The Portable Z: How Virginia is Scaling the Z-Degree Across Its 23 Colleges with the Zx23 Project
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One advantage of a centralized statewide postsecondary system that shares core infrastructure, policy-making, and governance among diverse institutions is that often, promising innovations are able to scale more easily, and more quickly, than in decentralized systems. The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) has just this sort of centralized structure, which is enabling the widespread adoption and use of open educational resources (OER) across the system. Three years ago, only a small fraction of VCCS faculty had heard of OER, with far fewer using open materials in their courses. Today, with support from System Office grants, professional development funds, and local college monies, Virginia's colleges have helped develop over 70 new open courses, with many of these courses being adopted by entire college departments. Led by the pioneering work of Tidewater and Northern Virginia Community Colleges, Virginia already boasts three all-OER associate degrees, or Z-Degrees. Collectively these efforts have not only saved Virginia college students millions of dollars in textbook costs but have increased their chances of academic success. In April 2015, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation awarded the VCCS a grant to help fund the Zx23 Project. The long-term goal of the Zx23 Project is to identify what factors make a Z-Degree portable from one community college to another in order to eventually scale the model to all 23 Virginia community colleges. To that end, the grant from Hewlett is helping the VCCS to accomplish three initial objectives: (1) Adopt, adapt, and pilot Z-Degree courses across VCCS colleges, (2) establish models for sustaining and supporting future OER infrastructure, and (3) create a "roadmap" to be used by other institutions interested in scaling and sustaining a statewide or system OER infrastructure. A cohort of sixteen VCCS colleges began work on the Zx23 Project in Summer 2015, with project faculty currently piloting new Z-Degree courses in September and planning courses for the Spring 2016 semester. Lumen Learning, an integral partner in the project, has been working closely with participating colleges to help build degree pathways and common OER practices and infrastructure, and to evaluate the outcomes of the pilots. The goal of this session is to provide a valuable, on-the-ground report of the early results of this ambitious effort midway through its first year, as well as stimulate conversation and ideas about the project from the broader OER community.
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The Portable Z: How Virginia is Scaling the Z-Degree Across Its 23 Colleges with the Zx23 Project
- 1. The Portable Z: How Virginia is Scaling the Z-Degree Across Its 23 Colleges with the Zx23 Project Richard Sebastian Director, Teaching & Learning Technologies Virginia Community College System rsebastian@vccs.edu
- 3. 3 Doggles
- 4. 4 iFart App
- 9. 9 WebTV
- 10. 10 Time Machine* *Not actually invented until 2032
- 13. 13 Chelsea Soda “..about a gallon of Chelsea (twelve 10 ounce bottles per hour) would have to be ingested by a normal 70 lb. child to produce overt behavioral effects. This volume exceeds the capacity of the stomach.
- 14. 14 Lawn Darts®
- 15. GOOD IDEAS THAT ARE SUCCESSFUL “The Sweet Spot”
- 17. A Z-Degree is a pathway to a degree or credential that has zero textbook costs by using course materials made up of open educational resources (OER). Courses are offered at all campus locations What is a Z-Degree?
