “Building
Scalable Cisco Internetworks (BSCI) v3.0.”
Cisco Systems
is a market leading ICT technology solutions company providing
equipment and technology that form the technical foundation of
many ICT service providers and enterprises. Its
Cisco Networking Academy serves 600,000 students annually
in more than 160 countries.
The
Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) is an advanced
segment of the Cisco Networking Academy curriculum and
certification program, which validates knowledge and skills
required to install, configure and troubleshoot converged
local and wide area networks with 100+ nodes. CCNP
Professionals demonstrate abilities to manage the routers and
switches at the network core, as well as edge applications
that integrate voice, wireless, and security into the network.
This CCNP course is typically not offered every semester at
community colleges which are Cisco Academies. This pilot gave
students at other colleges an opportunity to take the course
when it would not otherwise be available at their local
academy.
 MPICT
Regional Partner Foothill College offered “Information and
Storage Management,” by EMC.
EMC is a
market leader in the area of data storage systems and
management, an area of exploding growth and importance within
ICT. The amount of digital information created, captured and
replicated worldwide has grown tenfold in the last 5 years,
and the importance of that data to the strategic operations of
organizations of all kinds has grown with it. Because of a
shortage of knowledgeable and skilled people to manage
storage, storage design and implementation specialists are
among the highest paid workers in ICT.
To address this shortage, EMC has developed the global
EMC Academic Alliance (EAA). There are currently 3 EAA
members in California, and MPICT Regional Partner,
Foothill College’s
Computers, Technology & Information Systems department is
the only California Community College member. In this pilot,
for the first time, students at non-EAA colleges had an
opportunity to take an EAA course.
Informally, MPICT Regional Partner Santa Rosa Junior College
contributed to the pilot, because Professor Michael McKeever
there is an experienced Elluminate expert, who has been using
it in classes for several years and had a lot of great insight
and advice.
This Phase 1 pilot focused on delivering each of these courses
in the hybrid in-person/online format. Student participants
had to enroll in the host college to take the course, but they
were able to join the class remotely.
From the student perspective as well as the faculty
perspective, the distributed education pilot was very
successful:
• 80% of students responded that the ability to take parts of
a course online was a major factor affecting not only the
decision to enroll but also the ability to complete the
course.
• Over 90% of students who attended physical class sessions
reported that the online equipment and participation of online
students during the class session was not a distraction.
• All online students reported that their instructors were
available and responsive and that they did not feel isolated
by participating online.
• Most (78%) online students whose courses required them to
communicate or collaborate with peers reported that online
participation did not adversely affect peer interaction.
CCC Confer Screenshot While Configuring Real Router
Faculty experiences were overwhelmingly positive. This pilot
challenged them technically and pedagogically, but it was also
empowering to be able to reach and interact so effectively
with students at a distance.
Of course, the pilot did not go without glitches. It was a
learning experience for everyone. This spring, MPICT will work
on a Distributed ICT Education Faculty Toolkit, to incorporate
the collective experience and lessons of these efforts and
make it easier for other faculty to do this in the future. In
Phase 2 of this project, MPICT will pilot having new faculty
teach courses in this hybrid format, using the Toolkit, and
assess the Toolkit’s effectiveness.
Phase 3 of the project will tackle various administrative and
operational issues associated with systematizing this model
throughout the region. How can students most efficiently
enroll in remote courses? How would colleges share revenue?
How do credits transfer? How can ICT-related chair-people
incorporate remote courses into local degree and certificate
programs?
The implications and possibilities of this model are
intriguing. It creates the possibility of much greater
efficiencies and leverage for corporate contributions of
educational resources. It creates the possibility for more
people to attend classes. It should increase demand for
courses, improve student retention, broaden student prospects
and create more opportunities for students in rural
communities. It should have a positive impact on individual,
local, State, and regional economies, by cost-effectively
improving the capabilities of the ICT workforce and its
ability to implement and support technologies that improve
efficiencies and strategic capabilities of enterprises…
Back to Q4 2009
Newsletter |
