Consortium helps community colleges tackle CBE programs

College for America at Southern New Hampshire University partners with USA Funds to open the door to community colleges who want to learn more about CBE programs and implementation

College for America at Southern New Hampshire University is partnering with USA Funds to create a competency-based education (CBE) consortium for community colleges.

The consortium will provide an opportunity for community colleges to learn from College for America and to engage employers in addressing workforce challenges through competency-based education.
Participating community colleges will learn about best practices from their peers and initiate conversations about CBE with employer partners in their communities.

The partnership will support both identifying workforce competencies needed by industry, and engaging employers in delivering those competencies to working learners. The consortium will work in two phases; the first will be to provide colleges a chance to learn and develop models and spark conversations about CBE within their institutions and employer partners. The second phase will be to scale and provide technical assistance for the colleges and to help them adopt CBE models if they are interested.…Read More

Online career training expands to new academic partners

Career Step formed new partnerships with Cass Career Center, Northland Career Center, KMR Training, St Petersburg College, University of North Florida, Kennesaw State University and Louisiana State University

Career Step, an online provider of career-focused education and corporate training, announced seven new partnerships with educational institutions across the country, including: Cass Career Center, Northland Career Center, KMR Training, St Petersburg College, University of North Florida, Kennesaw State University and Louisiana State University.

These institutions will be offering Career Step’s online training programs within their communities, preparing students for careers in the healthcare, technology and administration industries.

“Career Step has more than 150 academic partners across the United States,” said Ryan Ewer, Vice President of Academic Partnerships. “These new partners are important to us because they will enable more people in the Midwest and Southern states to access affordable, employer-trusted training programs. We are honored that these schools have chosen to team up with Career Step, and we are excited to help empower individuals in these new areas to improve their lives through our career education programs.”…Read More

Qwickly Attendance integrates with Blackboard Learn

Qwickly Attendance enables teachers to take attendance that is automatically graded in the Blackboard Learn Grade Center

A new attendance platform for Blackboard Learn, Qwickly Attendance, helps instructors track and grade student attendance while allowing for a variety of student check-in and card-swipe options.

“Without a doubt, what teachers do within the four walls of the classroom has been one of our focus areas over the past year and we are very excited to have extended Qwickly and launched this product. We soft-launched at the end of 2015 and today have thirty-one active pilots and paid clients” says Dr. John DiGennaro, co-founder and CEO of Qwickly, Inc.

“We worked with our schools to build a product that easily, but also very cost-effectively, solves one of the most frustrating tasks teachers face today. Teachers can focus on teaching, allowing simple and elegant technology tools to make their jobs easier. Qwickly Attendance extends the Qwickly Platform, one that also connects those users with the most robust, scalable, and adopted learning management system in the world, Blackboard Learn.”…Read More

Massasoit Community College implements threat protection

EiQ’s SOCVue provides school with ability to proactively monitor and protect against threats

SaaS security intelligence service provider EiQ Networks is working with Massasoit Community College on security monitoring and proactive threat protection. The school selected EiQ’s SOCVue hybrid SaaS security service.

Massasoit Community College will use EiQ’s SOCVue Security Monitoring to monitor several SANS controls, including Control 2 (Inventory of Authorized and Unauthorized Software), Control 5 (Malware Defenses), Control 11 (Limitation and Control of Network Ports, Protocols, and Services), and Control 14 (Maintenance, Monitoring, and Analysis of Audit Logs). They chose EIQ because of the ease of implementation and management, and because EIQ made it possible for Massasoit to monitor multiple SANS Controls even with a small IT staff.

“EiQ has allowed us the ability to be more proactive as to how we look at security,” said Jack Barrett, Deputy CIO, of Massasoit Community College. “The EIQ support staff is great! The weekly meetings are helping with the implementation of the service. Requests are handled in a timely and professional manner.”…Read More

Report: Community college students not prepared

A new report examines remedial course rates and national movements to reduce remedial enrollment.

Many community college students are not prepared to complete college-level work, do not succeed in remedial courses, and fail to attain their educational goals, according to a new report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin.

According to the National Student Clearinghouse, only 39 percent of community college students earn a certificate, associate degree or bachelor’s degree within six years. With that data in mind, the report seeks to understand community college students’ experiences with assessment, placement, and developmental education.

Expectations Meet Reality: The Underprepared Student and Community Colleges” features data from more than 70,000 community college student respondents across 150 institutions and more than 4,500 community college faculty respondents from 56 institutions.…Read More

Report explores college, career readiness strategies

A white paper from Pearson is designed to help educators navigate different approaches to students’ college and career readiness

college-readinessA new white paper introduces three “readiness models” designed to gauge students’ preparedness for college and workforce success.

On Track: Redefining Readiness in Education and the Workplace,” from Pearson, was written by David T. Conley, Ph.D., Paul G. Stoltz, Ph.D., and researchers from the Pearson Research & Innovation Network Center for College & Career Success.

Over the years, the authors assert, educators, employers, and policy makers have changed their expectations. Instead of wanting to assess students’ current knowledge, these stakeholders want to know more about students’ potential to achieve impactful and successful outcomes in the real world.…Read More

Why higher ed should be concerned about “education deserts”

New brief discusses why geography is an important factor concerning equity in postsecondary education.

education-desert-geography

It’s the same concept that applies to food deserts: because travel to another source is not possible, and local access is limited, mostly rural area populations cannot obtain affordable, quality food. Now switch food to education and the concept is fairly clear.

This concept is discussed in a recent American Council on Education (ACE) report, which posits that the national dialogue on equity and college access doesn’t often take into account geography—and it should.…Read More

Texas Association of Community Colleges implements online proctoring

Examity will provide live, recorded and automated proctoring

online-proctoringThe Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC) has chosen Examity, a leader in exam integrity solutions, to conduct all proctoring for online tests.

Examity will provide live, recorded and automated proctoring for the 50 colleges that compose TACC.

“We are excited to partner with TACC and provide it with the tools needed to preserve the integrity of its online learning program,” said Examity CEO Michael London.…Read More

Oops! We could not locate your form.