Actually, there are two apps and more on the way.

Shoreline Community College is going mobile in an effort to meet students where they are, wherever they are. Shoreline is the first community college in the state to launch full-featured “apps” for Apple and Android mobile devices. A Blackberry option is on the way and a Windows version is anticipated. The college also has a new mobile Web site.

In the coming weeks, the college will launch a new communication service, Connect–ED, that sends emergency and other important messages via e-mail, texts, voicemail to cellular and land-line phones and even to TTY-TTD devices for the hearing impaired.

And, they all tie in with the college’s existing learning management system that can allow students to go to class on their smartphone, iPad or other mobile device.

“These are big steps for us, but they are just first steps,” Shoreline Community College President Lee Lambert said. “Students have an expectation of this kind of service. We all have that expectation in our everyday lives, it shouldn’t be different when you go to college.”

The new apps were created in partnership with Blackboard, the same company Shoreline uses for its online learning system. Both the Apple and Android apps provide:

• Directory – Look up contact info for Shoreline faculty and staff, save contacts and e-mail to a phone or mobile device.
• Courses – Access the class schedule for the current term, and the next term as soon as it is published.
• Learn – Check in on class assignments and other information posted in Blackboard and even go to class in some cases with Blackboard Mobile Learn.
• Videos – Tune in to Shoreline’s YouTube channel.
• Images – See a sampling of photos from campus events on Shoreline’s Flickr feed.
• Get Help – Emergency phone numbers and other contact information.

Connect–ED – a communication service that provides college officials with the ability to reach students, faculty and staff with time-sensitive information within minutes – is also being implemented through the partnership with Blackboard.

“Statistics show Shoreline to be a safe campus, but we must prepare for situations that we hope never happen,” Shoreline President Lee Lambert said. “The ability to have immediate communication during emergency situations plays an important role in the safety and security of our students, employees and the surrounding community. This new tool gives us that ability.”

Contact information for about 10,000 current students and employees is already loaded into the Connect-ED system. The college is sending a test e-mail and phone message on Jan. 17. A second test, a text message, will be sent Jan. 23 to students and employees who provide a phone number for texts.

It is important that all current students and college employees go towww.shoreline.edu/connect to confirm, change or add contact information and preferences for Connect-ED.

“Depending on the service plan, receiving a text message can cost the user money. So for that part of the service, we’re asking students and employees to go to our Web site and choose their preferences,” said Jim Hills, special assistant to the president for communications, marketing and government relations. “No system is perfect, but the more ways we have to communicate important and emergency messages, the better chance we have of keeping people informed and safe.”

The new mobile Web site was created in partnership with Hearst Seattle Media, the sales arm of www.seattlepi.com. The site includes mobile versions of pages about programs, cost, enrollment, online classes, photos and contact information. The mobile site also includes a link back to the main college Web site. “Hearst has been a big help in quickly getting the college into the mobile environment,” Hills said.

For students, the core is the Blackboard learning management system.

Blackboard Learn is Web-based software that provides students and instructors a set of tools to post class materials online and easily communicate with each other. Shoreline uses Blackboard to deliver its online and hybrid courses and to provide Web-based resources for many on-campus classes. Students can access Blackboard from anywhere they have Internet access.

In addition, Shoreline adds Blackboard Mobile Learn, giving students and faculty access to their courses, content and organizations on a variety of mobile devices including iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and Palm smartphones. Initially, Mobile Learn was available only for Sprint customers, but through an agreement with Blackboard, it is now available regardless of carrier.

There is no additional fee from the college to students for any of the online services, although cellular phone companies may charge for data services and text messages.

Ann Garnsey-Harter, director of eLearning for Shoreline, said the steps support all students regardless of how and where they attend classes. “While we offer four degrees completely online and one more mostly online along with eight certificates, these additional online services are available to everyone,” Garnsey-Harter said.

President Lambert has previously announced that Shoreline would move ahead with a virtual-college initiative.

In March, 2011, a 64-page “Blueprint for a Virtual College: Report to the President’s Senior Executive Team” was presented to Lambert and other college officials by Garnsey-Harter and Stuart Trippel, acting director of financial services.

