There are no release notes for February 2025. If you missed our previous release notes, read them here. Questions? Email support@cvc.edu.
There are no release notes for January 2025. If you missed our previous release notes, read them here. Questions? Email support@cvc.edu.
There are no release notes for December 2024. If you missed our previous release notes, read them here. Questions? Email support@cvc.edu.
The CVC is excited to announce a few new enhancements this quarter:
Our team will be reaching out to colleges in the next few weeks to discuss these updates in greater detail. Please contact us at support@cvc.edu if you have any questions.
CVC Exchange release notes will begin publishing in November 2023.
Many students may not see themselves in the imagery and representation in their prospective disciplines or careers. Part of Peralta Community College District’s grant project was to encourage faculty to build more diverse representation into their curriculum for Career Technical Education (CTE) courses and support them in drawing connections among the course content, students’ lives, and their futures. This blog post will focus on the E7 criterion of the Peralta Online Equity Rubric, specifically:
The "Content Meaning" criterion of the equity rubric asks us to look at our course content and determine ways to make it personally relevant to students. More specifically, the criterion asks that this relevance is based upon students' sociocultural background in connection with others. Sociocultural contexts consider the societal forces that impact our values, beliefs, and attitudes about learning and life in general. Making connections between course content and these value sets can make a tremendous positive impact on students' ability to connect to the course material. For a course to be aligned with this category: “Communications and activities draw connections among course content, students’ lives, and students’ futures.” For a course to achieve exemplary in this category, “Students connect course content to their identities, backgrounds, and cultures, and/or the identities, backgrounds, and cultures of others.”
Within Bloom’s taxonomy, three learning domains are identified: cognitive, psychomotor and affective (Pierre & Oughton, 2007). Within most curriculum design, the focus remains upon creating content that meets learning occurring in the cognitive domain, which often bypasses areas making content personally relevant for students. Reaching students at the affective domain helps with intrinsic motivation. The RSA Animate video below provides a rationale for why intrinsic motivation is important. Though the speaker focuses on the workplace, replacing "work" with "learning" makes the idea applicable to course design.
This 10-minute video offers a powerful analogy for how an educator might consider designing content that moves away from the carrot-and-stick approach to learning. This approach follows a “learn-to-earn model” of design. Whereas we are suggesting within this module a “learn-to-learn model” of design that makes explicit the value and applicability of academic content to students’ ability to thrive. It’s no secret that students often struggle to engage with content that they feel does not impact their “real lives” or only satisfies a requirement. To increase engagement, create content that is relevant to students in the following ways:
Watch the videos below to see how three instructors from Peralta aligned their CTE courses with the Peralta Equity Rubric. In these spotlights, they will discuss how specifically, they have met the criteria for E7, providing content that is directly relevant to students’ lives. Click on the images to launch the videos!
Business Instructor, Alta Erdenebaatar, has a Google Maps-based discussion called your Favorite Entrepreneur, in which students are asked to identify entrepreneurs who have made an impact on their lives or communities. Watch her talk more about it in this 3-minute video.
In this 3:45 video, Construction Management Instructor, Melissa McElvane, discusses her final project in which students role-play three stakeholder roles in the construction industry to develop hands-on skills.
Suzan Tiemroth-Zavala discusses how every activity in her Job Search course is meant to prepare students for skills they need to successfully get the job they desire. Check out this 4-minute video as she explains how she curates meaningful curriculum.
Authors:
Chelsea Cohen
CTE Pathways Grant Coordinator
Inger Stark
Peralta Professional Development Coordinator
Adrienne Oliver
Peralta Online Equity Initiative Trainer
Kevin Kelly
Higher Education Consultant
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District or those of the California Community College Chancellor’s Office.
Prior to receiving the CVC-OEI Improving Online CTE Pathways Grant, there was a need to improve the quality of our CTE and GE-related online courses. Our professional development offerings, DE-related positions, and opportunities for peer review and collaboration to support this endeavor at the college were lacking.
Upon receiving the grant, our project goal was to improve the quality of online CTE courses and programs by aligning 15-20 existing online CTE and CTE-related GE courses to the CVC-OEI Course Design Rubric by developing our own local POCR program, as well as a districtwide Peer & Mentoring Review program with our sister colleges, Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College.
Course alignment to the OEI rubric is very work intensive. Funding to continue our local POCR program is necessary for mentors, mentees, a POCR lead, and to support faculty professional development. An obstacle that we are facing is norming our local POCR program with the districtwide POCR so that courses are well-prepared to move onto the state level and become OEI quality review badged.
