The President's Take

Online learning and the 21st century workplace

2012-02-07T08:54:00.000-05:00

I get asked how Charter Oak State College is preparing students for the workforce at every meeting I attend, and my answer is one I enjoy giving time and time again. I shared it at a meeting in Washington, DC last week, and one of the college presidents attending told me he was going to include it in his blog. So I decided that I had better get my idea into print before I needed to cite someone else.

All kidding aside, the question of how higher education is preparing students for the 21st century workforce is a critical question for our industry. It is being asked with increased urgency because so many students are borrowing larger and larger sums of money to pursue their college education. So it should be no surprise that the questions about whether these loans are justified by the learning are getting louder.

My answer is this. When I look at the classroom experience of our online students, what I see is a perfect example of the 21st century workplace. Like the workplace, our online courses are distributed in time and space, are technology-driven, collaborative, and short term. In effect, the strategies and behaviors of an online class mirror the strategies and behaviors of the 21st century workplace. Let me explain.

Our online courses emphasize communication between the instructor and students. This communication is executed through email, threaded discussions, and various types of digital presentations. The course activity occurs within the framework of a Learning Management System—Blackboard’s Learn, in our case.

This technology is necessary because while students take the course as a cohort, they do their “work” on their own schedule. For example, each set of assignments is due during a given week, but there is no specific time when the whole class meets. This is called asynchronous learning.

That same Learning Management System makes student collaboration easier. Our courses use very few high stakes objective tests and a large number of collaborative (team) projects. Students must produce work, share that work with their instructor and classmates, react to suggestions and offer them to others, play a specific role in the team’s project, and then deliver a final product by a due date.

And finally, since the vast majority of our students are working adults going to school part-time, these courses are just part of the work they do every day.

What I have just described is what an average work day is like for most people employed in this 21^st century economy. Employees often team up with colleagues who may not physically work in the same office, or even the same state or country. They collaborate constantly, and use a variety of communication technologies to support those collaborations. They may also be members of a variety of teams, none of which is their only job.

Charter Oak State College's students are being prepared for the 21st century workplace because their academic activities occur in the same online space, using the same tools, and arranged in the same collaborative teams as that workplace.

Would you agree? If you are a former or current online student, does this idea resonate with you? Please share your thoughts in comments. I would love to hear them.

Thoughts on 2012 and beyond

2012-01-13T10:50:00.000-05:00

Let me begin by wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year. I am taking advantage of some quiet time to share my thoughts about 2012 with you. As President, it is part of my job to keep an eye out for trends that will affect the College in both positive and negative ways, and adjust our course to address those trends. The break between Christmas and New Year is a good time for such contemplation.

We are always striving to increase the number of areas of study we offer our students, and continually focus on building programs in sectors of the job market that are growing. Health care is one such area and, after performing a careful scan of potential online programs, we chose Health Information Management (HIM) as the program in which we would invest. I am happy to report that this decision has been met with great enthusiasm in the health care industry.

The development of our HIM degree is moving quickly. We have identified and contracted with a subject matter expert who has developed the curriculum and program learning outcomes for the degree. These will be in alignment with the Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA) Examination and licensure that graduates of the program will achieve. We have identified qualified faculty from across the country to begin working with our Instructional Design team to build the 12 specialized courses that this program will require. Our Provost and Dean are preparing the documentation we must present to our Board of Regents and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges to gain approval for our new program. And we have set the second term of fall 2012 (October) as our planned launch date. So this important new program is moving forward according to schedule.

But I am continually wondering what to expect from the larger landscape. Will the economy improve? Will our adult students continue to see our offerings as important to upgrading their workplace skill sets? How will we all respond to the economic challenges facing our country?

Here is what I think. In Connecticut, we have a Governor who is aggressively addressing the state’s economic challenges. Working with our General Assembly and the state’s workforce, he has produced a balanced budget through a combination of new taxes, spending cuts, and union givebacks. None of this has been easy, but he has persisted. His plans included re-organizing our sector of higher education into a Board of Regents, and that entity is beginning its work. So at the state level, we are working hard to put our economic house in order.

And I see similar efforts, all a little different in terms of their emphasis on cuts, revenues, and pension adjustments, in the surrounding states. In effect, throughout our country, we have 50 laboratories experimenting with approaches to doing more with less. Unfortunately, on the national front, our Congress has not yet begun its work. It is my hope, as the various states begin to see positive results from their hard work, our federal representatives will adopt approaches that mirror the best thinking from those efforts.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments section of this post. How has the economy affected your life? What are your thoughts on the responsiveness of state and federal government to the economic downturn? Please let me know what you think.

I will keep you posted as the year progresses, and I wish all the best to you and yours from the team at Charter Oak.

Serving Our Nation's Finest

2011-11-11T10:53:00.000-05:00

Charter Oak State College is dedicated to educating adults. All our services are designed with working adults in mind, and our success is measured by their ability to finish their degree and improve their workplace success. One important sub-set of that population is our nation's active military. These students are working to finish their degree while holding down a job and raising a family -- just like all our other adult students -- but they are often doing all of that while stationed overseas or at the frontlines.

