Fall and Beyond: Higher Education in the Age of COVID-19 and Other Disasters

May 8, 2020.Reading time 24 minutes.

Even before the COVID-19 global pandemic, higher education was struggling to make sense of what David La Piana and Melissa Mendes call a VUCA world in The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution: Real-Time Strategic Planning in a Rapid-Response World. Originally coined by the US military to describe a post-Cold War world, VUCA stands for: Volatile– The world […]

Promising Practices for Navigating “What’s Next”

April 23, 2020.Reading time 31 minutes.

I have long marveled at how quickly and effectively WCET pivots to support its members when we most need assistance. Remember the announcement of new guidelines that regional accreditors were going to use to evaluate distance education (CRAC-2001)? State authorization enforcement by the Department of Education? WCET helped us navigate around those icebergs. The Coronavirus […]

What’s Next? Surviving in Lifeboats. Getting to Summer Term and Beyond.

April 8, 2020.Reading time 13 minutes.

This week WCET is starting a new series of blog posts on what distance education leaders should be thinking about as we move past the initial pivot to remote learning. The series, “What’s Next?” will focus on a variety of topics aimed at helping you prepare for the summer term and beyond. Many of these […]

Three Keys to Opening the Door for OER

November 6, 2019.Reading time 12 minutes.

Today marks our the finale for our 2019 WOW Award series. The WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Awards honor member institutions and organizations that develop technology-based solutions to challenging educational needs. As we mentioned last week, we have three outstanding award winning initiatives this year: the Colorado Department of Higher Education’s OER Council, Granite State College, […]

Show me the money: Shifting legislative conversations about the cost of distance education

October 4, 2019.Reading time 12 minutes.

Online education can often be polarizing—some advocates champion it as higher education’s savior, bringing access and affordability to students across the globe. Others see it as the modern equivalent of a Trojan horse come to assault the quality of higher education. Questions of the quality of online education aside, one of the biggest lightening rods […]

Let the DATA drive: Washington community & technical college’s journey to establish OER and Low-Cost codes

March 21, 2019.Reading time 9 minutes.

In this blog, Mark Jenkins and Boyoung Chae detail the vital benefits of using a data-driven approach in OER initiatives to promote affordability and student success for Washington’s Community and Technical Colleges. Their approach helped to meet two important goals: Meet students’ needs for learning which courses use free or “low-cost” resources, which aids them […]

Regional Collaboration in Promoting OER Adoption

December 12, 2018.Reading time 15 minutes.

Today WCET Frontiers is excited to showcase the recent Open Educational Resources (OER) Implementation and Policy Summit for the MHEC States. This multi-state OER meeting brought together OER advocates from across campuses, legislatures, faculty, students, and more to collaboratively learn about OER and OER expansion for their states. To give us a review of this […]

Expanding the OER Research Horizon – the OER Research Fellowship

September 25, 2018.Reading time 15 minutes.

If you celebrated a recent large-scale study at the University of Georgia showing Open Educational Resource’s (OER) positive impact on student outcomes, you’ll be excited to know that there are many other articles on the topic of OER efficacy and affordability thanks to John Hilton III and the OER Research Fellows. This week’s Frontier’s blog […]

Open Textbooks and OER in Colorado: Lots of Interest and Great Promise

February 9, 2018.Reading time 12 minutes.

image of quote: {“Use of OER is a very clear strategy to speak to two very important concerns/barriers to education for today's learner populations: cost and convenience. Judiciously applying OER to these two critical decision-making issues can lower the barriers for a wide variety of students.” Mike Abbiatti, Exec Director of WCET

This week on WCET Frontiers Blog, Tanya Spilovoy, Ed. D., Director of Open Policy for WCET, discusses the outcomes of the Colorado Open Educational Resources (OER) Council recent work in open textbook initiatives, her research and consulting role with WCET, and how OER can be leveraged to meet state higher education goals. WCET is thrilled […]

Distance Ed Growth – Access is a Big Motivator, But It’s Complicated

February 1, 2018.Reading time 23 minutes.

Graph of answers to question "growth in stduents studying completely at a distance." Expense of F2F enrollments (33.3%), does not affect F2F enrollments as distance students do not come to campus (45.8%), is primarily focused on + funding over serving new students (19.3%), is primarily focused on serving new students over + funding (27.1%), is leading to more blended/hybrid options (64.6%)

Distance education enrollment data continue to show growth. But, we wondered why. Is the motivation to serve more students, to make money, both, neither, or a complex set of other issues? We had heard many theories, often delivered with absolute certainty, but little proof. One of the reasons I wanted to ask these questions was […]