Students at Contra Costa College should know that more and more of CCC’s online CTE and GE-related CTE courses are undergoing a comprehensive peer review process to significantly improve the quality of our online course offerings. These improvements in quality directly support the success of our CCC students.
CCC’s local POCR program has aligned 15 courses to the CVC-OEI Online Course Design Rubric and this fall 2020, will align 7 more.
Authors:
Michael Kilivris
Faculty; POCR Lead
Anthony Gordon
Faculty; POCR Lead
Maritez Apigo
Distance Education Coordinator
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District or those of the California Community College Chancellor’s Office.
Lassen Community College (LCC) is a rural college in the northeast corner of California. LCC is located in Susanville, situated on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and over 200 miles from the nearest large city, Sacramento. Due to the remote location, LCC has been striving to provide more solid distance educational opportunities. LCC’s goal with the CVC-OEI Improving Online CTE Pathways Grant was to develop online courses and programs that would increase our online offerings within CTE as well as improve online instruction and student support services.
Using grant funds, LCC was able to develop a new fully online Geographical Information Systems (GIS) certificate. The GIS certificate can be completed in just two semesters and is well suited to provide individuals with the education necessary to enter the workforce as an entry-level GIS Technician, or add to an existing or future bachelor’s degree education to help strengthen and solidify the technical nature of said degree. For example, a combination of a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology and a certificate in GIS can be a very valuable and powerful combination to potential employers. The applications of this certificate will be an enhancement to the current Fire Technology and Agriculture degree programs at LCC. There are thousands of organizations in virtually every field using GIS in some form including education, public safety, health, transportation, real estate, utility companies, insurance, retail, natural resources, manufacturing, and government. This new certificate program has received all approvals and was offered to students in Fall 2020. A current student provided this feedback about the certificate “I started the GIS program more as a hobby, but quickly found it was applicable to my job as a municipal firefighter. Mapping hydrants based on their gpm, tracking incident types by location, mapping areas around the city to preplan for high danger interface zones, and much more. I have come to learn how important GIS is for so many industries. Having a knowledgable instructor who has experience and a passion for the subject is great too.”
Developing this new program did not come without obstacles. A major obstacle was finding an adjunct instructor to help design the certificate, develop curriculum, and shepherd the new certificate through the approval processes. There were also initial concerns regarding software necessary to instruct the course did not materialize and the instructor found financially sustainable resources for students’ use.
LCC Academic Senate was committed to accepting and developing a local POCR team to enhance the current online offerings as well as any future online course development. The grant allowed LCC to provide professional development opportunities for faculty members to become POCR certified. LCC’s POCR trained Instructional Designer is currently assisting the GIS adjunct faculty to align all the courses to the CVC-OEI Rubric.
Authors:
Michell Williams
Grant Operations Manager
Roxanna Haynes
Interim Dean of Instruction
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District or those of the California Community College Chancellor's Office.
Taft College developed the CVC-OEI project around a tripartite goal of
Central to achieving these goals was streamlining efforts to both clarify the path and to help students stay on the path as articulated in Guided Pathways. Since the College serves a rural area in West Kern County, our project directly corresponded to student requests for more online options. A sizable portion of our students work, commute, and balance family obligations that necessitate online options. Therefore, our primary goal was to transition some of our online CTE programs to meet the increasing need for flexibility and efficiency for more students to complete their programs, according to their fluctuating schedules. A secondary goal was to increase the quality of the programs by aligning some of the courses to the OEI rubric.
Of the 14 Certificate of Achievements (CoA) in career education, we focused on the “low hanging fruit” or programs that were already partially online and/or transitioning to online. Additionally, we identified programs already identified as priority industry sectors by the Central/Motherlode Regional Consortium (CRC), of which Taft College is a member of the 15 college-strong group.
Faculty and Instructional Designers
Faculty have been central to the planning and implementation of the project by first, weighing in on which programs would be best suited for hybrid and/or online programs, and second, ensuring that the 10 CTE programs offered aligned with the CRC Consortium’s priority industries:
Additionally, we consulted our student success data, specifically looking at success rates to help us further determine which classes should remain face-to-face and which could be moved online and aligned.
