Tennessee's Outcomes-Based Funding Approach Showing Signs of Success

Tennessee implemented Outcomes-Based Funding several years ago. I applauded the change from funding allocations that were tied heavily to enrollment growth. When I worked at Chattanooga State Community College in the 90s, the only date we cared about was the 14th day of the fall semester - census day. The new formula rewards degree completion. While it is not a perfect system, it is conceptually an improvement.

Now we have indications that the outcomes focus is paying off. The Lumina Foundation has released preliminary results of their study of the Tennessee program. It shows:

Bachelor’s degrees awarded have increased by 3.4 percent annually since initial formula implementation, compared to 2.5 % annual growth prior to formula implementation. Other states have also had faster growth in bachelor’s degree completion in recent years, consistent with underlying demographic trends, so it is too early to confidently attribute the results to the formula alone.

Associate degrees have increased by 6.3 % annually since initial formula implementation, significantly faster than the 2.8 % average growth rate prior to implementation.

Certificates in Tennessee show strong growth since formula implementation that appears clearly linked to the new funding policy, with 174 % total growth in short-term and 27 % average growth in long-term certificate awards. The “certificate” category is much more flexible than degrees, so institutions have greater scope to create programs very quickly or to define completion of certain existing groups of courses as a certificate award. Tennessee has refined its standards for which certificates can be counted to limit opportunities for “gaming” the formula and to make sure that certificates have genuine academic and economic value for students.

Read my POV Column in Community College Week

I wrote Six Reasons Your Community College Needs A Social Media Strategy and Not Just a Facebook Page to encourage two-year institutions to develop a comprehensive

strategy or plan to fully use social media channels to engage with students and other constituents.  I have developed an online course for Snead State

Community College (AL) for their new certificate program in Social Media.  To make that happen, I have researched and explored a wide variety of material on techniques and best practices to maximize the impact of social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more.  

Will Community Colleges Exist as We Know Them?

One of my greatest fears is that American community, technical and junior colleges may well disappear.  2-year higher education is probably the single greatest American contribution to the world of higher learning.  One only needs to look at the plethora of such institutions that have

undergone name changes to eliminate the term “community from their name to see the effort to be more like 4-year institutions..  

The other disturbing trend is the notion that community colleges offer bachelor’s degrees.  This is a slippery slope and could lead to the eventual demise of true community colleges.  Perhaps this can be done is a way that allows 2-year colleges to retain their distinctive and important role, but I have my doubts.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a great opinion piece from Rob Jenkins.  Rob is one of the most insightful voices

for higher education, especially for community colleges.  He is an associate professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College and author of Building a Career in America's Community Colleges. 

Read Rob's article The 'Middle of the End' for Community Colleges? HERE

7 Great Blogs to Follow About Community Colleges

Community College Success

Isa Adney is a speaker, author, host, and consultant who Blogs about helping students break the cycles of poverty through education. Her book Community College Success was published by NorLights Press in 2012. Twitter: @IsaAdney

Confessions of a Community College Dean

Matthew Reed, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Holyoke Community College in Massachusetts writes Confessions of a Community College Dean.  He is a long-time Blogger for Inside Higher Ed who writes from the perspective of an academic leader.  Reed's book, "Confessions of a Community College Administrator," is published by Jossey-Bass. Twitter: @deandad

The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER)

CCCOER encompasses several educational partners who seek to develop and use open educational resources, open textbooks, and open courseware to expand access to higher education and improve teaching and learning. The Blog is curated by Una Daly, a faculty member at Foothill College in California. Twitter: @unatdaly

Community College English

Focused upon the First Year Composition course and other intro English courses, this Blog is open to contributors who want to add their voice to this community site. Many of the posts are curated by Holly Pappas, a writing teacher at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts. Twitter: @hapappas

Two Year Talk: A Blog for Librarians at Two-Year Colleges

Two Year Talk communicates news, promote discussion of relevant issues and serve as a visible development vehicle for two-year college libraries. Primary curator of this Blog is Julie Cornett, Assistant Professor and Librarian at Cerro Coso Community College in California. Twitter: @frontlib