With the 21st century military providing advanced communication capabilities, our active military students are able to continue working on their online courses while they are deployed. For me, someone who has been promoting distance learning as a major tool for increasing access to higher education, these stories about our soldier-students are tremendously compelling. We are truly transforming education from a location to an activity -- an activity that is available wherever the student finds herself or himself.

It is also true that our military members have always been at the forefront of distance education; in fact, they invented it. As a result, these students also expect us to provide a quality product. If increasing access was the first challenge for distance learning, improving quality is today's challenge. Our active military students serve as excellent evaluators for testing and improving our educational products.

For a student perspective, you can meet student and military mom Diana Jones who is featured in our "Community" video. Her video spotlights the tight virtual community that Charter Oak cultivates through its online classroom, and in her piece, Diana talks about the bond she has with her fellow students, which has fostered friendships beyond the classroom. She also expresses her appreciation for the loyalty of her admissions counselor, and the quick, positive feedback she receives when she has questions -- whether she is taking courses stateside or while stationed overseas.

Finally, I want to extend my gratitude to all of our military members who have served, or are now serving, our country.

Please join us!

2011-10-14T13:40:00.000-04:00

Mark your calendars for October 27! The Charter Oak State College Foundation is sponsoring its annual Shea Lecture, which is FREE and open to the public. This yearly event is offered in memory of the College’s first President, Dr. Bernard Shea. The topic of this year’s lecture is a timely and fascinating one - the reliability of eyewitness testimony. The presentation will be delivered by Associate Professor of Psychology Jennifer Dysart of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who is an expert in eyewitness testimony. She will share her research into how we see and how we remember what we see. She is often asked to testify at major trials, and we are thrilled she can lend her expertise on this fascinating topic. Professor Dysart will be joined by a panel of police chiefs from Connecticut’s three largest cities.

We chose this topic for this year’s Shea Lecture because we believe it will resonate with our public safety students and alums. As many of you know, the College has a vibrant public safety program that has graduated nine Connecticut police chiefs. In fact, the panel of respondents includes Hartford Chief of Police Daryl K. Roberts, a COSC alum, and the recipient of the 2011 Charter Oak State College Foundation Innovation Award. This award will be given to the Chief, who recently announced his impending retirement at the end of the year, at the fundraising reception that will follow the Shea Lecture. Chief Roberts will be joined on the Shea panel by Bridgeport Chief of Police Joseph Gaudett , who is a current COSC public safety student, and New Haven Chief of Police Frank Limon. The lecture will be moderated by retired Branford Chief of Police and COSC alum John DeCarlo, PhD.

This thought-provoking event will be held at the Hartford Tower Auditorium, 22nd floor, 1 Hartford Plaza, Hartford, CT. This magnificent room is part of the Hartford Insurance Company’s building and the fun begins at 5:30 PM. We hope that those of you who live within driving distance of Hartford will come out for the lecture. In addition, we will be filming the talk so that it can be used in police training across the state. And if you would like to thank Chief Roberts for his 30 year career serving the citizens of Hartford, the fundraiser will give you a chance to shake his hand.

Our website has more information about the Shea Lecture. The staff and I are very excited about this event - will you be joining us?

A Formula for Success

2011-09-27T11:00:00.000-04:00

The best thing about these blog posts is that I have the opportunity to talk about whatever is on my mind. I have just finished reading the latest Thomas Friedman book, That Used to Be Us, which he wrote with leading foreign policy thinker Michael Mandelbaum. I confess that I am a huge Tom Friedman fan. He came to Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut to give a talk from his book on September 14th, and I managed to get myself a front row seat thanks to one of our alums who works there (Charter Oak alums are everywhere).

I tell you all this because I think Friedman has identified precisely what is ailing our economy and our country in his new book. His central argument is that we have built the largest and most successful economy in the world because we have had a formula for success and we have worked that formula for most of our history. According to Friedman, the five elements of that formula are: the best infrastructure in the world, the best educated population, government-sponsored research, laws and rules that permit the market economy to flourish but not explode, and an open immigration policy that attracts talent and energy from across the world.

It doesn’t take much thought to see that we are not working our formula now. Our infrastructure is old, budgets for basic research are down, the housing crash was caused by weak controls on the investment industry, and we are closing our doors to immigration. All of these are critical issues, but let’s take a moment to think about whether we are succeeding at having the best educated workforce in the world. Friedman argues that we have always educated our people “beyond the current level of technology whether it is the cotton gin or the supercomputer.” But are we doing that today?

The short answer is no. To begin, our educational system is not adapting itself to the existing technological reality of the world. Twenty-first century jobs are collaborative; technology intensive; driven by science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); and global. So are we systematically moving our children through a curriculum that is rich in STEM education, 21^st century technologies, project-based learning (the educational version of workforce collaboration), and global culture (e.g. languages, studying abroad, and international school-to-school partnerships)? While I have seen places where the answer is yes, it is not universally true. It certainly is not yet part of the conscious and intended outcomes of our educational system.

