Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Competency Based Learning, Canvas LMS and Skamania County

I didn't mean to wait this long between blog posts but Winter quarter got away from me in a big way.  I hope the quarter is going well for you.  I want to update you on three initiatives that may be of interest to you. 

1.  Competency Based Learning and the Coalition of the Willing
This is a provocative initiative happening at the state level that I expect will be of concern to many faculty.  There is a movement at the state level to create a community college version of Competency Based Learning ala Western Governor's University.  It's too early know how this might work at the CC's and there are many issues to resolve.  Meanwhile there are a series of trainings happening statewide with participation from 28 of the CCs.  Clark is participating in these trainings and if you're interested I would be happy to provide more details. 

There is quite a bit of information about competency based learning and WGU at these sites.  The concern centers around the deaggregation of the faculty role.  For example in the WGU model the responsibilities of curriculum design, grading, mentoring and instruction are done by four different faculty.  It's definitely a different model and it's difficult to see how much of this would translate to the CC's but the conversation is taking place.

2.  Canvas LMS
Many of you are aware of the recommendation to switch to the Canvas LMS that was forwarded by the Elearning committee.  I chose not to weigh in because I wanted to hear the conversation and have appreciated the discussion thus far.  To date, the recommendation has been presented to Instructional Council, unit leadership, College Council and Executive Cabinet.  Some of the concerns I've heard are related to the quick implementation timeline,  potential of increased workload and questions about whether Canvas is a better LMS than Moodle. 

Based on what I've seen I believe the switch to Canvas is the right move.  Utilizing an LMS that has been adopted by the majority of higher ed institutions in Washington will benefit our students.  I am confident the Elearning department will be able to migrate your courses with minimal issues and a number of trainings already exist.  I encourage you to voice your opinions about this issue as the decision needs to be made soon.

3.  Clark in Skamania County
Feb 19, President Knight, myself and a few others were invited to attend a forum in Carson, Washington.  The purpose of this forum was to investigate whether there was sufficient interest in offering some classes in Skamania County.  We thought there might be 20 or so individuals and were taken aback with the more than 200 standing room only crowd that attended.  We answered questions for 90 minutes and it is fair to say there is significant enthusiasm for offering limited courses at the Wind River Education Center, a former middle school that is largely vacant.  We will be meeting more to discuss what types of classes and how many to offer but the goal is to offer 1-2 this Spring and go from there.

1 comment:

  1. Great words shared about canvas LMS. Primary features to be found in Canvas LMS are Speed Grader Annotations, Integrated Media Recorder, Graphical Analytics Reporting Engine, Canvas Commons, Notification Preferences, Android, IOS, and many more. Our professionals have designed and incorporated each of the features as well as interfaces in such a manner that it leads to saving of big amount of time and effort of individuals. In this way, Canvas LMS leads to each learning and teaching methods. For any queries email us at: info@cryptextechnologies.com

    ReplyDelete