WCET Cooperative Consulting

WCET members and others sometimes need in-depth assistance with various aspects of their e-learning efforts. Western Cooperative Consulting (WCC), a service of WCET, was founded in 1998 to provide a range of consulting services which could be tailored to specific needs. WCC supplies an independent perspective and extensive expertise to higher education institutions, organizations, corporations, and agencies. Consultants include WCET staff, members, and others with the special expertise needed for the various projects. Consulting efforts this year included:

eArmy University, IBM

WCC won a contract to evaluate a series of courses from providers for the eArmy University to determine why some institutions were more successful than others in serving the eArmyU students. The contract involved one team looking at institutional practices and another team using EduTools (in partnership with the Monterey Institute for Technology in Education) to compare courses offered by different institutions on a series of standardized features. The project was awarded in late fall and completed in early January.

Fielding Institute (CA)

WCC researched part-time adult attrition rates and time-to-degree differences between on-campus students and distributed learning students.

Holyoke Community College (MA)

A four member WCC team of representatives from the WCET membership worked with the president and vice president of academic affairs to sort out a distance learning plan for the campus that included market analysis, costing, faculty support, and general planning.

Montana State University BATE Project III

Seeking to jointly develop and offer online certifications for school librarians and administrators in rural states, Montana State University-Bozeman partnered with the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and University of South Dakota to create the Borderless Access to Teacher Education (BATE) project. WCC serves as the project evaluator and participated in a related project to further study the success in retaining students enrolled in the library administration program.

Observatory for Borderless Higher Education

During this year, WCC completed the benchmarking process from 2005 and began planning a new project for 2006 that will focus on the impact of e-learning on institutional policy and practice related to faculty use of information and communications technologies in teaching.

Tennessee Board of Regents

WCC assisted in planning efforts for the next generation of statewide e-learning activities among the 47 Tennessee Board of Regents’ institutions, including technical institutes, community colleges, and universities.

University of Alaska

WCC continued to assist and advise with strategic planning for the integration of IT management and services among the system office and the Fairbanks campus (February 2005 – June 2006).

Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)

WCC reviewed the WASC “Substantive Change” document online and made recommendations for changes that correspond to current good practices in open and in distance learning.

Westwood Colleges, Denver

WCC assisted staff in the development of new faculty assessment tools.