The last time we intentionally drove our system to produce a systematic improvement in outcomes like these occurred in the 1960s in response to Sputnik, the Russian satellite that beat us into earth’s orbit. We called on our educational system to produce scientists and engineers, and it did. Clearly, we need that sort of clarion call again. And I would argue that we must point ourselves towards approaches that are already producing these results. In other words, we need to identify programs that successfully address these needs and reproduce them in quantity across the educational landscape.

I have argued before that online learning mirrors the 21^st century workplace. Students must use communication technologies to produce projects, have discussions, and receive mentoring from their instructors and peers. This is precisely what is occurring today in the 21^st century workplace. To its great benefit, the online classroom is diverse, open to those with ability challenges, and accessible from anywhere that has access to the Internet. It does not require enormous investments in new infrastructure and it is scalable. We can intentionally grow this approach to education and use it to increase the educational attainment of our people.

So as Charter Oak works to improve its programs, services, and systems, we take satisfaction in knowing that we are doing our part to keep one element of America’s formula for success vibrant: we are committed to providing a level of education that surpasses the technology of our day.

Delivering Measurable Results

2011-03-29T14:22:00.002-04:00

Happy Spring! When I haven't been worrying about collapsing ceilings and wet basements, I have been watching the new pressures from Washington sweep over higher education. America's approach to higher education has created tremendous economic power for our country. We have opened our doors wider to potential students than any other country. After World War II, we welcomed home our returning servicemen and women and gave them unlimited access to higher education. My father took full advantage and ended up with a law degree from the University of Miami. In the seventies, we created and expanded our Community Colleges, offering second chance access to a whole range of students, including non-traditional students from our inner cities and our rural areas. The idea was to offer low cost, low frills education to as many Americans as possible.

Charter Oak was part of this expansion when it was created in 1973 to offer adult learners a way to bring their prior learning experience and college credits from almost anyplace to one institution that could help them shape those experiences into a degree. Our country has been brilliant at access to higher education.

For the past ten years, the Federal government has been increasing its financial support of higher education through Pell grants, which support our poorest students. That contribution has continued to grow, while state support for public higher education has remained flat or decreased. So it is not shocking that the Federal government is now asking us to report on the return on investment from its $150 billion dollars in financial aid support. Access, alone, is no longer enough; we have to deliver results.

So I have been working with a group of college Presidents collected by the Gates Foundation to find a set of performance metrics that colleges and universities can use to measure their educational accomplishments. These metrics include items like the six year graduation rate (how many students graduate in 150% of the normal time). In Charter Oak's case, we are at 63% on this scale, second only to UCONN in Connecticut’s public higher education system. And Charter Oak's number is up from last year’s result, which was an all time high.

We are also measuring our first-to-second-year retention and the workplace success of our graduates (our Connecticut grads improved their weekly income by $404 according to the Department of Labor). It is important for higher education institutions to know what their educational effects are and to report these widely and clearly. I am pleased to be part of the national work being done in this area, and proud of Charter Oak's success. But we can’t rest on our laurels. All of us will need to be reaching ever higher. So, expect to hear more about how higher education is succeeding at its educational mission, and how Charter Oak is doing in comparison to its peer institutions.

Serving Adults at a Distance? Join Transparency by Design

2011-02-03T13:03:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

If you follow higher education coverage in the media, you will know that there is increasing pressure on us to produce and measure learning outcomes. Well, Charter Oak has been working on solutions to this need and our Capstone courses are part of our response. But Charter Oak is also a founding member of Transparency by Design (TbD), which has created an online presence that is offering institutions a way to publish their program-level outcomes for inspection and comparison by prospective students. We are very proud of that project, and as the current chair of the TbD executive committee, I was asked to write a blog entry about the College Choices for Adults website. Here is a link to that piece, which was published by WCET:

Serving Adults at a Distance? Join Transparency by Design, a guest blog post on WCET by Ed Klonoski

Enjoy!

Call to Action

2011-01-27T15:35:00.001-05:00

I am sitting in my study watching the snow fall and figuring out when to release my staff for the snowy trip home. Presidents make lots of decisions, but none of them is as clearly right or wrong as the snow-closing call. In effect, these decisions represent a "call to action" for a leader, and they are both an opportunity to show that you care and a chance to be wrong. In the past few weeks, Connecticut has provided me lots of opportunities around this issue, so it has got me thinking about "calls to action."

Last night, President Obama talked about this generation's "Sputnik moment" and how it relates to the current economic recovery effort. He was making a call to action. Well, I am going to do the same — call you to action! America has long viewed higher education as a pathway to personal success AND the means by which the economy increases its competitiveness. That assumption is under assault from a variety of sources, not the least of which is the mounting cost of education.

