PROJECT EAGLE II, "online learning project"
STATEMENT OF WORK
- Synopsis
Project Eagle II, the online learning program to be supported by Congressionally–authorized funding, is an extension of an earlier and highly successful Congressionally authorized initiative, listed as Project Eagle (and now referenced as Project Eagle I). The original Project Eagle was a multi-year strategic initiative by St. Petersburg College to build a national model for increasing access to four-year degrees and work force training for students attending community colleges. Courses, programs and services developed through the initial funding were increasingly flexible, i.e., delivered at a time, place and pace best suited to the needs of individual learners.
There is still much work to be done to expand and enhance course offerings to take advantage of technological innovations. The goal is to move from an anytime, anywhere learning environment to an everywhere, all-the-time learning environment. Through Project Eagle II, over the next four years (August 2003 – July 2007), St. Petersburg College proposes to:
- Extend online course and expand program development at the certificate, associate and baccalaureate levels;
- Review and enhance current online courses to encompass innovative technologies;
- Explore, test, and implement (in new and existing courses) models for standards-based learning objects, mobile computing and production activities, and video-on-demand;
- Consolidate and integrate electronic academic and student support services;
- Create a specialized Center for Teacher Transformation (CTT) to address the urgent need for new and retooled educators in the county and the State of Florida; and
- Serve as a model for best practices and evaluation techniques, including the development of a formal comprehensive ongoing system for assessing quality of online programs and instructors.
SPC will accomplish these objectives by:
- Extending and expanding the educational technology team and related technical networking and Information Technology (IT) personnel who have made Project Eagle I so successful;
- Focusing on the trend toward mobility in computers in both capturing educational materials and developing applications for mobile devices like PDA’s;
- Upgrading our current course management system and integrate that system with the College’s new PeopleSoft Student Records System;
- Developing a repository of reusable learning objects/shared content objects and provide leadership in the national debate on evolution of standards, e.g., SCORM and other compliance issues like ADA, in this arena;
- Launching a multi-phased video initiative, including newly developed educational materials, to be incorporated in classes and developed for SPC-TV, and developing systems for archiving, organizing, and utilizing a video-on-demand (VOD) system partially purchased with Eagle I funding;
- Creating model courses that include these new technologies and applications, and then refining the concept of mentors to work with the Educational Technology staff to extend and expand training initiatives;
- Developing a robust College portal which integrates all electronic student services and, supplemented by a help desk, becomes the “one stop” shop for students needing online support and information;
- Extending cyberservices for online students to include cyberadvising and cybertutoring;
- Creating a database driven interface that allows for regular updating of information for Project Eagle courses in development and redevelopment;
- Purchasing and upgrading, where appropriate, equipment and software for faculty and course development to take advantage of video applications and infrastructure advances;
- Hiring a CTT staff and focusing on developing model training curricula and systems, including Year 1 of principals’ training; and
- Through project and contractual staff, developing and testing a methodology
for assessing learning outcomes and using the results to improve learning,
including an ongoing research evaluation and dissemination component.
- Background
For more than 75 years, St. Petersburg College (SPC) has responded to educational needs in Pinellas County and offered innovative approaches requested by students. SPC enrolls more than 60,000 students per year in credit and non-credit programs at its four comprehensive campuses and its three special-purpose centers dedicated to health, law enforcement and corporate training. SPC spans Pinellas County’s 280 square miles and serves nearly a million people in the Southeast’s most densely populated county.
As Pinellas County moved from a tourism-based economy to a much more diversified economy including being home to the state’s second highest concentration of both high technology and small manufacturing industries, demand for new flexibly delivered programs to an increasingly highly skilled workforce escalated dramatically. In response, in 1999 SPC secured support for Project Eagle and developed more than 160 online courses for addressing educational demands, including a full AA degree and several AS workforce programs. The University Partnership Center (UPC) was created, bringing 52 full bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree programs from 14 college and university partners to Pinellas County. In 2001, SPC singularly was granted the authority by the Florida Legislature to begin offering bachelors degrees in three critical needs areas: teacher education, nursing, and technology management. Those programs were offered beginning in fall 2002.
To provide leadership to the developmental side of this initiative, the College built an educational technology team to work alongside subject matter experts (SMEs) in creating courses and programs. The teams consisted of the SME’s; Instructional Technologists who would work on course management templates, training, storyboarding, and the pedagogical constructs; and Technology Design Specialists who created the graphics and the technical tools and effects, like Flash, that brought the courses their multimedia appearances and interactivity. To provide leadership and a central point of contact and responsibility on the operational side, the College created eCampus, a separate organizational entity charged with organizing and managing the College’s then-disbursed electronic course offerings.