The blueprint concludes the college should take an “approach that will build upon the College’s existing strengths: offering high quality online instruction at an affordable price. … Using this incremental approach, the immediate recommended goal is to improve existing online instructional offerings and to package them comprehensively, and – equally if not more importantly – to address internal process barriers in the area of student services.”

“The mobile apps we’ve launched are milestones, visible evidence that we’re making progress,” Lambert said. “We’re following the blueprint, taking the steps necessary to make sure we’re meeting the needs of our students and the community.”

tec

This is the case for public education as a whole and especially true for Washington state’s community and technical colleges. There are many factors driving the need for change in our system. Dramatic cost shifts to students in the form of tuition and fees, significant reductions in state support, globalization and technological advances are driving the need for envisioning a new future for our colleges.

This new vision must include a dramatic shift from the model of teaching and learning currently deployed in our system. The community and technical college system in its present form was enacted into law in 1967. Under past circumstances, the system served the residents and businesses quite well. With its emphasis on open access, the system paved the way for scores of individuals to receive a quality education at an affordable price. Many of these individuals have gone on to be business leaders, doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, teachers and the list goes on. Legislators, past and present, should be proud of the system they helped form. The countless educators, staff, administrators and boards of trustees deserve our respect and appreciation for the outstanding work they have done to educate and train the residents of Washington state. Employers – large and small, past and present – should be thanked immeasurably for their commitment to partnerships with colleges and support for the students that often go on to become valued employees.

When they were established, community and technical colleges were an innovative response to serious needs. However, the law is nearly a half-century old and crafted for a different era. As they say on Wall Street, “Past performance does not guarantee or imply future success,” a warning well worth heeding. Colleges can once again be an innovative response to serious needs, but not without significant changes made as soon as possible. I believe the challenges are clear and the solutions available for a brighter future where the system can continue to be an innovative leader.

Forces driving change

It is tempting to attribute today’s challenges to the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. This is akin to saying the problem is not of our doing, placing the blame at someone else’s doorstep and shunning responsibility and accountability. Undoubtedly, the recession is painful, but it obscures the truth that the winds of change have been gathering strength for decades. As Walt Kelly’s cartoon-strip character, Pogo so pointedly said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

As I reflect on my own schooling, I realize that I received a less-than optimal education in high school. And, that was from 1977-81. In 1983, the “A Nation at Risk” report was released, signaling the need for change or America’s standing would be compromised. Another important snapshot, published this past May by the independent Washington State Budget and Policy Center, reveals a slow-but-steady shift over the past two decades away from public support for higher education to placing a greater burden on students for the cost of their education. All the while, positive student learning outcomes at all levels are in serious doubt and U.S. students face increasing competition from abroad in a globalized economy.

For the first time in U.S. history, the current generation of college-age Americans will be less educated than their parents’ generation, according to the non-profit group, Achieving the Dream. If our state, and nation hope to attract and retain the best talent in order to maintain economic viability, we must raise the educational standard for all residents.

The 21st Century version of globalization – as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman likes to call it, Globalization 3.0 – has made human capital the No. 1 currency. According to the World Economic Forum report, “Human capital is replacing financial capital as the engine of economic prosperity.” The ability to attract and retain the best talent from wherever will define a nation’s, a state’s, a company’s success or failure. Therefore, a nation’s or a state’s success, will turn on its ability to train and educate its citizens. However, the skills needed are those that the current system is failing to deliver.

What are those skills? Tony Wagner, in “The Global Achievement Gap,” details the Seven Survival Skills our students must acquire to be globally competent. While much more is needed and expected for ongoing success, these skills are foundational to that success. In “That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back,” Friedman and his co-author, Michael Mandelbaum, argue that individuals need to think, act and perform like an immigrant, a waitress and an artisan. In other words, everyone is going to have to develop extra skills and abilities.

Another key consideration is the need to close the educational achievement gap, especially for our low income, disadvantaged populations. The recent report released by the American Council on Education, “Minorities in Higher Education – Twenty-Fourth Status Report: 2011 Supplement,” underscores the pressing challenge facing us as a nation. This challenge continues to persist with very little cost saving scalable solutions being piloted.