On our end, we are working diligently to better measure the results of our educational programs. At Charter Oak we created the Capstone course so that students could reflect on their educational efforts and create ideas and products that showcase their skills and knowledge. We have also launched a Cornerstone course that will orient new students and refresh their writing skills. And finally, we have begun testing a "flagging system" that will give us early alerts so we can intervene in real time when students encounter academic problems. Implementation of these three concepts represent the College’s response to my call to action.

But you, as individuals, have a role to play as well. I challenge each of you to reflect on the value of the education you have completed or are currently pursuing. What was your call-to-action that sparked your interest to complete your degree? Put those thoughts into words. Share those thoughts with your family, friends, and co-workers. Send your thoughts to me via this blog. And eventually consider sharing those thoughts with the larger community in editorials, public forums and the like.

We all need to pay close attention to what our education providers are doing. At our end, we must be transparent and concrete about our outcomes. As our customers, you must help us understand where we are succeeding and where we must do better.

That is my call to action to all of us.

Season's Greetings

2010-12-17T12:15:00.000-05:00

I would like to take a moment to wish our students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends a happy and healthy holiday. Personally, I have a great deal to be grateful for, not the least of which is the creativity and support our staff and faculty offer to every one of our students. We have been very gratified to see our student enrollment grow to an historic high this year, so there are even more of you to support and appreciate.

This is traditionally a time for New Year's resolutions, and the College has made several. These begin with our very first Master's degree in Organizational Effectiveness which we are planning to launch in September. The program will begin and end with a face to face meeting with the cohort, but all the coursework will be offered online.

In order to improve the learning outcomes for our online students, we are deploying software in every course that will help our faculty and advisors understand when our students are struggling. This will enable us to offer timely and appropriate support. Think of this as the educational equivalent of Amazon knowing what sorts of books you might like from the ones you have already purchased. Part of the power of online education is that we can provide customized learning support to each student based on need, and the College is working toward this goal.

So, during this season of sharing and giving, I wish you all a peaceful and loving holiday. The College looks forward to serving you even better in the coming year.

Degree Completion: The New Center

2010-11-12T12:09:00.000-05:00

Thirty-seven years ago, Charter Oak State College was created to help adults return to college and finish their degrees. The founding idea of the College was that a degree represented a set of learning outcomes and abilities—like being able to write an argumentative essay or to analyze a set of data—and there are a variety of ways to demonstrate those competencies. So the College validated learning using formal tests, portfolios, courses from other accredited colleges and even learning that occurred at work.

Colleges like Charter Oak that specialized in degree completion -- and there were only three such institutions at the time -- were called college credit aggregators.

Today, America is at the threshold of a post-secondary education revolution. It is becoming clear that the global economy requires its workforce to attain skills and learning beyond high school. That is true for the plumber, the computer programmer, the financial analyst. It is true for everyone. If America wants to keep up with its competitor nations, it must produce one million more adults with bachelor's degrees each year for the next 20 years. In other words, Charter Oak would be required to increase its graduate output by about 1600%. Clearly, that is not likely.

So the Lumina Foundation -- an organization dedicated to helping people achieve their potential through success in education beyond high school -- has funded a series of proposals across the higher education landscape that will try to move degree completion from a singular challenge involving one student and one special institution to an assembly line. One funded initiative involves the state of Minnesota which maintains a database of 150,000 Minnesota residents with some college credit but no degree. The initiative was funded by Lumina to move as many of these people as possible into the degreed column.

I tell you all this as a way of pointing out that Charter Oak is no longer an outlier with an unusual or esoteric mission. Adult degree completion has become the new center. It is an absolutely critical part of the higher education landscape as America works to develop all of its intellectual talent. In effect, we have to find ways to support everyone's learning. We cannot afford to waste a single human talent set.

So it will not surprise you that Charter Oak is growing. We just passed our all-time, highest enrollment, and we show no signs of slowing down. Nor should you be surprised that we are working diligently to improve our efficiencies so we can do our part in converting more "adults with some credits" into "adults with degrees."

What may surprise you is that we are not alone. All across the country, there is a new focus on serving adults who have earned college credits but not their degrees. We are proud to be an institution that has worked on this challenge every day in all of our 37 year history.

New Programming for the Nation's Workforce

2010-09-14T16:54:00.000-04:00

As the economy continues to struggle, we are focusing more than ever on our new Vision statement, particularly one line of that goal:

Charter Oak State College: A community of online learners advancing the nation's workforce one graduate at a time.

We see our new master's degree in Organizational Effectiveness as an important part of meeting current workforce need. If the College is any indicator of what other businesses are doing, then improving organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and measures of that effectiveness are more important than ever. The content of this online master's degree, as well as its method of delivery, will provide exactly the preparation required for today's business leaders. We hope to launch our program in the Fall of 2011.

But there is more we are doing to advance the nation's workforce. We are also undertaking a substantive research effort to identify the skills and knowledge that the new economy will require in order to develop academic programs that will help working adults meet those emerging needs. As I have mentioned before, this recession is not just temporarily displacing workers, it is also permanently displacing workers. That means that new employment opportunities will require both new knowledge and new skills. We have collected data on where the emerging jobs will be, and we are now working to identify which of these possibilities will work for our adult, online students and which skills we should emphasize in our programs.

