• Thomas Edison State University and Ed Map — TESU’s partner for its OER initiative — will discuss the logistical and cultural challenges of implementing OER. They will also share perspectives on the changing nature and use of course materials, barriers in moving away from traditional models, and strategies for curating content.
• Learn about the Open Textbook Network housed within the University of Minnesota, an alliance of higher education institutions committed to improving access, affordability, and academic success through the use of open textbooks.
• Hear about the progress College of the Canyons is making offering students a zero total cost degree by the fall of 2017. The ZTC will be offered in Sociology, and the degree utilizes model curriculum for the state, which provides guaranteed pathways between community colleges and California State Universities.
• The North Dakota University system will also illuminate the challenges and opportunities of a state-wide OER initiative, which is now in its second year.

Online education was once on the cutting edge of educational technology, but that is no longer the case. Badges, bootcamps, and nanodegrees continue to gain prominence, and during the past several years, the number of students and providers in the online education space has grown dramatically. According to Eduventures, more than 3.5 million students are projected to study online in 2016 alone.In this presentation Andrew J. Magda, Manager of Market Research at The Learning House, Inc., will share results from his recent research report, “Growth Opportunities in Higher Education: Degrees and Alternate Pathways.” Find out which degrees and alternative pathways students are primed for growth, and learn how your university can position itself to reach tomorrow’s student.

Presentation slides.

University of Central Florida has developed an online student performance dashboard that draws upon LMS data to present a visually-appealing tool for student planning and success. Students are shown their status, assigned a goal for improvement, and given the ability to easily prepare a plan for achieving it. This session will describe the dashboard project, demonstrate its functionality, and share the results of a Spring 2016 pilot.
 

Learn about two institution's innovative big-picture approaches to ensuring accessibility in online courses. Western Kentucky University’s Distance Learning unit engaged in a holistic review of the accessibility efforts for online learners and developed a process to support online course accessibility. By reviewing accessibility requirements, identifying current efforts, and developing processes to support accessibility efforts, the Distance Learning team was then able to develop a database that houses all data pertaining to various accessibility efforts. By improving and enhancing operations around accessibility WKU has the ability prioritize courses based several criteria, and expedite requests based on student needs and faculty preferences. The Center for Distributed Learning is the central agent for distance learning at the University of Central Florida. CDL partners with their Student Accessibility Services office to ensure online course accessibility. An important issue at UCF is scaling immediate need accommodations. UCF will discuss how they are combining several innovative technological solutions to address scale.

Presentation slides.

In response to current federal regulations that require the authentication of online students, the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) spent the past year evaluating possible solutions offered by three separate vendors: Examity, ProctorU, and BioSig-ID. The primary goal of the authentication project was to identify an approach that allowed authentication to occur not only when students were engaged in an online assessment activity such as a exam but at multiple points within an online course. The ideal solution would be an authentication system that requires a student to authenticate at random points throughout a class and at a frequency that would not disrupt the natural flow of the course or learning activity. Each of the solutions offered by the vendors was piloted separately and proved useful in understanding the scope of student verification. Feedback from faculty, students, and administrators was instrumental in evaluating these tools, informing the development of institutional policies, and surfacing essential features. Key attributes of an ideal system include security and accuracy; scalability; ease of use; integration with the LMS; and cost-effectiveness. This presentation will tell the story of how one university is navigating the student authentication landscape to evaluate and identify a system that is “just right” for its institutional infrastructure and culture.

Presentation slides.

Leaders in course design from Columbia College, National University, and Southern New Hampshire University will each share the approach their institution has found helpful for enabling the design of successful courses for online students. The panel is organized around four prompts: what you do and why, success stories, enduring challenges, and what you wish you'd known a few years ago. The insights shared will be valuable to anyone designing online courses, as well as those building their institution’s course design capability. Please bring your questions for this panel of experienced professionals.

Presentation slides. 

Teaching and learning in competency-based education (CBE) can look different from one institution – even from one student – to the next. It “can occur in a wide variety of forms and settings, and students can receive regular support and encouragement along the way” (C-BEN, 2016). As such, the journeys of college faculty who are leading CBE efforts around the nation have been replete with both rewards and challenges. This panel session features faculty and administrators from two colleges helping to lead the emergence of competency-based teaching and learning in the United States: Westminster College in Utah and Rasmussen College in Minnesota. Both institutions offer different CBE experiences by program, modality, mentoring, and credential level; however, the common panel story of building new and effective faculty models to support responsible CBE innovation in will benefit institutions who are considering alternative pathways to traditional higher learning.

