Innovation and Leadership

WCET’s broad range of projects is designed to serve the general membership along with specific niches within it. Many also inform the larger higher education community. Support for these projects comes from membership dues, fees for service, grants, and contracts.

AdjunctMatch Pilot

AdjunctMatch, launched in March 2005, is an online service designed to facilitate the adjunct hiring process for higher education institutions and individuals seeking part-time employment as instructors teaching online or by other distance learning modalities. The long-term plan for AdjunctMatch was that it would be supported by a combination of participation fees and advertising revenue, as well as by some fee-based auxiliary services.

The plan for the launch included three phases to allow WCET to evaluate the viability of operating the service at each stage. During Phase I, which concluded in February 2006, 10 member institutions paid a participation fee (payment made in FY05) and had representatives serving on the advisory committee. These included Chemeketa Community College, OR; Cochise College, AZ; Eastern New Mexico University, NM; West Hills Community College, CA; Bellevue Community College, WA; Victoria College, TX; Eastern Oregon University, OR; Oregon State University, OR; University of Alaska Southeast, Sitka Campus, AK; and UT TeleCampus, TX.

The advisory committee made many recommendations for improvements in the service and tested the various components as they were implemented into the AdjunctMatch site. At the conclusion of Phase I, however, WCET decided to turn over the ownership and operations to Adjunctopia, its partner in the development of the site. Bruce Antley of Dow, Lohnes and Albertson provided legal advice on the dissolution of the partnership as an in-kind contribution to the project.

Center for Transforming Student Services

WCET, in partnership with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) and Seward Inc., established the Center for Transforming Student Services (CENTSS) in November 2005 as a virtual one-stop site, providing institutions with the tools and training they need to develop and deliver high-quality student services online. Through the center (www.centss.org), institutions can license the CENTSS Online Audit Tool to bench-mark their student services across four generations of online sophistication. CENTSS also provides a searchable collection of resources about online student services and best practice profiles of services identified in its research efforts. Through CENTSS institutions can also contract for an independent CENTSS-expert audit, for workshops and webcasts, and for consulting services to assist them in redesigning their services to increase student success and retention.

Prior to establishing CENTSS, MnSCU contracted with Pat Shea and Darlene Burnett to develop the audit tool for 20 services and has since donated its use to the partnership. Seward built the online version and hosts the CENTSS site.

CENTSS is a self-sustaining project funded by contracts and license fees. Pat Shea serves as its director.

The following activities provided support during this fiscal year.

• WCET & Higher Learning Commission Joint Workshop. Through this joint workshop, “Best Practices in Student Services Online: Providing Experiences that Support Learners,” the Higher Learning Commission and WCET provided a forum for teams from 22 institutions to critically examine seven key online services students use and to explore and adapt good practices that will enhance their services. Fifteen presenters and mentors provided participants with an overview of good practices and findings, based on WCET audits of student services online. Institutions prepared for the workshop by using the CENTSS audit tool in advance. It was held June 7-9 in Lisle, IL.

• CENTSS Online Audit Licenses. On April 1, 2006, CENTSS began offering institutions the opportunity to license the CENTSS Online Audit Tool and pay online to examine as many as 20 of their services. Five institutions licensed it during this fiscal year. Twenty-two institutions registered for the Higher Learning Commission workshop and had complimentary access to the audit tool to benchmark seven services.
  
  Institutions can license the tool at several promotional prices including discounts for institutions in the WICHE states and for WCET members.
  
  CENTSS is currently working with three partner institutions – Kapi’olani Community College (HI), Northern Arizona University, and Washington State University – to identify improvements for the next version.

• NCHEMS for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Pat Shea worked with NCHEMS to develop a survey for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education in response to its RFP for an environmental scan of services provided to stakeholders by virtual consortia. The project will be completed and payment made in FY07.

• Arizona Regents University (Phase III). WCET assisted the staff of Arizona Regents University in developing the functional and technical requirements for a new web-based infrastructure, writing an RFP, evaluating the responses to it, and developing a budget for implementation. The work was concluded in December 2005.

EduTools

EduTools (www.edutools.info) provides objective, independent reviews of selected e-learning software products and online courses. The site also allows users to take information from the site and to go through a step-by-step decision making process, to find out what products will best meet institutional needs. EduTools is most widely known for its reviews of course management systems. The site is based on the pioneering work of Bruce Landon of Douglas College, who serves as a senior advisor on the site. Scott Leslie of the British Columbia campus serves as the chief reviewer on the site. Russell Poulin directs EduTools.

In the past year, EduTools has undertaken the following review activities:

• Rewrite of EduTools software. Based on requests for using the EduTools framework for comparing institutional data or other information that could be easily categorized, the web pages and database structure were re-written to provide more flexibility. The new update allows WCET to sell that service. This feature has already been used in consulting engagements for MIT, Alaska, and eArmyU.

• One-time Reviews. EduTools has continued to form groups of users who are interested in reviews of products that are early in the adoption cycle. The group pays for the reviews and has sole access to them until an agreed-upon date, when the results are published on the site. Group members also share information with each other about their requirements in searching for a software product and what they have learned about the product thus far. Concluding their work this year were four partners (Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, Oklahoma Board of Regents’ ONE Net, and the University of North Carolina System), which funded a second set of reviews of learning object repositories.
  
  From October 2005 through May 2006, EduTools partnered with the Electronic Portfolio Action Committee – International to form a third group of seven partners, focused on ePortfolio products. The final report for that project will be released in July and a presentation will be made at the WCET annual conference. As a new feature of the reviews, WCET engaged David Giguerre of Boston Research & Communications to perform a business analysis of the companies whose products were being reviewed. EduTools will pursue requests for additional ePortfolio product reviews to be conducted this summer.