We will certainly build on the strong foundation that already exists, as we have growing programs in public safety, early childhood education, and healthcare administration. We will also develop programs that are module in nature. While the College's primary goal is degree attainment for adult learners, as we design new programs, beginning with the master's degree, we will build these in such a way that pieces of them can be used to build specific content and/or skill sets that are particularly relevant in the emerging workplace. For example, our master's degree will have a non-profit focus, and that group of courses could be taken as a unit to enrich individuals looking to improve their understanding of the non-profit sector.

We understand that the American workforce is challenged to improve itself to stay relevant in the post-recession workplace, and we are actively working to create programs that provide degrees and skills relevant to that economy. Not only are we seeking to provide flexible approaches to those new skills, but in the process we are participating in growing and sustaining a new economic workforce in America.

2010 Commencement Speech: Life Happens

2010-06-29T11:08:00.000-04:00

Charter Oak State College was created to serve adult students, second chance learners, who were balancing work and family while they worked to complete their degree. As I look out at your happy faces, I can see that we were founded on solid ground.

Let me begin by congratulating each and every one of you on the successful completion of your degree program. As you know better than I do, today did not happen by accident. It most likely began a number of years ago... in a few cases, more years than you care to admit... and I suspect it didn’t go smoothly. Things happened that derailed your first efforts at college. Life happened.

In some cases it was money—it ran out. In others, children. In a few others, it was bad grades or doubt about what major to choose. Maybe you got married or enlisted. Lots of you have moved around, collecting credits from a variety of institutions, but a degree from none. Some of you soured on higher education and others just got too busy.

In other words, life happened, and your degree hopes were put aside. But that dream of a degree didn’t die when you turned 25. It is true that many of you had your education derailed by life events, but it is equally true that each of you is here because some other life event drove you to start back up and persevere until you finished.

That life event might have been a missed promotion. Or the sight of your kid graduating from high school. It might have been an inheritance that put some extra money in your pocket, or more likely a pink slip that put more time into your hands. Maybe you finally picked your major or the graduate program that you want to pursue. Maybe you just stumbled across Charter Oak. Life happened.

And I bet that your decision to reconnect with college wasn’t made alone. Look around this auditorium, listen for a moment: Our students come to us a part of a family package. When you began to make your plans to finish your degree, I bet there were other people at the table. How many of you graduates have children in college? How many of you in the audience took on extra responsibilities so your significant other could study?

Well these are all examples of life happening as well. It is certainly true that life can interrupt us, but it is equally true that it can set up back on our path. And each of you is here today because your life happened—both the good stuff and the bad, and it all led you here.

So what words of wisdom do I have for you? Just this: Never doubt that you can accomplish great things. You have. And never doubt that life will happen while you are trying. It did and it does. But today you graduates are proof to yourselves and to the rest of us, that we can all achieve great things not in spite of what life throws at us but because life happens.

So I send you out into the world, Charter Oak State College graduates, life tested, degree in hand, confident that you will find new goals and that you will achieve them. And I ask one thing of you: The next time you hear someone say, Life Happens, you answer that it sure does. And it led you to this special moment.

Charter Oak's Vision Statement

2010-06-09T12:15:00.000-04:00

As part of its ongoing strategic planning process, the College has created something we call The Visioning Team whose mission is to keep all entities within the institution focused on achieving the strategic goals we've established for ourselves. Creating a vision for an organization, then linking subsequent decisions and strategies to its realization, is much more difficult than corporate management textbooks make it sound. Often, vision falls victim to daily pressures, sudden crises, and a variety of other pressing concerns. But in reality, nothing is more important to the health of an organization than a shared vision and the feeling, by each participant, that he or she is making a key contribution to achieving it.

So we created a visioning team comprised of a nucleus of staffers who were already spending time on activities related to the strategic goals of the College. These were the folks who were measuring progress and then imagining what needs to be done next. The Charter Oak Visioning Team is comprised of four executives and three key directors. Those three directors selected a faculty representative and an additional staffer to bring our total number to nine. We meet every two weeks.

The team's initial challenge was creation of a vision statement. I was more than a little nervous about this. I worried that we wouldn't agree on content, or that we might not be able to find the proper language to clearly express the vision. Well, my worries were for naught. After only two meetings the group created this insightful statement:

Charter Oak State College: A dynamic community of online learners, advancing the nation's workforce one graduate at a time.

This statement is both internally and externally directed. It is aspirational, which means it is meant to be a reach; and it is specific, which means we are trying to grow along a specified path. That is why the team used the word "workforce." If we were a liberal arts college, we would have used a word like "citizenry." But as an adult-serving, degree completion institution, the best descriptor we could find for our audience and for our niche in the world of higher education is WORKFORCE.