The result of concentrating efforts on the developmental and operational fronts has been nothing less than remarkable. From 1999 to 2003, the four-year duration of Project Eagle I, eCampus’ growth has been phenomenal. In fall of 1999, eCampus enrolled 534 students; by spring 2003, enrollment reached 9,924 students, an increase of 1,760%! Last year SPC topped all the other 27 community colleges in the state by a large margin: more than 18,000 course enrollments in 1,112 sections of 240+ different courses. And the satisfaction level of eCampus students, as reflected in the results of the College’s latest “Enrolled Student Survey,” was the highest of any SPC campus or center.
Still there is much work to do. As both the students and the College have adjusted to eCampus’ meteoric growth, demand has accelerated for even more courses and programs, for continual upgrading of existing courses to take advantage of new applications and technological advances, and for better integration of student and academic support services. At the same time, large scale specialized needs, like teacher training, have become more critical, and the need for monitoring and addressing quality issues has never been greater.
- Narrative for Project Eagle II, "online learning project"
Since the College was awarded its first Project Eagle funds, the technology landscape has changed significantly. At the same time that area traffic and geographic inaccessibility were impediments to access to higher education, thereby helping to fuel the success of Eagle I, there was a continuing concern that Pinellas County is underserved, especially in upper division programs available through multiple learning modalities. These issues are being addressed by the new high tech Seminole Campus, organized to house all the major academic and administrative technology operations of SPC; in 2005, a joint-use facility for College and county high-tech and economic-development training will open.
Building on the strengths of earlier efforts, with this new project the College proposes to address many important needs. They are described below.
- Build New Online Courses and Programs
During the four years of Project Eagle II, SPC proposes to develop 100 new online courses with project funds: 40 in Year 1 and 20 each in of the subsequent three years. These courses, including some full programs, will be at both the associate- and bachelors- degree levels, primarily in the high demand workforce area, including some incumbent worker training. Limited non-credit courses for the business community may also be created.
In addition to SPC, funds will be provided through partnership agreements to other colleges’ and universities’ faculties who might develop online, interactive and/or blended learning classes through the University Partnership Center. As part of the new program development, the expanded Educational Technology team will create model courses to serve as templates for standards and use of upgraded techniques and tools.
- Enhance Existing Online Courses and Programs
While many of the online courses in SPC’s current “inventory” were being created, so were the processes to ensure proper pedagogy and interactivity. Many of the techniques and tools used to identify weakness and support changes were in their infancy or did not exist at all.
With Eagle II funds, SPC proposes to infuse existing courses with better and more sophisticated communication tools, in addition to the content enhancement noted in item “3” which follows. Also, a database-driven interface will be created that allows for regular updating of information for Eagle’s courses as they are developed or redeveloped. Faculty-development activities will be included to improve the faculty’s effectiveness when using new processes/tools and making content more robust.
- Develop and Integrate Powerful New Courses Elements
Both existing and new courses will benefit from enhancements to content via advances in technology, institutional capabilities, and infrastructure upgrades for hardware, software and personnel. Support for specialized hardware and software, for use both by faculty and ET/IT staff, will lead to major enhancements in three areas: reusable learning objects, use of video, and use of mobile applications.
- Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs)
Also known as Sharable Content Objects (SCOs), RLO’s are small segments, components, modules or mini-lessons that can be developed, used and reused as they are imbedded in numerous courses. MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) is an organization that collects and conducts international peer reviews on RLO’s. Two SPC faculty currently serve as MERLOT discipline chairs, and Eagle II will support their continued tenure within the organization as well as an initiative among the Educational Technology staff to identify and create “objects”, which are media rich tutorials, simulations or labs, across SPC’s disciplines. The intent is to share SPC’s “objects intra-state, as part of a nascent initiative by the Florida Virtual Campus, to create a resource like MERLOT. Training on the use of the College’s RLOs will be included.
- Greatly Enhanced Use of Video
Since the advent of the initial Project Eagle there probably have been more significant advancements in the potential use of video, including expanded bandwidth, than in any other area. Through support from Project Eagle II, SPC proposes to launch a multi-faceted effort to make more effective use of video in online courses and college Educational materials overall. Video production capabilities will be developed to expand educational programming in SPC-TV. These enhancements will be done using production facilities already constructed on the Seminole Campus and equipped, in part, with funding from Project Eagle I. Project Eagle II will support increased staffing as well as mobile production equipment for field “shots” and on-site streaming from anywhere at the College (and beyond)! Imagine a science instructor in a course in Florida Biota wanting to film and use a segment from a wetlands area in a local park; or imagine the political science instructor who is interested in showing a debate being conducted by students on one of our campuses. The equipment and staffing will provide a rich array of content and the ability to create course segments and learning objects from anywhere at the College.
