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Three grants, all under the student success initiative and California statewide initiatives of distance education, are going to be put into place over the next three years and were discussed during a presentation at the College Council meeting last week by Interim Director of Distance Education, Leslie Tirapelle.

 Interim Director of Distance Education Leslie Tirapelle of Pasadena talks about the State Wide Initiative with other Committee members on Thursday, February 27, 2014.(Josh Balmadrid/Courier)

Interim Director of Distance Education Leslie Tirapelle of Pasadena talks about the State Wide Initiative with other Committee members on Thursday, February 27, 2014.(Josh Balmadrid/Courier)

Tirapelle gathered all this information from a meeting in December where the initiatives were discussed from a technology standpoint, and expected effectiveness.

Under the online education initiative, $16.9 million will be given at one time and $10 million will be given on going to support these initiatives.

“The mission of Distance Education is to promote student access and success by integrating programs and services of the California community colleges using technology mediated instruction and to develop and promote effective distance learning paradigms,” a statement from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office reads.

The online education initiative would allow students to take online courses through another community college but their home college would still receive the funds for the student taking the course. This initiative would use an existing online database, California Virtual Campus (CVC), which would be used as an online catalog. Colleges can place selected courses in the course exchange and any student from any community college would have the accessibility to the class.

“This is important,” Rocha said. “Even if our student took their course we can still get paid for it because the student is ours.”

That idea is still under review, however, because how a student’s home college will be determined is not exactly known. But this way of taking courses gives students more flexibility in completing their degree.

“It just at the cusp so we don’t have very many details,” Tirapelle said. “What we’re hoping for is to see how well our students are doing.”

The education planning initiative would focus on creating a centralized education plan. This would include a new electronic transcript system and allow for a common assessment. This common assessment would allow for a shared system with other community colleges where assessment tests could be transferred between colleges. This will hopefully lead to the creation of a common system along with the new California Community College (CCC) Apply that will identify students more efficiently.

This effort to create a centralized education plan has a timeline to be done by the end of 2015-2016.

“That’s not a lot of time, they’re under very tight deadlines,” Tirapelle said.

Many members of the College Council wondered how priority registration would be affected since PCC is in the middle of changing its priority registration process.

“The secret sauce, a new student identifier that will be separate from the K-12 with the new CCC apply,” Tirapelle said. “Everything I’ve talked about is going to end up in a single portal, that will provide an abundance of access and resources.”

“It is important we give and receive input on priority registration for these online courses,” Rocha said.

The mission of all these initiatives is to hopefully increase the number of students who will obtain an associate degree by making the process easier and much more efficient. Millions of dollars have been set aside for these initiatives with the idea of maximizing access to students regardless of where they are located, according to Tirapelle.

“Once these [initiatives] are put into place, it will hopefully make it easier on students,” Tirapelle said.

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2 Replies to “Colleges move towards more online classes”

  1. Forgot to add: I like that Rocha’s approach is all about the money. Way to support student success.

    By the way, the 90s called; it wants its pedagogy back.

  2. “It just at the cusp so we don’t have very many details,” Tirapelle said. “What we’re hoping for is to see how well our students are doing.”

    Great…another poorly thought-out plan to spring on our students. Keeping hoping, keep hoping.

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