We have shared this phrase with students, alums, staff and our faculty. We shared it with the Board at the May meeting, and we will begin using it in our communication. As you receive more of these communications, you will see that we are trying to organize our efforts to make this vision a reality. For example, we have just chosen a company to help us research academic programs so that we can develop new programming that really does "advance the nation's workforce." And the new document scanning system we are purchasing will move more of our work online, making our goal of becoming a "dynamic community of online learners" more accurate within our administrative walls.

You will hear more about both the Visioning Team and our progress in achieving our vision in future posts.

Micro-credentials: The Next Frontier

2010-04-20T21:03:00.000-04:00

Charter Oak State College prepares working adults to advance their careers by completing their degrees. We have spent the past 37 years helping over 10,500 such adults finish their Associate or Bachelor’s degrees, and that need is increasing. But I think there is a shift coming in the way that working adults approach credentials. My prediction is that many of you will become interested in partial credentials—certificates—that I call micro-credentialing.

By micro-credentials I mean a cluster of courses around a core expertise. In addition to finishing a whole degree, I predict that working adults are going to be demanding that higher education help them add specific skills to their resume. Imagine a recently promoted worker who needs to better understand HR or Finance or Exporting or Tax Law. What they need is 6-12 credits of coursework that quickly and specifically advance their functionality in these areas. And I believe these demands will be coming primarily from adults who already have degrees. Let me explain.

The first driver for this change is the nature of our current underemployment problem. Not only is the current recession reducing jobs in fields that often suffer from periodic unemployment (e.g. retail or home improvement or real estate to name three areas that are slow right now), but we have a variety of industries that have shed jobs that will never come back in their previous form. The best example of that is the auto industry. As the car manufacturers retool their product lines, they have closed plants, laid off a variety of workers, and they have no plans to re-hire most of these workers if their sales pick up.

The second driver, which will emerge over the next several years, is the baby boomer retirements. When the stock market collapsed, my 401K retirement plan shrank to a 201K plan. That same shrinkage occurred to millions of retirement age workers, who were forced to delay their retirement until their funds recovered. Well the market is slowly recovering (it’s back over 11,000). That growth has put my funds back to where they were when the collapse occurred, and as that recovery begins to work for workers in their mid-sixties, we will see large numbers of baby boomers retiring. But we will not just lose the cohort that turns 66; we will also lose the cohorts that turned 66 over the past several years and who have been waiting. These are very big cohorts—that why they are called boomers. There aren’t enough trained workers prepared to replace all these boomers, particularly those working in positions of responsibility.

These retirements will be a real opportunity for many of our alums. You finished your degree by making a commitment to lifelong learning. You will be fully prepared for the rapid approach to gaining missing credentials that I am predicting. The workforce left behind will need to fill gaps in its experience as quickly as possible (probably at the same time as they take on new responsibilities abandoned by retirees) and higher education will need to be ready to provide these micro-credentials.

I find this encouraging because the only way to integrate this rapid learning with on-going and increasing work responsibilities is to provide that learning to the students where they work…in other words, online. I also believe that much of the micro-credentialing will occur at the graduate level, and Charter Oak is preparing to be an online provider at this level. So if I am right, the adult workforce will be even more interested in credentialing than they are now, but they may view that education through the prism of skills rather than degrees.

Remaining Relevant

2010-03-05T16:19:00.005-05:00

Welcome to my first official blog post for Charter Oak State College. When I asked the staff what the best way to communicate with our students and alums might be, I was curious about the approach they would recommend. I was ready for live chats, threaded discussions, even tweets, but their suggestion that I write a blog seems perfect to me because it takes me back to my roots. I taught college writing for over 20 years—perhaps the most dreaded course after college math—and during those years I often wrote and published op-ed pieces, the blogs of that time. Back then I was trying to practice what I was preaching to my students. Today, I am trying to create a sense of community with our students. So here I go again, sharing my thoughts and trying to do it with a little style.

The cover story of the September 21, 2009 issue of TIME focuses on America’s unemployment crisis. In the story entitled “Unemployment Nation” Joshua Cooper Ramo references research by Lawrence Summers, director of the President’s National Economic Council and former president of Harvard (see how I worked another college president in there). Summers writes about a concept called hysteresis, which refers to changes in the economy that are permanent. We hear a great deal about economic cycles that move the market up and down and are all part of the business cycle, but hysteresis is the unpleasant idea that some changes in the marketplace are not part of a continuum; some changes are permanent. The most famous example is the farming jobs that disappeared during the Great Depression and never returned. Another is the large steel furnaces that formed one of the major industries in this country but that were replaced by mini furnaces decimating the economy of steel cities like Pittsburgh.

There is concern on a number of fronts that many of the American jobs that are disappearing in today’s recession will never return. The auto industry may be one example, and another is mass manufacturing. The answer will be clear in a few years, but in the meantime we have almost ten percent of the population looking for work. So what is the country to do?

In a word, the answer is re-tool. But it is not our technology that needs to be upgraded, it is our workforce. We need to offer displaced workers training that prepares them for the employment that is available, and even more importantly, for the employment that WILL become available. “But wait,” the discerning reader cries, “how can anyone know what jobs will be important in the emerging new economy.”