- 18. What is the Zx23 Project? Z-Degree x 23 Virginia community colleges
- 19. 19 Zx23 Project Grant $200k from Hewlett Foundation $380k match from VCCS
- 20. July 2015 16 colleges awarded up to $15K
- 21. 21 Course Creation & Adoption OER Course Creation, Zx23 Project Planning Document https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fObL6TJvKFRrCUz70xxdyqsf2VoTWxY4No9gfKayGEw/htmlview# https://courses.candelalearning.com/catalog/vccs
- 22. 22 Planning & Evaluation Request for proposals, contracts, project planning Vision Why this degree program? How is cabinet supporting the vision? Communication Plan With whom? How? • Project management • Broad awareness OER Review Full courses Existing resources Difficulty to create Enrollment Plan Courses Current sections Timed transition Faculty Metrics Support and Faculty Development Plan Faculty Program leads Campus support staff Institutional leaders Develop program leads Choose the right degree Engage faculty effectively Set enrollment goals
- 23. 23 Communication & Coordination Blog posts, webinar archive, project docs https://bit.ly/zx23_archive http://edtech.vccs.edu
- 24. 24 Team & Faculty Development Pathways course, faculty workshops, site visits https://courses.candelalearning.com/pathways/
- 25. 25 Sustaining & Sharing OER Course Tab, Faculty support
- 27. Engaged Champion Leaders VCCS Chancellor Glenn DuBois
- 28. Adapted to Existing Ecosystems
- 30. Built Infrastructure & Support
- 32. Structural advantages • Shared LMS: Blackboard Learn • Shared SIS: PeopleSoft • Centralized governance – 23 presidents report to Chancellor
- 33. 33 Zx23: Interim Results 6 degree programs 100+ courses 427 faculty members Small, Rural, Under-resourced, Disproportionately low income 16 institutions
- 34. 34 Zx23: Interim Results 16 colleges 100+ courses 427 faculty members 6 degree programs 1. Business Administration 2. Business Management 3. Criminal Justice 4. General Education 5. Liberal Arts 6. Social Science
- 35. 35 Zx23: Interim Results 16 Institutions 6 degree programs 427 faculty members https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fObL6TJvKFRrCUz70xxdyqsf2VoTWxY4No9gfKayGEw/htmlvie 100+ courses
- 36. 36 Zx23: Interim Results 16 Institutions 6 degree programs 100+ courses 2015 2016 TOTAL Faculty 136 291 427 427 faculty members
- 37. 37 Zx23: Projected Results Enrollments Fall 2015 14,541 Savings $1,454,100
- 38. 38 Zx23: Projected Results Projected SP15-FA16 Savings $8,230,000
- 39. 39 Zx23: Projected Results Other OER Enrollments Ex. SIS Course Attribute
- 40. OER * Universe of Traditional Course Materials
- 41. Lessons learned
- 42. 42 Set clear goals Zx23 Project Goal Impact 50,000 VCCS students Big Hairy Audacious Goal Z-degree at 23 colleges* Strategic Goal Complete 2021
- 43. 43 Zx23 Project Vow of chastity* Full courses, not resources Full degrees, not courses Pathways course All openly licensed material Create OER policy
- 45. A little bit of friction
- 47. Blackboard xpLor
- 49. 49 Model openness (duh?) Share project information publicly Include all VCCS faculty and staff as much as possible
- 50. Activity Parts per million What is the overall goal of the OER movement? How do we measure progress toward your goal (e.g.350ppm)?
- 51. Open®
- 52. Viva la France
- 53. Peace
- 54. EdTech@VCCS http://edtech.vccs.edu Candela VCCS catalog https://courses.candelalearning.com/catalog/vccs Zx23 Course Spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fObL6TJvKFRrCUz70xxdyqsf2VoTWxY4No9gfKayGEw/h tmlview# Pathways OER Course https://courses.candelalearning.com/pathways/ Zx23 webinar archive https://bit.ly/zx23_archive Lumen Learning http://www.lumenlearning.com OpenVA http://openva.org http://groups.google.com/group/openva Richard Sebastian Director, Teaching & Learning Technologies Virginia Community College System rsebastian@vccs.edu http://edtech.vccs.edu
Editor's Notes
- PRESENTER: Kim – Open and do introductions
- Fart-a-Friend
- Fart-a-Friend
- On Feb. 4, 1912, in Paris, Franz Reichelt dove from the Eiffel Tower. Known as the Flying Tailor, Reichelt wore folds of fabric hanging from his shoulder like drapery, stitched together to form wings and fill up with air upon flight. It didn’t, and though reports later claimed he died of a heart attack in midfall, he didn’t quite stick the landing. But the wing suit returned with a vengeance — and better synthetic materials and air inlets — in 1999, when the world’s first commercial suit, also called the Bird Man, hit the market. These days, about 20 people a year die in wing-suit crashes. The Estate of André Steiner via Archive of Modern Conflict, Howard Levy Photo Collection/Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum via the Archive of Modern Conflict
- Gordon Earl Adams was a London-based engineer, scientist and seeker. In the late 1920s, he built a machine with dozens of flywheels, some perhaps weighing several tons and looking as if they could spin so fast that they would set off powerful electrical charges into the atmosphere. His goal was to control time and space. Adams worked for years in his basement in Shepherd’s Bush and died in 1933, at 68, his machine lost to history. Eight decades later, notes from his project (shown here), along with photographs, were unearthed, highlighting its technical wizardry and spectacle. It was deemed conceptual art far ahead of its time
- Standard on the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, the shot glasses were magnetized on the bottom so they wouldn't tip over from your inevitably woozy driving.