• Online Course Evaluation Project. EduTools has partnered with the Monterey Institute of Technology and Education’s (MITE) Online Course Evaluation Project in providing reviews and comparisons of commercially available online courses. MITE developed a rubric and service for conducting independent reviews of online high school, Advanced Placement, and college courses. Initial reviews were conducted with assistance from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. WICHE’s Western Consortium for Accelerated Learning Options funded additional reviews of online AP course options.

WCET undertook the following new course review activities in the last year:

• We assisted in the design and implementation of the Consumers Guide to Online AP Courses.

• In support of the eArmyU consulting project, reviews of three online courses from each of six eArmyU institutions were conducted. In addition, an “overall review” was created for each institution based upon the three reviews and other facts learned from conducting the reviews.

• With funding from the Hewlett Foundation, plans are underway for WCET to review and post additional courses solicited from colleges by MITE.

In the past year, EduTools has undertaken the following consulting activities:

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology commissioned a survey of 10 peer institutions to learn about two e-learning topics: course/learning management systems and course-materials life cycle. The results will be disseminated in fall 2006.

• Utah Education Network. The Utah Education Network sought assistance in creating an RFP for a statewide course management system (CMS) license. Bruce Landon, Scott Leslie, and Russell Poulin provided advice on elements that should be in the RFP and on ways to assess and score the vendor submissions.

• University of Alaska. The University of Alaska commissioned EduTools to conduct a survey of both faculty and students to address the question: “Do the University of Alaska course management systems meet the needs for instructional delivery for the University of Alaska?” The results of the survey will be used to decide whether additional work is needed to find a new CMS product or supplementary products to meet educational needs.

In the past year, EduTools has undertaken the following grant activities:

• EduTools received a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (which funded its initial development) to conduct a study resulting in a business plan to support EduTools. Eduventures, the firm selected to conduct the analyses, submitted its report in June.

International Benchmarking Project
with Observatory for Borderless Higher Education

WCET partnered with the U.K.-based Observatory for Borderless Higher Education this year on a benchmarking project that included a dozen institutions from the U.S., U.K. and Australia. The central topic for the benchmarking was the policy and practices around the integration of technology into all aspects of campus operations. Each university compiled an institutional review document that underpins the benchmarking process and sets out a series of questions through which institutional leaders and administrators are invited to consider current practice.

The topic areas covered in 2005 included: IT strategy development, IT operations management, e-learning operations management, resources for IT infrastructure, staff development and training, communication and feedback/monitoring, and review. From the institutional information, WCET staff developed statements of good practice, which were analyzed in a workshop that included the university leadership from the participating institutions. Participants were then able to rate their practices against these good practices.

Plans were also completed for a second benchmarking project on “The Evolving Academic Endeavour: Impact of Using Technology in Learning and Teaching.” To get underway in the fall, that project will focus on the impact of e-learning on policies and practices for academic staffing, recruitment, retention, development, promotion, and reward.

Open Education Resources

WCET has been involved with the open education resources (OER) movement since its inception in 2001. Open educational resources are a direct reaction to an emerging trend to privatize information. They include courseware, content modules, learning objects, learner support and assessment tools, and online learning communities.

They also include resources to support teachers: tools for teachers and support materials to enable them to create, adapt, and use OER, as well as training materials and other teaching tools. In addition, they include resources to assure the quality of education and educational practices. Open educational resources champion the sharing of knowledge worldwide to increase human intellectual capacity.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the first to announce its open courseware project. There are now seven other U.S. institutions with open courseware projects. For example: Rice University’s Connexions project offers faculty tools for creating their own OERs for others to use and modify; and Carnegie Mellon University has created electronic “textbooks” that are being used by secondary schools and colleges throughout the world. Dozens of other OERs have been developed in five additional countries, and more open education resource projects are developing all the time.

With the continued support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Sally Johnstone represented the Hewlett Foundation’s work on open educational resources at conferences in the U.S., Europe, and the Asia Pacific Region. She was also involved in the international, online conversation coordinated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the ways these resources are being used in developing countries. Johnstone also served on the advisory group for an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study examining the barriers to OER use and development.

Technology Costing Methodology (TCM)

WCET’s Technology Costing Methodology (TCM) is a set of step-by-step procedures that enable institutional leaders to analyze the costs of using technology in both on- and off-campus instruction. Developed in partnership with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), which ended in December 2004, TCM offers a series of products to assist users in making comparable and reliable estimates of the costs of alternative modes of instruction.

Ongoing activities include:

• Disseminating TCM products. A CD-Rom containing the TCM Handbook (step-by-step procedures), TCM Casebook (user stories), TCM Tabulator (spreadsheets that assist in applying the TCM procedures), and the TCM Tutorial is sold through the TCM website (www.wcet.info/projects/tcm).

• Consulting. Tom Henderson of Central Washington University agreed to assist with consulting projects involving costing issues. He was involved in the costing aspects of the M.I.T. and Holyoke Community College projects, described elsewhere in this report. Russell Poulin is involved in costing and pricing issues for the NEXus (Nursing Education Xchange) project and reviewed an upcoming book on cost efficiencies in higher education.

• Partnering with The TLT Group. The Teaching, Learning, & Technology Group (TLT Group) conducted a series of workshops on evaluation issues in e-learning. Poulin co-led a webcast with Christine Geith of Michigan State University on “Using Assessment to Gain Control of Your Time (and Budget).”