Improving the Quality of Existing Certificates
Since the implementation of the project, it has been a collaborative effort wherein content faculty developed their courses for online delivery and/or align them to the OEI rubric. With the help of instructional designers (IDs) who have received extensive training and certification through @ONE, content faculty were given support to complete this project. Instructional designers work to support faculty through
Step 1: Understanding the CVC-OEI Rubric
To assist faculty in transitioning face-to-face courses to online, one Instructional Designer, created a Canvas course for any faculty member wanting to learn about the process of aligning courses with the CVC-OEI Rubric. This annual 3-day training takes place in the spring using Canvas for asynchronous instruction and Zoom for synchronous instruction. Using feedback from those who successfully complete the training, accessibility was identified as a challenging area, and so this particular area has been expanded.
Step 2: Working with Instructional Designers
Once faculty completed the training session, the next step involves working directly with an instructional designer. After a number of reviews, some more challenging areas for faculty were identified. The most challenging areas for faculty were those from Section D-Accessibility of the CVC-OEI Rubric. Below is just a sampling of some of the areas identified:
D1: Heading Styles
From an accessibility perspective, headings are valuable as they provide individuals using screen readers with a simple method to navigate within a Content Page. Therefore, we provided training on how to properly tag headings within a Content Page:
Use the styles from the drop-down paragraph styles menu. Highlight the heading, then choose the heading level from the drop-down list. The title of each Canvas Page is Heading Level 1 (H1), so the styles available for faculty begin with level 2 (H2) and proceeds to H3 and H4. There is both a visual difference (for sighted students) and a coded difference for students using a screen reader. When importing different documents such as slides, pdfs, or WORD documents, training is provided to faculty to explain how to use the individual accessibility features within these different programs.
D4: Tables & D9: Slides
Training was also provided in the areas of creating tables and including slides in Canvas. Creating tables within the Canvas Content Editor is different from including external sources with tables. Zoom training was provided by one of the Instructional Designers to help faculty understand how to format columns and tables for accessibility when using an outside source, such as MS WORD. Additionally, faculty liked to use PowerPoint in classes, so there was additional Zoom training provided to explain how to make slides accessible.
D7: Images
Accessibility is comprehensive, so the instructional designers offered training on how to use images in Canvas since any images used in content pages must provide content to all students, including those who are visually challenged. The alternative text, called alt text for short, allows you to provide a description of the image. There are times when images not only provide information; they also serve a function, such as a button or links to additional resources. In this case, the alt text should clarify the function. Finally, there are scenarios where descriptive alt text is not required because the image is purely decorative. To simplify, the alt text should include the following:
D12: Video
In the areas of videos and accessibility, Taft College’s Distance Education department provided a number of helpful pdfs that faculty can follow to learn how to embed and use video in their courses. Because the options are so varied (e.g. embedding videos into a discussion, uploading video to YouTube, and creating your own videos), there are a number of helpful links that faculty can follow. This is certainly helpful for getting videos into the course, but Instructional Designers discovered some faculty members felt challenged captioning their videos for accessibility. Thus, Distance Education staff have provided an entire section on using Canvas Studio to address this area. One Instructional Designer worked directly with a faculty member using Canvas Studio to caption videos.
Sustainability
Taft College is invested in the CVC-OEI project and continues to offer many resources to faculty who want to learn more about using Canvas or create accessible course content. The Distance Education department has created and shared numerous videos for students and faculty. Also, we plan to continue our professional development series, entitled Lunch and Learn (LaL), that we launched last fall for all faculty. Our workshops and presentations are offered virtually and are saved in a Canvas shell for future reference. In addition, the Professional Development Committee (PDC) plans activities for the Fall, Spring, and May in-services for faculty to acquire new skills and build on established practices. Taft College is committed to training faculty to use modern technology, ensure accessibility, and andragogical techniques to enable our students to have the best possible outcome when participating in the online environment.
Conclusion
While the CVC-OEI project has helped to provide guidance for faculty and staff in online course development, it has also created some challenges for our faculty and staff. These challenges are primarily related to accessibility in online courses. Our Instructional Designers have worked hard to train faculty in accessibility requirements to successfully produce distance education courses that are understandable, meaningful, and accessible to our students with and without disabilities. We believe that our institution can provide the best online educational experience through our training programs and our instructional designers’ commitment. We have achieved a sustainable and effective means to support Taft College’s commitment to providing high-quality programs through our training methodologies.
Authors:
Amar Abbott
High Tech Access Specialist
Adam Bledsoe
Professor, Business, Management & Economics
Juana Rangel-Escobedo
Counselor, Student Success
Veronica Van Ry
Professor, Sociology
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District or those of the California Community College Chancellor's Office.