• Thomas Edison State University and Ed Map — TESU’s partner for its OER initiative — will discuss the logistical and cultural challenges of implementing OER. They will also share perspectives on the changing nature and use of course materials, barriers in moving away from traditional models, and strategies for curating content.
• Learn about the Open Textbook Network housed within the University of Minnesota, an alliance of higher education institutions committed to improving access, affordability, and academic success through the use of open textbooks.
• Hear about the progress College of the Canyons is making offering students a zero total cost degree by the fall of 2017. The ZTC will be offered in Sociology, and the degree utilizes model curriculum for the state, which provides guaranteed pathways between community colleges and California State Universities.
• The North Dakota University system will also illuminate the challenges and opportunities of a state-wide OER initiative, which is now in its second year.
  

Great ideas abound - the hard part is leading the change process in order for them to become a reality. A survey of WCET members leadership development needs revealed that change management is a desired growth area at all levels of leadership. Join this discussion to hear stories from the trenches and effective strategies for managing change in complex systems -- without going crazy in the process.

Since 2010, UMUC has undergone a cultural transformation driven by an institution-wide commitment to evidence based decision making. The UMUC Office of Analytics’ leadership, platform and approach, served as a catalyst during this evolution. After much success within UMUC, the university created a new company, HelioCampus, in 2015. HelioCampus leverages the technology platform and process model created by the Office of Analytics to enable institutional analytics beyond UMUC.

HelioCampus continues to serve as a change agent within within UMUC by providing institutional leaders and stakeholders greater visibility into the connections between disparate data and ongoing opportunities for institutional improvement. This approach helps to facilitate collaboration among different units by not just providing data but presenting data in a meaningful context, such as by specific student segments, an academic program, or critical moments in the student lifecycle.

Learn more about the platform, process, and approach that has resulted in a culture of cross-functional collaboration within UMUC to improve outcomes through analytics. This presentation will also share a framework for identifying opportunities for improvement, coordinating intervention efforts, and systematically evaluating initiatives.

Presentation slides.

How familiar are you with SARA? NC-SARA and the regional compact directors will dispel some of the frequent statements about SARA that are absolutely incorrect!  Test your knowledge.  What is the status of the new national reciprocal plan for state authorization 'SARA' ? How? When? And what next for your institution? For the region? For states in other regions? How does it impact SREB's Electronic Campus Regional Reciprocity Agreement? Using a Q & A format, an update on the status of the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement and the impact it has on the complex and rapidly changing landscape of state authorization in distance education will be provided. Real questions from the past six months will be used to dispel SARA myths. What is the difference between SARA, SECRRA, and SREB? Which one is going away?

As online learning tools become a part of mainstream instruction, institutions are challenged to address assessments in new ways. Proctored online exams once reserved for fully online or distance students are now becoming more prevalent in traditional courses. Paper-based exams in crowded lecture halls are being challenged by students who expect better alternatives through technology. Competency-based programs require faculty to evaluate their assessment strategies and develop ways to demonstrate prior knowledge. Online programs generate students located all over world, causing institutions to scale assessment policies beyond their traditional campus(es). Institutions can address these and other critical areas more effectively by formulating an Institutional Assessment Strategic Plan to develop assessment technologies, policies and best practices. The strategic plan includes identifying the critical actors and institutional systems that are vital to success; and, educating faculty on assessment options and designs to ensure that learning objectives are met. In this session we will discuss how to develop an Institutional Assessment Strategic Plan using examples from a large public university, while also drawing on experiences from a variety of institutional sizes and types represented by attendees. The interactive session will help institutions to identify various assessment strategies, the impacts to campus service organizations, and assessment best practices.

Presentation slides.
 

Online and technology-mediated learning continues to merge into the mainstream of higher education, yet uniformly implemented policies and guidelines for course quality and accessibility features may not exist at an institution, or if they do exist may be unevenly applied. There may exist a tension between an institutional need for consistency across courses and issues of faculty training and support, or what may be perceived as academic freedom. The result may be a patchwork of course designs at best, or loss of student engagement at worst.

Working within the context of quality course design and accessibility, this discussion will provide participants with the opportunity to compare their knowledge (or notions) of course design with well known and established processes and rubrics. Participants will be able to reflect on various aspects of good (and poor) course design, and have an opportunity to review and discuss different design aspects of a course themselves, both for quality as well as accessibility. Considerations for identifying the attributes of highly accessible courses, which benefit all learners, will be an additional focus of this session.

Push innovations such as competency-based learning, micro-credentialing, MOOC, bootcamp, free college, 2-year to 4-year college pathways, academic coaching, adaptive learning, badges, stackable degrees, and industry partnerships together with accreditation, institutional policy, culture, federal and state laws. Add media hype and vendor promises. Stir in enrollment goals and budget cuts. Spin around three times and walk a straight line to strategic planning. Dizzy yet? Join us for conversation around navigating the landscape of continuous change.