Colleagues,
It was exciting to see the interest in the Colorado Online Open Forum on October 15 – we had over 355 people in attendance! Thank you to everyone for your questions and suggestions. The full recording is posted on the Colorado Online@ blog (https://coloradoonline.cccs.edu), where we will also post answers to frequently asked questions and decisions as they are made throughout the project.
Here are some updates regarding Colorado Online since my last email in September:
- Maintaining and expanding access to high quality online courses and services for students is our top priority, so we are excited to have two representatives from theState Student Advisory Council (SSAC) joining the Colorado Online Project Team in November. Starting with the student surveys and focus groups last spring, we have tried to keep the student experience front and center in the new consortium’s design. Having SSAC representatives on the Project Team will help us continue that approach going forward.
- Last year alone, more than 50,000 CCCS students enrolled in online courses – 29,000 of those in CCCOnline sections! We are committed to helping our experienced CCCOnline instructors transition as easily as possible to online teaching roles at our colleges so that our students can continue to benefit from their years of online experience and training. As such, CCCOnline leaders are working with CCCS Human Resources on a transition plan.
- The transition to this new Colorado Online @ Consortial Model will take place gradually over the next three years:
- Starting in Fall 2022:
- All students and instructors will be able to access all of their courses from one D2L homepage, even if learning or teaching for more than one college or CCCOnline – one of the most requested improvements by both students and instructors.
- Faculty and instructors teaching SPA 111 and select courses in ECE will be the first to have the opportunity to teach from accessible, ready-to-teach course shells developed by the state discipline faculty in conjunction with the learning design team at CCCOnline. Instructors in these disciplines will also be able to customize their own courses using a shared course framework to allow academic freedom. Thank you to the ECE and World Languages faculty discipline groups for volunteering to lead the way in helping to develop and use these new tools!
- Starting in Spring 2023:
- We hope to begin enrolling students in a small subset of online sections taught by colleges across the system as early as Spring 2023. Additional courses will transition to the colleges each semester after that, and CCCOnline’s role will gradually transition fully to consortium support services. The Academic Affairs subcommittee will make recommendations to the project team by late fall/early spring regarding the timing of when specific courses and disciplines will begin transitioning to the new model.
- More detailed recommendations for each stage of the project are being developed by subcommittees for Academic Affairs, Learning Design, Learning Resources, Technology, and Student Support Services with input from the Online Faculty and Instructor Advisory Committee, VP Council, Deans Council, and a wide range of other functional groups.
Do not hesitate to reach out to me or Tammy Vercauteren with any questions. As decisions are made by the Project Team and/or the Steering Committee, we will update the Colorado Online@ blog (https://coloradoonline.cccs.edu).
Sincerely,
Landon