As a professor in both health sciences and environmental technology, I understood the unspoken difference between courses that were considered “general education” courses compared to the career or technical education courses. Career education was “hands-on” and not considered useful to teach “online”. Well, that was until SARs COV-2 hit with the world with a vengeance and created one of the worst pandemics this generation has seen. With over 225, 000 (and counting) dead in the United States alone, people from all walks of life realized that wearing masks and maintaining social distance would be here for more than a few short months… and at the rate the US has gone, well let’s just say, in my opinion, normal won’t be around for another year or two.
We all know that life can’t just stop, and as thinking beings, we try and figure out workarounds to deal with work, school and home life. From an educational perspective, the timing couldn’t have been better to be participating in a grant opportunity focused on online learning for career education programs. With the help of “cutting-edge” online design experts housed right on my college campus, I can now say that career education CAN be taught successfully in a fully online DE format.
Needs
My program in Environmental Technology, which offers both Associate of Science degrees and Certificates of Achievement in Environmental Management and Occupational Health and Safety, is what I like to call the “best-kept secret” on campus (and probably the local community). The program is small but mighty as many of my former students are respected professionals in their fields. The challenge has always been lack of advertisement funding, and “dog and pony” shows can only get so many students in the door. Having taught online for numerous years with my GE courses, I felt that creating a fully online Certificate of Proficiency that could be taught to students everywhere, not just my local community, would be a perfect way to introduce students to important careers in safety and environmental compliance.
The CVC-OEI Improving Online CTE Pathways Grant couldn’t have come at a better time. Not only would we “CTE” faculty be challenged to apply online andragogy to technical courses, but we would also end up supporting our students with these changes because COVID19 was just around the corner. What this activity taught me and other fellow faculty members who participated in the grant was that successful online education was possible for career education, too. The program will therefore continue to convert face-to-face courses to fully online or hybrid courses with a future goal of also making the awards “zero textbook costs” to further support our students.
Project Goals and Relevance to Students
The primary goals for this grant included increasing enrollment and developing a Solid Waste Technician Certificate of Proficiency that could be completed in two semesters. Students new to this area of study might decide, upon successful completion of the “mini-certificate ”, that completing either the AS or the Certificate of Accomplishment would be even more beneficial, since completion of these degrees (AS in Environmental Management or Occupational Health and Safety) or certificates also includes a 40-hour HazWOPER certificate for the Environmental Management awards, or an OSHA 30-hour General Industry Safety certification for the Occupational Health and Safety awards. Both of these certifications are highly coveted in environmental and safety careers.
As our new online courses launched this semester, we found that for the first time since the inception of the program, the Introduction to Environmental Technology course has enrolled close to the class maximum number of students allowed. The impact to the program and college is significant because this course can carry its weight to enhance enrollment in all the other courses offered in the program. The benefits don’t stop with the college and the discipline. Students also benefit greatly, since many who are not from the local community were able to register and take this introductory career education course because it was offered fully online. Students can now learn this specialized field of study without having to be within driving distance of the college that offers it (and few offer this program in California). Another positive student impact is the flexibility that these fully online courses offer. Many students don’t have the ability to get to campus because of transportation challenges, and others are often working multiple part-time or full-time jobs. This new online certificate gives more students the flexibility and support that are critical to their success.
Lessons Learned and/or Obstacles Encountered
Like all project and grants, there are lessons to be learned and obstacles that need to be addressed. In short, because I am a more senior faculty member at my college, the technological prowess needed to develop the design one envisions requires a learning curve that in some cases will likely be under-estimated, as was the case for me personally. Those with sharp computer and software skills will not likely take as much time to “get the hang of it.” Thankfully these obstacles were not insurmountable because of the support of our current Online Learning Center staff. Without their assistance, I doubt that I would have been this successful developing this course. It is a very time-consuming process, so I encourage people to give themselves ample time to transform face-to-face courses to fully online courses, especially when lab components must be included.
Major Project Accomplishments
This semester is the first time offering the first two fully online career education courses in environmental technology, and the feedback I have been given from anonymous student surveys is positive. The courses have been designed to minimize student confusion and to maximize student support and interaction. It will take a few semesters of data to determine how successful these courses will be. The faculty anticipate that with these positive results, and the ability to offer these courses through CVC-OEI Course Exchange, the program will likely increase in student enrollment and completion, giving students the opportunity to work in careers that pay higher than average wages and are in demand.
Author:
Marie Vicario
Professor, Health Sciences & Environmental Technology
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District or those of the California Community College Chancellor's Office.
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