IDeaS from the Sandbox

IDeaS from the Sandbox is from the Instructional Design Services department at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska.  It supports faculty use of educational technologies and learning strategies. Twitter: @MCCIDS

The Learning, Education, Technology and Support (LETS)

The Learning, Education, Technology and Support

(LETS) Blog is maintained by North Shore Community College's (MA) Academic Technology Department to provide an informative and useful resource for faculty, staff, and other interested parties. Lance Eaton, Coordinator of Instructional Design provides a growing pool of resources, recommendations, tools, and material for educational purposes. Twitter: @leaton01

3-D Printing: On the Verge of Something Really Big

I am fascinated with 3-D printing.

In 2004, The NMC: The New Media Consortium created its first edition of its signature publication, The Horizon Report.  I was fortunate enough to have been a member of that publication’s editorial panel and can clearly recall the discussion we had around RAPID PROTOTYPING – a technology we now think of as 3-D printing.  The panel recognized that a growing number of colleges and

universities were experimenting with rapid prototyping for fast and cost-efficient creation of models and parts.  The 2004 Horizon Report projected that the availability of 3-D printers would spread once the price of the units came done.

The recently published 2014 Horizon Report identifies 3D printing as a “Technology to Watch” with a time-to-adoption projection of two to three years.  It describes the technology this way:

Known in industrial circles as rapid prototyping, 3D printing refers to technologies that construct physical objects from three-dimensional (3D) digital content such as 3D modeling software, computer-aided design (CAD) tools, computer-aided tomography (CAT), and X-ray crystallography. A 3D printer builds a tangible model or prototype from the electronic file, one layer at a time, through an extrusion-like process using plastics and other flexible materials, or an inkjet-like process to spray a bonding agent onto a very thin layer of fixable powder. The deposits created by the machine can be applied very accurately to build an object from the bottom up, layer by layer, with resolutions that, even in the least expensive machines, are more than sufficient to express a large amount of detail. The process even accommodates moving parts within the object. Using different materials and bonding agents, color can be applied, and parts can be rendered in plastic, resin, or metal. This technology is commonly used in manufacturing to build prototypes of almost any object (scaled to fit the printer, of course) that can be conveyed in three dimensions.

Ten years later, the current NMC panel is even more enthusiastic about the technology.  And, there are scads

of examples of how it is being used regularly in educational settings – both formal and informal.

I can affirm that this technology is here now – at least in Chattanooga.  The Chattanooga Public Library 4th floor has a 3-D printer that is available for use to members of the public.  I used this device to make my first 3-D object – a very small figure of Totoro, the iconic

anime character.  They have since added a second printer with the capacity to produce larger objects.  You can read a story - The Boundless Possibilities of 3-D Printing  - on how Chattanooga has embraced 3-D printing in Nooga.com, a local news website focusing on business, government and lifestyle in the Chattanooga area.

You should also read a recent article in Campus Technology, one of my favorite publications - Print Your Own 3D Learning Objects.  The article describes how faculty and students at the University of North Georgia are using 3D printing to create low-cost orthotics and assistive devices for disabled children and other applications of this “disruptive technology.” This article also provides some resources for those interested in learning more about 3-D printing in education.

Autodesk AutoCAD: commercial 3D modeling software
Autodesk Maya: commercial 3D animation software
Blender: free, open source 3D creation software
Dassault Systems SolidWorks: commercial software for engineering design
Trimble SketchUp: a commercial design program that includes 3D modeling
Trimble SketchUp Make: a free 3D drawing tool

Printer Options - Hobbyist 3D Printers (sub-$3,000)
Afinia H-Series

Deezmaker Bukobot 8

MakerBot Replicator 2

Personal Portable 3D Printer (PP3DP) UP! mini

SeeMeCNC Orion

Solidoodle Cube 3D Printers

Ultimaker

 

10 Things that Will Make You a Better Photographer – Guaranteed

1.  Rotate your camera.  If you subject is mostly vertical, turn your camera 90 degrees.  This will create a vertical

Rotate the camera to make a vertical composition

photograph that makes you subject more prominent.