- Standard on the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, the shot glasses were magnetized on the bottom so they wouldn't tip over from your inevitably woozy driving.
- Standard on the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, the shot glasses were magnetized on the bottom so they wouldn't tip over from your inevitably woozy driving.
- After several years piloting successful system and local OER initiatives, including the creation of 3 new ZTC degrees, the VCCS launched the Zx23 Project, with funding help from Hewlett. The eventual goal: to scale Z-Degrees to all 23 colleges. We are currently 6 months into this year-long grant. Meeting this goal is not a foregone conclusion and entails some risk. But we believe it can be done because a number of factors:
- How did we get to the place where we could attempt this?
- From the start, the VCCS has had a vocal and enthusiastic champion in Chancellor Glenn DuBois. His advocacy arises from his own experience as a community college student who had to delay his education because of the cost of his textbooks. His mom, a single mom, had only saved enough for tuition, and the added cost of textbooks was a surprise. He made OER a topic at his Annual Retreat in 2012, and an expert OER panel that included Dr. Wiley, inspired TCC’s Z-Degree. Used ReThink Task Force to establish TCDLR Committee Devoted funds for Chancellor’s OER Adoption grant ©Virginia Community College System (Image used with permission)
- The use of OER aligned with the VCCS strategic plan at the time: affordability, access, success, which enabled us to integrate these efforts into existing strategic initiatives and system infrastructure. Examples: - Textbook Costs Committee - Bookstore contract Chancellor’s Innovation Fund (CIF) NVCC OER degree VCCS Peer groups New OER Peer Group Engaging existing groups around OER subject areas Annual faculty professional development conference, New Horizons Powerful influence of faculty peers It was here in 2014 that I realized these efforts had “gone viral” http://www.public-domain-image.com/free-images/nature-landscapes/underwater/major-tourist-attraction-coral-reefs-near-beaches-along-the-red-sea-and-the-mediterranean/attachment/major-tourist-attraction-coral-reefs-near-beaches-along-the-red-sea-and-the-mediterranean
- Local colleges, operating somewhat independently, contributed to shifting the culture at VCCS with their own projects TCC Z-Degree, Associates in Business Administration NOVA Associates in General Studies, Social Sciences Faculty grantees in OER Adoption Grants The System Office and colleges have become more collaborative
- Every minute of faculty time is scheduled; we couldn’t ask faculty to take on any significant, new responsibilities without providing the support they needed Support VCCS-wide Lumen contract Faculty Grant Incentives Zx23 Program Manager to guide grantees through development of Z-Degree Infrastructure OER Course Tabs in Blackboard Learn XOER attribute Policy Open licensing language in grants
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- How did we get to the place where we could attempt this?
- 3x credentials by 2021 We are not funded to do this Hewlett grant; points back to strategic goal Build mechanisms to measure
- Set constraints: Dogmé 95 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogme_95) Confession
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- How did we get to the place where we could attempt this?
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark
- Interim results? Project is at 6-month mark