News
International Speaker at LEAP 2007!
Friday, June 01, 2007 - Power Up Editorial Staff
This year’s participants/innovators will have an opportunity to meet Anthony D. Williams, co-author of Wikinomics and keynote speaker at LEAP 2007. Good news is everyone at TSTC will benefit from this speaker’s presence. LEAP information will be shared, and innovative ideas gleaned from his presentation will be incorporated into future projects and practices developed at LEAP.
Following are project champions’ descriptions of the Chancellor’s Final Five LEAP projects. Innovators have self-selected to participate in one of these projects during the three-day conference to be held June 13, 14, and 15 at TSTC Marshall.
Project 1
Title: Retention Design/Guaranteed Success
Champion: Pat Hobbs
TSTC Harlingen has decided that within the current climate of reduced new enrollments we must concentrate substantial efforts and new thinking and strategies toward retaining the students that we do successfully enroll. Without sustainable enrollments our technical programs will continue to suffer program convergence and/or closures to the detriment of our state’s economic development, and our academic enrollments will continue to provide negative impact upon our “Closing the Gap” expectations. Retention-based strategies will be a major focus of the Instructional Division over the next two years in order to cut our losses of committed students. These strategies will include considerations, suggestions and ideas made popular by the Strategic Innovations Conference. The initiative will also include revised entrance and exit tracking features that will allow us to document the fact that students attain their chosen educational goal (Certificate, Degree, Marketable Skills Award, or satisfaction of their desire for knowledge and skills related to only a few courses)—a kind of “guaranteed success” factor.
Project 2 (three projects combined under one umbrella)
Title: Stealth Marketing /Alternative Course Delivery/Second Life
Champions: Eliska Flores, Fred Nelson, Kevin Brown, and Nick Alvarado
(a) Stealth Marketing / Social Software (Eliska Flores)
Pursue avenues of stealth marketing such as viral marketing to use word-of-mouth marketing delivered and enhanced online to reach a large number of people rapidly. Using blogs and e-zines is one way to increase brand awareness. Other examples could be designing flash games for distribution on the web or to be used with a partner such as Whyville.net for "tweens." Possibly have advergame creation contests with current TSTC students, then use the games to reach prospects.
Use social software, designed to support social networking and communication to act as an environmental tool to strengthen customer relationships or for customers to have a forum to discuss TSTC. This includes email, instant messaging, blogging, social networking sites, YouTube, etc. (Waco and Harlingen have ventured into this with Myspace college and departmental Web sites. West Texas is ventu ring into this with Second Life, and their Live Chat service with Admissions, Financial Aid, Counseling, etc).
(b) Alternative Course Delivery (Fred Nelson)
Consider alternative methods of course delivery. For example, utilize the Tegrity program, a mobile lab, hybrid self-paced courses.
Tegrity is a hardware/software solution that allows instructors to record lectures by video and/or audio for later delivery to students anytime, anywhere. It enhances pod casting/cell casting and enables students to download indexed class content to view and replay the entire class experience from their iPod, phone, or mp3 player, view thumbnails and navigate anytime. Tegrity offers extensive reporting capabilities, allowing faculty, academic officers, IT staff, and administrators to track usage patterns and measure technology impact.
A mobile lab would essentially be a hauler with pneumatics, hydraulics, welding, satellite, television, web access, etc. to use as an on the road training lab for corporate training. For example, one could develop electronic welding training to eliminate burn and rod, and offer software driven simulation in the mobile lab.
One example of a hybrid, self-paced course could be a self-paced reading course designed to accelerate completion of Texas Success Initiative (TSI) remediation requirements by first time students. Prerequisites would include a score of 64-68 on the Accuplacer Reading test or an equivalent score from any state recognized placement test.
(c) Second Life (Kevin Brown and Nick Alvarado)
Second Life is an online, virtual world that has become one of the Internet's most popular experiences. Second Life is also becoming an increasingly popular venue for teaching and socialization among educators, students, and organizations. One of the main draws for educators in using Second Life is for the improvement of interaction and expression among learners. This "three-dimensional", virtual reality experience is a great advantage over the traditional online learning systems that education currently embraces. Faculty and staff have worked diligently together to allow TSTC West Texas to debut our first course offerings in Second Life during the summer 2007 semester. Students across West Texas are excited that our school is “cool”.
Project 3
Title: Corporate Solutions
Champion: Tara Odom
TSTC's approach for connecting students/graduates with industry has historically been reactive with some exceptions. We propose a proactive, TSTC-driven initiative to develop and execute corporate solutions specifically in the procurement of current and future technical workforce needs. This will include planning and collaboration with clients in workforce pipeline development, employee training, recruiting and selection, corporate sponsorships and scholarships, etc. TSTC will provide customized solutions for business and industry requiring multi-function integration and buy-in throughout the System. We believe there is significant potential value to our student and corporate clients that could be realized by TSTC in this venture.
Project 4
Title: For Profit Private Enterprise
Champion: Pam Price and Paul Woodfin
To serve as a profit generating center for unrelated business services or enterprising marketing of individual talents and facilities. For example, use connections with industry partnerships for profit; teach about SACS accreditation, aviation repair facility.
Project 5
Title: Getting the Job Done
Champion: Rich Morris
“Do not mistake activity for progress”
Bill Segura 2006
How much of our work life is structured around activity?
How often have you heard, “It’s 8:30 am, where’s Joe? Doesn’t he know the work day starts at 8 am sharp?” Little does the person uttering those words know that you worked until 9 pm the evening before.
If someone is not at their “desk”, do you hear comments about Janie goofing off again?
And how often have we heard the term work/life balance. Just what is it?
Work/Life Balance: n. a state of equilibrium in which the demands of both a person’s job and personal life are equal.1
How often have you had an appointment for personal business for a period of time during the “normal” hours of work and you wish you could schedule your day around that appointment?
Have you ever had a sick child that you could not leave at the daycare and no one else was available to care for her? So you sit at home all day while your child is sleeping. Then next day when you return to work, your desk is piled high with the previous day’s work. Wouldn’t it have been nice to be able to work from home that day?
Numerous studies have shown that by focusing on the outcomes not activities, the work place can become more productive and less stressful.
This project will explore the opportunity to create a more productive and balanced work place.
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