That’s a good question. I, for one, don’t think it is impossible to see what those jobs will be like. First, they will not be low knowledge, high touch jobs. The new jobs will involve the following elements: creativity, independent initiative, critical thinking, quantitative analysis, information literacy, and adaptability. They will be more like consulting jobs, where you are offering yourself as a key component in larger projects. Work will be team based, and each of us will function on multiple teams simultaneously, sometimes in a leadership role and other times in a supporting role.

Does anything like that exist now? Well if you are a Charter Oak student, you know that your online courses require all of these traits. They require working in teams, communicating using internet technologies, self-direction (no boss looking over your shoulder), and multi-tasking (I am writing the first draft of this while babysitting for the neighbors kids). You can do your work from a variety of places, and your team consists of people from all over. Could it be that these online courses provide the model for what these new jobs will be like?

I will have more to say about preparing for the next economy in future blog posts, but if you are learning online you are already participating in the best model for that economy that higher education has developed. You might even say that your online courses are a simulation exercise that is preparing you for the jobs that WILL become available. So don’t complain about those team projects and don’t feel guilty for reading your favorite blog in between class assignments; you are just practicing for one of those 21st century jobs.

Connections, February 2010

2010-02-01T00:00:00.002-05:00

Welcome to 2010. The past year has been a real challenge for many of our students and our alums. Let me begin this message by wishing you all a much better new year.

For Charter Oak, the weak economy has been increasing both the number of students entering the College and the number of students applying for and accepting financial aid. At this point in the academic year, the College has already surpassed the total number of students who received financial aid in Fiscal Year 2009; and the numbers continue to grow. So we are growing, but it is pretty clear that our growth is being driven by economic disruption and the need for adults to improve their workforce credentials. The good news is that helping adults attain degrees is exactly what Charter Oak was created to do. So with every graduate, with every course enrollment, with every certificate we issue, we are helping families cope with the economic turmoil. You can help us serve our most financially challenged students. The Annual Appeal Campaign for the Charter Oak State College Foundation is in full swing. The Foundation is providing $30,000 in grants, this academic year, to Charter Oak students in need. This generosity is made possible by the support we receive from Alums and Friends of the College. We hope you are one of them. You can donate by visiting http://coscf.org/annual.

One of the new developments at the College is our tuition fee waiver for Connecticut’s military veterans. Charter Oak State College has not been named under the Connecticut State Statutes requiring public institutions to provide tuition waivers for Connecticut veterans because the College does not have “tuition.” Instead, it has fees. However, the staff and Board of Trustees agree it is important that the College does its fair share to support our veterans. So, in November, the Board approved a tuition waiver policy, following one instituted at the Connecticut State University System. Our new policy allows a 50% course fee waiver for Connecticut veterans who matriculate at Charter Oak. We are also reviewing our fee structure for active members of the military in order to align it more closely with those of other military-serving institutions.

In another area, the marketing staff is tracking how the College’s media efforts performed in enticing potential students to the College. These tracking reports enabled staff to make better-informed decisions regarding our spring, 2010 marketing efforts. For example, staff found that of six radio stations used last fall, three performed well while three underperformed in terms of luring students to the College’s website. That tracking information allowed us to improve the efficiency of our radio buy for the College’s spring enrollment campaign. In addition, research has shown that although the median age of Charter Oak students remains at 40, one of the College’s fastest growing demographic segments is in the 25-and-under age group. So it won’t surprise you that we are advancing the College’s efforts in the area of social networking. Our staff is blogging on Facebook and LinkedIn, and the College has observed that more and more alumni are using the social networking blogs. Check us out on these sites, and let us know what you think.

As always, feel free to send your thoughts directly to me at eklonoski@charteroak.edu, leave a message at 860-832-3876, or comment here.

Connections, August 2009

2009-08-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

I am writing this in mid-July, and Connecticut has been having a cool, rainy summer. The one ‘hot spot,’ however, is the College’s summer online courses. Our enrollment is up 26% over last summer as adult students continue adding online courses and programs to their educational plans. With online course enrollments growing nationally at 12% annually, and at an even higher rate here at Charter Oak, the staff has begun a five year planning process to try to understand how the changes in our economy and the needs of adult learners will affect the College.

Looking forward, we are assuming that there will be an increase in price sensitivity among adults seeking degrees, so Charter Oak’s affordability will be an advantage. In addition, the steady growth in online enrollments demonstrates that students are embracing this delivery method. We believe they enjoy the flexibility and convenience of online coursework (no driving, no parking, and no wasted time), so we are expanding our catalog of courses and our complement of trained instructors. Finally, everyone from President Obama, on down, is emphasizing how important a college degree is to being workforce ready. With the national unemployment rate touching 10%, even adults with good jobs are considering finishing their degree so that they can be as marketable as possible.

So, as we imagine this brave new world, we can’t help but notice that the College offers three key components that should be in high demand: a degree completion program, affordability and online delivery. With these components in place, we believe we are poised for dramatic growth. As such, we should focus on answering this question: What makes Charter Oak special, and what makes its online courses unique?

