SUNY Learning Network Receives Grant to Improve College Readiness & Completion

Official SUNY Press Release

SUNY institutions will use technology-enhanced blended learning to increase student success, reduce costs, and advance Chancellor’s strategic plan

SUNY announces $250,000 national grant to the SUNY Learning Network for a blended learning initiative

The SUNY Learning Network (SLN) will receive a $250,000 education from Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC), a new initiative focused on identifying and scaling technology-enabled approaches to dramatically improve college readiness and completion, especially for low-income young adults, in the United States.

The Next Generation Learning Challenges funds will be used to enhance a developmental math course and develop a blended online degree program using technology to improve student success and promote unprecedented collaboration among the 4 SUNY community college partners. The SUNY Learning Network will work with the SUNY campuses to target young adult low wage earning single parents from under served populations with the SUNY SLN “Catch-up and Complete” Enhanced Blended Learning Initiative. This program will scaffold and support student success through the developmental education stage to prevent loss, create educational momentum for the student and the social connections necessary to succeed, support successful entry into a degree program, measure progress and scaffold support, and accelerate completion that ultimately results in a local labor-focused credential for the student.

“This funding will provide us with an opportunity to target the Bermuda Triangle of developmental education – where most go in and never come out – by helping students Catch-up, so that they can then Complete their education and earn a credential that gets them a job, resulting in improved chances for them and their children to escape poverty.” said Alexandra M. Pickett, the associate director of the SUNY Learning Network who is the author of, and principal investigator on the grant coordinating the initiative. The program seeks to provide these at risk students with an educational experience that targets their developmental needs, program completion and student success to begin to break the cycle of poverty in the state of New York. The ultimate goal is to reduce poverty and the trans-generational transmission of poverty in NYS by assisting young adult low-wage working single parents from underserved populations to complete a degree program that provides them with a credential that they can use to move into a higher paying career.

A blended learning initiative aligns very well with the SUNY Chancellor’s strategic plan that calls for action, credibility, and data-driven decision-making with core values of student-centeredness, community engagement, diversity, integrity, and collaboration. This grant gives us the opportunity to address the issues together and systematically, thereby improving the likelihood of positive sustainable impact and success.

In addition to benefiting at-risk students with enhanced blended learning options, the four partner SUNY campuses will collaborate by adopting the use of common standards, course objectives, and assessments in the program’s courses. The courses will share common content that is adapted, developed, and/or curated by the participating faculty and delivered in the common courses taught at all four SUNY institutions. Several innovations in technologies and approaches will be implemented to test their efficacy in the program. An online interactive social networking hub will be used by all four institutions to scaffold student resilience with peer-to-peer support and social networking, open and digital content will be used to reduce textbook costs and promote higher levels of engagement with rich media content, online learning concierges will be developed at the campus and system levels to personalize and support the student experience, and digital-age librarians will be developed at the campus level to promote the development of information fluency skills in project participants.

Standardization on tools, technologies, and approaches at the system-level afford numerous benefits to the university. A successful blended learning initiative can serve hundreds of thousands of SUNY students more efficiently and effectively, reduce costs, address persistence and completion, and inform and influence the quality of technology-enhanced instruction in SUNY.

In addition to funding, NGLC is gathering evidence about effective practices, and working to develop a community dedicated to these persistent challenges. The goal of this project is to identify faculty development and course/program design innovations, student support technologies, and inter-institutional standardizations and approaches that improve persistence and at-risk student. “Through this grant we hope to advance our knowledge of the kinds of supports that enable community college students to persist and succeed in online and blended programs. We have conducted research in this arena for over ten years but funding from this project will allow us to ask new kinds of questions about the challenges confronting community college online learners specifically.  We believe that this research will add to our understanding of new forms of learner self- and co-regulation that lead to success in technology-mediated learning environments.” said Dr. Peter Shea, associate professor in the department of educational theory and practice at UAlbany, and SLN’s senior researcher and co-principle investigator on the grant.

This grant recognizes that SUNY continues to lead the way in online teaching and learning innovation. The project will be guided by the principles and practices from the SUNY Learning Network, an award winning national and international leader in effective online teaching and learning faculty development, course design and practices. Project participants will share materials and lessons learned from the program so that others can benefit.

By promoting inter institutional collaboration, capitalizing on existing successful SUNY-wide mechanisms, and leveraging cutting-edge technologies and innovative approaches we can positively impact student outcomes, success, access, convenience, and persistence with a blended online degree program that leads to a credential that will position students well to enter the local workforce. The lessons learned from this project will be used to scale the initiative to other SUNY institutions and to inform and influence the quality of blended and technology enhanced instruction in SUNY.

With this project we have the opportunity to act as a system and leverage the “Power of SUNY.” A SUNY blended learning initiative is good for the university, good for the economy, good for the environment, and good for people of the state of New York.

In a nationwide, competitive grant process, the SUNY Learning Network’s  proposal was one of only 29 selected from a pool of 600.

Next Generation Learning Challenges is a collaborative, multi-year initiative created by the Gates and Hewlett foundations and others to address the barriers to educational innovation and tap the potential of technology to dramatically improve college readiness and completion in the United States.

The 4 public two-year institutions are: Herkimer County Community College, Finger Lakes Community College, Jamestown Community College, and Westchester Community College.