VOD(Video-on-Demand) equipment and software, already in place at the College, will be supplemented with grant funds to establish, organize, process, distribute, and manage that content. The objective is to give faculty ready access to significant video resources for use in online classes and across the curriculum.
- Mobile Applications
The widespread adoption of simple, low-cost wireless connectivity promises to fundamentally challenge the way we deliver and access learning. No longer tethered by wires or bound by even an 8-10 pound notebook computer, we are now able to find new, better and more efficient ways to present experiences and learning outside the classroom than ever before. As part of Eagle II, SPC proposes to develop applications and tools for the next generation of Personal Data Assistants (PDAs) and other mobile Personal Computers (PCs) so distance/online learning can truly be “everywhere, all the time.”
Both the PDA applications’ development and the mobile video equipment serve to underscore the innovative nature of the project: not only access to learning “on the spot” and “as it happens”, but also being able to archive video for future learners. And all these assets are to be integrated with the “next generation” course management system secured by the funding, which will give the College the ability to share materials across courses and upload materials with ease.
- Consolidate and Integrate Electronic Academic and Student Support Services.
The Eagle I support allowed the College to create electronic applications across the range of academic and student support services: applications, registration, testing, financial aid, orientation, library services, etc. This summer SPC will launch the Peoplesoft Student Records System and Project Eagle II funds are proposed to be used to both integrate the smaller electronic applications within the larger system, but, more importantly, to integrate the new course management system with Peoplesoft.
Eagle II will support trained staff at the College’s Help Desk to address the questions and technical difficulties of online learners and a programmer who, in addition to the integration tasks noted above, will spearhead the College’s effort to build personalized information systems, via a new SPC portal, for all students. The portal will need to be interactive and customized, providing access to the full range of services referenced above as well as the individual student information on items like grades and courses—a tool to consolidate information and services with quick, easy, secure access to personal data.
Through the purchase of software tools and assignment of dedicated staff, Eagle II also will help to support a personal connection for online students through the availability of a cyberadvisor, supplemented with tutorial software.
- Create a Center for Teacher Transformation (CTT)
In 2001, the state legislature identified the need to recruit 165,000 new teachers in Florida by 2005. To address this need it authorized the creation of a new College of Education at SPC. Working with the new College of Education, the CTT will identify, develop into interactive and engaging presentations, provide support materials on, and train others to use the proven best practices in teaching and learning. The CTT also will house on-site laboratories of learning where pre-service as well as in-service teachers will learn, experiment and interact with successful professionals across geographic boundaries.
The Center for Teacher Transformation will originate, replicate and disseminate national programs and projects that have proven successful in the practice of teaching. This will be accomplished by the multifaceted Center acting as: 1) a magnet for local (Grow Your Own Teachers) and state (Centers for Excellence) programs designed to attract and recruit new teachers into the profession, especially minority students and those individuals proficient in more than one language; 2) a reference center for current and future teacher professional development (Teacher Net); 3) a laboratory for the application of proven “best practices in teaching”; and, 4) a catalyst for the national and international exchange of information and research on teaching—bringing together the participants of quality education programs and scientifically based research, with professionals seeking to incorporate and build on current quality programs to improve education for every child.
Principals’ training is also an important function of this center. As the State of Florida faces a large retirement of education professionals, it is critical that we have qualified and trained individuals to step in and continue the tradition. Also, principals currently in the field need direction on the constantly changing face of education within Florida, from technology infusion to cultural diversity to the implementation of the 2002 referendum mandating limits on class size. These factors not only transform the classroom, but also have significant impacts on the management of local school systems, development of state statutes and licensure criteria, and serve as beacons for other states.
Curriculum has been developed by the Florida Association of District School Superintendents, which SPC will use in consultation with them as necessary. Courses to help principals address the aforementioned and other problems that will arise as great numbers of teachers retire, as funds for education are not replenished, and as the schools are asked to do even more with even less. The online courses to be developed will likely be used by 150 principals from Florida’s 67 counties in Year 1.
The CTT will house on-site laboratories of learning—where the new education majors and current teachers will learn, experiment and interact with successful professionals across geographic boundaries. An information center will be available to provide teachers-in-training and teachers in the classroom with professional support.
- Conduct, Evaluate and Research and Disseminate Information on Best Practices
and Learning Outcomes’ Assessment for Online Learning.
In order to monitor progress and evaluate outcomes, Project Eagle II will include an extensive formative and summative evaluation process, and will both collect and disseminate information on best practices. The specifics on the College’s evaluation plan related to Eagle II are included in Section 4 of this document.
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