The Completion Agenda

The Completion Agenda focuses on a commitment to student (quality) degree/certificate completion. At this year's League for Innovations Conference, Terry O'Banion discussed a working set of Six Principles of the Completion Agenda. These six principles are:

1. Every student will make a significant connection with another person at the college as soon as possible.
2. Key intake programs including orientation, assessment, advisement and placement will be integrated and mandatory.
3. Every student will be placed in a "Program of Study" from day one; undecided students will be placed in a mandatory "Program of Study" designed to help them decide.
4. Every student will be carefully monitored throughout the first term to ensure successful progress; the college will make interventions immediately to keep students on track.
5. All decisions regarding policies, programs, practices, processes, and personnel will be based on evidence to the extent it is possible to do so
6. Professional Development for all college stakeholders will focus on student success and completion as the highest priority.

Do you agree with these Six Principles? Which would you revise? What would you add? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.


Additional Resources on the Completion Agenda:

• CollegeBoard
• American Association of Community Colleges
• Change and the Completion Agenda, by Terry O'Banion (written for The League for Innovation)

180 Free Technology Tips

The website, 180 Free Technology Tips, boasts, "15 hours of free training in just 5 minutes a day." The site is indexed by topic and offers tech tips on the following:

• Microsoft Windows Operating System
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Internet
• Microsoft Excel
• Computer Hardware
• Microsoft Word
• MS Outlook Email
• Additional Resources

Get started on your tech training by visiting the site: http://www.180techtips.com/index2.htm

Fall Full-Time Faculty In-Service: Call for Presenters

The theme for this year's Fall Faculty In-Service is "The Completion Agenda." We are soliciting proposals from instructors, administrators and staff for presentation topics related to the theme. Topics addressing the following are especially encouraged:

• Teaching strategies or class activities supporting student success
• Classroom methods that help students' reach their goals
• Services and resources that help students complete programs or degrees

Proposals for a limited number of presentations on topics in other areas will be considered.

Please complete the HCC Faculty In-Service Presentation Registration Form at:http://citt.hccfl.edu/inservice_fall/presenter.cfm

Upcoming Conferences

Interested in attending a conference? CITT can sponsor faculty to attend a conference, especially if you submit a conference proposal and are selected to present.

Here is a listing of upcoming conferences:

League Learning College Summit: http://www.league.org/lcs/

Bb World 2012: http://www.blackboard.com/BbWorld/Home.aspx

NUTN NETWORK 2012 CONFERENCE: http://www.nutn.org/network2012/

2012 STEMtech Conference: http://www.league.org/stemtech/

For more conferences, visit the conference listing page on the CITT website: http://citt.hccfl.edu/conference.cfm

Free Technology Toolkit for Universal Design

Universal Design is a design approach that gives all users equal opportunities to learn, regardless of age, ability or situation. Universal Design presents environments and materials in manners that are not stigmatizing to non-average users and results in easier use for everyone. Universal Design especially aids students with cognitive disabilities. The Wiki, Free Technology Toolkit for UDL in All Classrooms, is a comprehensive listing of different technologies that speak to the principles of Universal Design. The technologies are grouped by category:

• Free text to speech
• Graphic organizers
• Multimedia and digital storytelling
• Study skills tools
• Literacy tools
• Writing tools
• Collaborative tools
• Research tools
• Math tools
• Tools That Compensate for Handwriting Issues
• Helpful Apps

You can access the Wiki by clicking the following link: http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/Home

Elite Universities' Online Play - from Inside Higher Ed

From Inside Higher Ed

Elite Universities' Online Play
April 18, 2012 - 5:00am
By Steve Kolowich

Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor have teamed up with a for-profit company to offer free versions of their coveted courses this year to online audiences. By doing so, they join a growing group of top-tier universities that are embracing massively open online courses, or MOOCs, as the logical extension of elite higher education in an increasingly online, global landscape.

Princeton, Penn and Michigan will join Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley as partners of Coursera, a company founded earlier this year by the Stanford engineering professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng. Using Coursera’s platform, the universities will produce free, online versions of their courses that anyone can take.

The move is perhaps the most coordinated foray into online learning by high-profile education institutions since early last decade, when Fathom (a Columbia University-led for-profit venture into online education that also involved the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, and Michigan) and AllLearn (a nonprofit collaboration between Oxford University, Yale University, Princeton and Stanford) became casualties in what was then a relatively underdeveloped online learning sector.

Online education, and the technology universities are using in that medium, has matured significantly since then. And brand-name elites, this time with little or no emphasis on making profit or even breaking even, are making a new push toward finding their place in the constellation of Web-based higher education.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/18/princeton-penn-and-michigan-join-mooc-party

20+ Active Learning Techniques

Dr. Bonnie B. Mullinix created a website with 20+ Active Learning Techniques. The site lists the techniques, along with their advantages and instructions and ideas on how to use them in your courses.

You can find the list here: https://gvltec.blackboard.com/bbcswebdav/orgs/GTC_UYF_GUI/Teaching%20Resources/20%2BActive%20Learning%20Techniques-BBMullinix.pdf