It struck us that one of the best sources for answers to this question would be our graduates. So I am asking you to let us know what it is about the College’s program that best served you. In addition, I am trying to learn what it is about Charter Oak’s online courses that distinguish them. By the way, I do not assume that either our degree program or our courses are perfect. In fact, at the heart of this exercise is the clear intention to make both our program and our online courses better. So please send us your thoughts about what served you well at Charter Oak and how we can improve ourselves.

We think the College is poised for growth because it is adult focused and emphasizes flexibility, convenience, and affordability. We want to use this opportunity not just to grow our student body but to take our approach to the next level. We eagerly look forward to receiving your input.

Please send your thoughts directly to me at eklonoski@charteroak.edu, leave a message at (860) 832-3876, or comment here.

Connections, February 2009

2009-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to 2009. I hope that despite the economic challenges, you and your family are managing.

Here at the College we have been working to ready ourselves for Connecticut’s financial challenges
so that we are available to assist our students with their career preparations. We recognize that for
adult students difficult economic circumstances mean increased pressure to complete those degrees. The College is carefully adjusting its strategic plan to ensure that we have the online courses and student services required for our growing population. We believe that this economy and impending baby boomer retirements make educating the existing workforce a clear priority for both government and industry, and that is what I have been reminding both legislators and corporations.

On a positive note, our annual fund raising effort for the Charter Oak State College Foundation began in November, and we are seeing a wonderful response from those who have already benefited from their Charter Oak degrees.

Even in an economic downturn, our alums and friends of the College are digging deep so that we will have adequate resources for those students who need financial assistance. The generosity of our alumni clearly reflects the value they place on their Charter Oak degrees, and we deeply appreciate that support.

Even as we adjust ourselves to the economic downturn, we continue planning for the steps we believe we need to take to keep the College moving forward. We plan, during the next session of the Connecticut General Assembly, to ask the legislature to amend the existing statute that created Charter Oak so that we can offer a master’s degree. For years, we have heard our alumni ask why they cannot
continue their education by pursuing a master’s with Charter Oak, and we are determined to develop an online master’s program as soon as we can. The Foundation has promised to support this effort, so we are working diligently to prepare for this major step.

And finally, we are beginning to think about ways to add more “learning objects” to our online courses. These are interactive mini-applications that empower learners to explore concepts while the technology tracks their progress and offers them choices and second chances. Another word for the learning objects is “simulations” (think of software like SimCity™), and they are an exciting new frontier in distance education. Our mission is to provide adult learners efficient paths to degree completion, and we see simulations as another powerful means through which adults can master the concepts that lie at the heart of any academic program.

I write this at the threshold of the holiday season, and I hope that you had a restorative holiday. Let me know if there is anything that I can do for you.

Connections, August 2008

2008-08-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

The fall of 2008 marks a special moment for the College and for me. On October 3rd, we will hold an inauguration ceremony publicly celebrating the transition to a new president. This is the first time in eighteen years that the College has needed such a ceremony, and it seems a propitious moment to reflect on changes—both personal and institutional.

For me, this is what the IT folks call a career moment. As I write this, I am five months into the job and beginning to see just how large and exciting a challenge it is. I am thrilled to be Charter Oak State College’s new president and grateful for the support and encouragement I am receiving from staff, students, and alumni. But as I assist with planning for the inauguration, I am forced to face just how significant a moment this is for the institution; and that is a more solemn proposition.

The economic challenges that swirl around all of us require that we execute the College’s strategic plans with special care. But these difficult conditions also reveal the wisdom of our previous efforts. As the cost of fuel rises, the cost effectiveness of distance-delivered education becomes clearer to everyone. We now have over 200 online courses, with new courses being added with every launch date. Our courses are delivered in 5-week, 8-week, and 15-week versions, and we begin new “semesters” across the whole calendar year. Clearly, our distance learning efforts have placed on the right side of history as higher education moves to deploy the power of modern communication technologies to project learning to the learner.

In addition, the economic landscape is being shaped by the looming retirements of baby boomers and the decline of their college-age offspring. These two demographical realities point toward adult learners as the population that will require intense educational support in the coming years. Charter Oak State College’s distance learning expertise and its 35 years of adult learner focus will become its sharpest tools in meeting that challenge. As it becomes increasingly difficult to find new workforce talent, we expect that companies will be working furiously to find ways to keep their workers prepared and educated. We are preparing the College to assist with that challenge by using its ability to deliver education to the workplace and to construct that learning to serve adult learners.

So, the strategic focus of the College over the next months will include preparing ourselves for increases in online learners and wider public interest in online learning. Already, the College is being included in a variety of workforce proposals that seek to educate the Connecticut workforce using the tools of technology-mediated education. We have launched a Corporate Partnership Program to increase our visibility in Connecticut’s workplace, and we are continuing our efforts to find partners whose educational content can be combined with the College’s advising and eLearning capabilities.

Stay tuned. It should be an interesting journey.