2.  Move in closer.  Standing too far away from your subject diminishes the impact of your photograph.

3.  Use the “Rule of Thirds.”  Avoid putting your subject in the dead center of your image.

 If you divide the image re into

Avoid "centering," create interest

thirds horizontally and vertically, placing your subject close to the intersection of the lines creates a far more interesting photography.

4.  Take lots of photos.  With digital photography, there is no reason to take only one of two shots.  Especially when you have people in the photo, take several of the same pose.  You will be surprised to see that there are small differences

Taking several shots can "capture the moment"

that will make one of these the “keeper.”  Delete the rest.  Also, often great photographs "capture the moment" and taking multiple shots will let you select that moment.

5.  Move.  Do not stay in the same place and fire off a bunch of shots.  Move closer and move from side to side.  If you have a series of photographs and they are all from the same spot, with the same background, they will be boring.

6.  Watch the background.  Even a well-composed photograph can be made worthless if there are poles or

Contrasting, soft background enhances subject

trees coming out of the subject’s head.  Try to find a neutral, uncluttered background where the contrast of that background and the subject will make the subject “pop.”  Also, avoid having the sun or extreme brightness behind your subject.

7.  Hold steady.  A blurry photograph is usually not what you want.  Hold your camera steady.  Practice pushing your camera’s shutter button with a smooth, steady pressure.  Sometimes you will need to consider a camera support such as a tripod or monopod.

8.  Shoot at the proper level & angle.  Bend down if your subject is lower, such as a child or a pet.  Shooting at an extreme angle of up or down can be an effect you want, but

Bend down

in most cases, get to the eye level of a subject.

9.  Use lines, angles, and framing.  Lines and angles are powerful visual elements; they can direct the viewer’s eye to

Opening in wall as a frame

your subject.  Also, consider suing some element of the environment to frame a photo.  For example, a bit of a tree branch can make the subject stand out and have perspective.

10.  Learn as much as you can about your camera.  Even the simple “point and shoot” models have controls that will make you a better photographer if you know how to use them.  One example is ISO setting.  This lets you adjust the sensitivity of your camera to light.

Try these ides and see what people say about your talents as a photographer!

One Laptop Per Child – Where Can this Take Us?

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has a mission – to empower the world's poorest children through education.  The primary methodology is to provide every child with a laptop computer to help them learn.  Yes, every child – in the world!  The

good news is that this is happening right now.  According to the project website, worldwide over 2.4 million children and teachers have XO laptops.

OLPC is a project managed by the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPCA) with support from its partner the OLPC Foundation (OLPCF).  Both are U.S. non-profit organizations set up to oversee the creation of affordable educational devices for use primarily in the developing world.

The XO-1 laptop itself, perhaps more aptly called a “subnotebook,” is manufactured for OLPC by Quanta Computer, a Taiwanese company that is the largest manufacturer of notebook computers in the world with Apple, HP, and Dell among its customers.  The XO-1 is designed as a rugged, low-power device using flash memory with a variant of Red Hat Fedora Linux as their operating system.  The devices use WiFi “mesh networking” and operate with multiple machines wirelessly connected to a router or other access point.  There is a more

current XO-4 version that is in use and a tablet version using Android OS ready for sale at some WalMart stores for $150.  It is likely that the project will shift its focus toward more tablet distribution.

Dive into some of the press covering the OLPC effort and you will find some truly amazing stories.  From Armenia to Nicaragua to Uruguay, the impact of these devices is already profound for those communities where they are deployed.  The effort in Uruguay is actually the first instance where a national government has committed to universal distribution in its nation.

It makes you wonder what we could do in the United States with a commitment to provide One Laptop Per Child here at home.

Distribution of OLPC devices