The State University of New York is a unified statewide system of 64 campuses, including community colleges, two-year colleges of technology, specialized and statutory colleges, traditional four-year colleges, research university campuses and academic health centers.  The nation’s largest and most comprehensive system of higher education, the University enrolls nearly 370,000 students and employs over 75,000 faculty, administrators and staff. http://suny.edu

The SUNY Learning Network (SLN) is the award-winning online learning network for the State University of New York under the Office of the Provost and is the lead organization in this proposed project. http://sln.suny.edu

Proposal : SUNY – Blended Learning Initiative

This is a proposal that I wrote last year for a SUNY Blended Learning Inititative. I have used/submitted it in various places hoping to get it funded.

It seemed very germane to the SUNY strategic planning conversation on the Education Pipeline, so I contributed it to the Facebook discussion for the SUNY state-wide conversation for that topic. You can see it there by going to the SUNY Facebook page/discussions/Topic: Discussion Questions – Statewide Conversation #2.

The proposal is also duplicated in print below, and you can click on the “p” in the audio player below to hear the statement read at the SUNY State-wide conversation on Diversity at SUNY Delhi on January 11, 2010.




Online Blended Learning Programs

Background

Blended degree and certificate programs can provide efficiencies and economies to both institutions and students if planned, developed, and delivered correctly.

Proposal

According to the National Report Card on Higher Education, Measuring up 2008, (http://tinyurl.com/ncs9st) “College opportunities for New York State residents are poor. The likelihood of enrolling in college by age 19 is only fair, and a very low percentage of working-age adults (4 in 100) are enrolled in higher education. Among young adults, 29% of Hispanics and 34% of blacks are enrolled in college, compared with 50% of whites.” In addition, ” The enrollment of working-age adults, relative to the number of residents without a bachelor’s degree, has declined in New York… The percentage attending college in New York is well below the U.S. average and the top states.” According to the report, “if all racial/ethnic groups had the same educational attainment
and earnings as whites, total annual personal income in the state of New York would be about $60 billion higher.

NYS is failing to adequately meet the education needs of poor and working class NYS families, earning a dismal D+ in participation and a resounding F in affordability according to this report. Blacks and Hispanics in our state are particularly affected. While the issue of affordability clearly appears to be the significant factor in these statistics, the State University of New York can attempt to increase participation by making improvements in degree and certificate program options offered, specifically, targeting convenience. Studies by Eduventures confirm that convenience dominates consumer perceptions of online/blended learning. According to an Eduventures survey ( June 2006 and confirmed in 2007 ) almost 50% of consumers prefer an online-dominated / balanced option for their educational delivery mode – about 70% prefer some online content. The report also found that 46.3% want to speed the time to their degree/certificate/course completion. Offering the option of “blended” degree and certificate programs, may remove significant barriers, such as travel costs, time/scheduling, and other inconveniences, to better afford the opportunity for education to NYS poor and working class adults. By specifically targeting selected degree and certificate programs aimed at working class adults, a SUNY blended learning initiative will contribute to the university’s ability to be more efficient, “green”, and effective at providing educational options for those that need it most.

According to Eduventures, when considering an online program about 60% of consumers care about geography, suggesting that the majority of the online market is local/regional. And yet, Eduventures estimates that more than 60% of New York State residents studying online are studying online out of the state. If localness is such a significant consumer preference, and the majority of New York’s online students are going outside the state for their education, then effort should be made to leverage SUNY local presence and reputation to attract and keep online education consumers in state.

As part of this SUNY blended learning initiative, and to best address student consumer needs and preferences, an analysis of the geographical distribution of the SUNY online student body should be conducted including variations by campus/program in an effort to assess and align blended/online degree and certificate programs with supply gaps at local levels and to identify missed opportunities. An analysis of demographic/occupational/industries data in NYS, as well as in targeted metropolitan areas, may also assist us to gauge the demands/needs for specific degree and certificate programs. Alignment with state and regional occupational needs for maintaining certification, and an analysis of regional workforce needs should also be conducted. Areas with high concentrations of working class adult populations would be targeted with blended degree and certificate programs from local SUNY campuses that match the identified workforce needs.

SLN will work with SUNY campuses to “blend” selected degree and certificate programs. Incentives will be provided to encourage inter-institutional collaborations that partner SUNY community colleges with near-by 4-year SUNY institutions in the creation of regionally-based degree and certificate programs to respond to the student consumer preference for local/regional education.

The course development focus will be on the ANGEL Learning application. Campuses may opt to import the courses into other Course Management Systems such as Blackboard or Moodle.

Faculty members developing and teaching these courses in each selected degree/certificate program must participate in the SLN Faculty Development Program prior to developing their course and teaching it. This will ensure that any faculty member has received instruction in how to develop an effective blended course and will be prepared to teach effectively in a blended learning environment.

Impact
These degree programs will assist the university in keeping green and thrifty by reducing the gas required by students travel to campus, and by resulting in campus operating cost efficiencies – students save on gas, campus gets more out of each classroom. In addition, significant conveniences realized for students may increase the ability for working class adults to participate, and the campus can extend their reach/access to potential “new” students for whom convenience is a significant barrier. Students in remote, rural, distant geographic areas might be more able to begin or complete degree programs, if travel to the campus were minimized. Making it more convenient for the student by cutting time spent traveling to and from the campus, and by minimizing seasonal travel issues and schedule juggling, the student will be more likely to complete a course, take more courses at a time, and perhaps even speed time to degree completion.

Analyzing and matching the development of specific blended degree and certificate programs at SUNY institutions with both the regional/local demand/needs and with targeted populations of local/regional working class adults is a formula for success and impact.

A SUNY blended learning initiative is good for the university, good for the economy, good for the environment, and good for people of the state of New York.

Thanks for the opportunity to contribute to this conversation.

Alexandra M. Pickett
Associate Director
SUNY Learning Network