OSCQR Institution Showcase

October 4, 2018.Reading time 15 minutes.

Each week leading up to this year’s WCET Annual Meeting (October 23 – 25), WCET Frontiers will be featuring a post from one of our 2018 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Award recipients. This week we are excited to hear more about the OPEN SUNY Online Course Quality Review Rubric or “OSCQR.” Alexandra Pickett, the Director […]

Promising Practices and the Future of Dual Enrollment

August 23, 2018.Reading time 18 minutes.

A chalkboard that reads "what's next" in chalk

In our last dual enrollment post, we discussed the various types of dual enrollment courses, impact of these courses, who’s taking and offering these courses, and the pros and cons of dual enrollment. This week we’re looking at some promising practices suggested by experts in the field, how technology impacts these types of courses, what […]

Developing Future Leaders in Maryland Distance Education

August 16, 2018.Reading time 12 minutes.

As a new generation of distance education leaders emerges, it is incumbent on all of us to help these future leaders develop their leadership skills. The MarylandOnline consortium has taken great steps to ensure the success of future leaders through its new Leadership Institute. Thank you to Doug Gray and Jessica Young for sharing their […]

An Update on Dual and Concurrent Enrollment

August 9, 2018.Reading time 15 minutes.

Many conversations in Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee meeting on the reauthorization of the Higher Ed Act focused on dual or concurrent enrollment. Concurrent enrollment was also in the news in the past few years when The Higher Learning Commission clarified that instructors of dual-credit courses (within the HLC’s region) are required to […]

A DETA Update

July 26, 2018.Reading time 11 minutes.

It’s a DETA Update! Today we welcome Tanya Joosten, Director of Digital Learning Research and Development and Co-Director, National Research Center for Distance Education (DETA) and Technological Advancements at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to give us an update on DETA. DETA was established with funding from the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement […]

My online course quality rubric has a first name. It’s O-S-C-Q-R!

July 19, 2018.Reading time 13 minutes.

Today on WCET Frontiers, we welcome Alexandra Pickett, the Director of Open SUNY Online Teaching, to talk with us about the development of the online course design rubric OSCQR. This rubric was developed to help faculty improve the quality and accessibility of their online courses. She also reviews the components of the rubric and the […]

Rio Salado: Innovation Pushes the Boundaries of Tradition

May 3, 2018.Reading time 24 minutes.

Student population served vs. student population measured by IPEDS. Total unduplicated headcount 52,881, Unduplicated headcount (credit-seeking) 46,497, Part-time 41,339, Program-seeking 11,266, Full-time 5,158, IPEDs cohort measured 113

Today here on WCET Frontiers we are happy to welcome Stacey VanderHeiden Güney, the Director of the Digital Learning Solution Network. Stacey is here to discuss a recent study on higher education institutions implementing digital learning and follow-up conversations regarding one of the institutions included in the study. Thank you to Stacey for today’s post […]

Opening a New Path to Success – A Journey with Open Textbooks

April 26, 2018.Reading time 21 minutes.

Z Degrees (Zero-Textbook Cost Degrees) are what many consider the holy grail of Open Educational Resources (OER) accomplishments. Today’s guest blogger, Tanya Grosz, Ph. D., Dean of Graduate, Online & Adult Learning, led the open initiative at the University of Northwestern St. Paul—the first institution in Minnesota to create a Z Degree. Tanya and I […]

Count All Students! Outcome Measures for Non-Traditional Institutions

April 12, 2018.Reading time 21 minutes.

The Graduation Rate likely did not count 68.8% of community college students in Colorado. That’s almost 15,000 students. They are included in the new Outcome Measures.

Should we count all students when analyzing higher education, or only some of them? It’s not surprising that when you include all students, you get different results from that analysis than when you don’t. We think all students should be included. As reported in our last blog post (“Count All Students! New Outcome Measures Now […]

Count All Students! New Outcome Measures Now Include Non-Traditional Students

April 10, 2018.Reading time 14 minutes.

quote box reads: The new Department of Education's Outcome Measures includes about 60% more students in the WICHE region than does its traditional Graduation Rate.

There is new improvement to the U.S. Department of Education’s Graduation Rate statistic. And we should all be using it. Institutions with large non-traditional student enrollments (e.g.: community colleges, online colleges, inner city universities, military-serving institutions) have not been well-represented by the Department’s Graduation Rate statistic. Few of their students are included in the results […]