The clarion call has been sounded time and time again with little or no meaningful gains being made. The Educational Testing Service, in its 2007 report, “America’s Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation’s Future,” writes, “there is little chance that economic opportunities will improve among key segments of our population if we follow our current path. To date, educational reform has not been sufficient to solve the problem…we must raise our learning levels, increase our reading and math skills and narrow the existing achievement gaps…” This report utilized data and was released before the current economic crisis. If we thought it was difficult during good times to solve this national and state-wide challenge, it may seem near impossible giving the current set of circumstances. However, I don’t believe or accept the premise the challenge can’t be solved now. It will require a laser like focus, and a total restructure of how we approach teaching and learning to turn the tide.

Fortunately, there are positive solutions we can employ now. These innovative approaches will require all of us to collectively and dramatically shift our thinking, and create systems and processes that will welcome current innovations and allow for experimentation.

At Shoreline, we’re trying changes to meet students’ needs. For example, we are piloting a modularized developmental math program. Students move through the modules at their own pace, completing what they can during the quarter. What they pass, they keep, and pick up where they left off the next quarter. We’re building on our successes in the online environment, including fully online health informatics and supply-chain management degrees. We’re creating a virtual college that can serve students wherever they are in the world. Our automotive technician and CNC machinist programs are the blueprints for delivering employable skills with third-party verified, portable certifications. We’re expanding our international education program to benefit both domestic and foreign students. We’re actively courting private-side partnerships to offset the continuing loss of public funding.

These are all efforts within the existing regulatory framework, but systemic change will require systemic solutions. To that end, we’re also working with the decision-makers to look at how best to change outdated rules when they get in the way of our mission of helping students, our community and our state.

We signed an MOU establishing the basis to move towards setting up a contractual relationship to build a 400-bed dormitory on the campus. We met with officials from Xian University for Posts and Telecommunication and Xian Fanyi University. Xian Fanyi is a private university providing credit and non-credit offerings to approximately 40,000 students. We also reached a tentative verbal agreement to establish an office in Xian. Although the name of the office has not been set, we discussed calling it Shoreline: College for Global Relations and University Transfer.

Each time I travel to China, my sense of urgency grows about educating our American student’s about Chinese culture and language. Not only is China one of the two most populous nation’s of the world, it is quickly establishing itself as a market leader in many industry sectors. China Mobile has over 600 million subscribers making it the world’s largest telecommunications company. China has become the largest car market on the globe with approximately 18 million units sold last year. China is becoming the global leader in clean technology be it solar, wind, clean coal, battery technology, and the list goes on. Educationally, its high school students are outperforming the United States. It is for these reasons, and so much more, it is in the national and economic interests of the U.S. to cultivate an in-depth understanding of China.

If the above is not impressive enough, let me share just a few more observations. China is a civilization with a history of more than 5,000 years. Historical records confirm that China, not the Europeans, discovered the Americas. Admiral Zheng He (Ming Dynasty) was the architect of modern leadership and management practices. Following Mao’s passing, the Chinese began modernization plans resulting in the re-emergence of China as a global leader. The Chinese are currently executing their 12th five-year plan.

What the Chinese have done to modernize Shanghai, Beijing, Tian-jin and Shenzhen is occurring all over the country. Diana and I witnessed this first hand while visiting Xian. the old capital of China. Under Emperor Qin, China was unified more than 2,200 years ago. His legacy can be experienced by visiting the Terracotta Warriors, known as the eighth wonder of the world. He also began the project, we have all come to know and admire as the Great Wall. Xian is a city experiencing great growth and prosperity.

I titled this blog 20-30-34 as an example of this growth. One of China’s leading developers provided Diana and I with a tour of his latest projects. Twenty stands for the number of apartment buildings he will complete in 30 months of at least 34 stories. By contrast, it took Shoreline Community College approximately 18 months to complete a renovation of its student union building.

His work is impressive in and of itself. However, it is not exceptional for China. This type and scale of development is occurring all over the country producing a newfound level of wealth.

Fortunately for the U.S., there is much goodwill towards us. Older Chinese recall fondly the generosity of the America flying unit known as the “Flying Tigers.” Today’s Chinese parents consider America’s higher education system as the envy of the world. As such, these parents are willing to sacrifice by sending their sons and daughters to the U.S. The Chinese millennial generation admire American culture.

It is for these reasons and so much more, Shoreline Community College is moving quickly to strengthen its campus internationalization efforts to bring the world to Shoreline and grow the overall global competence of its faculty, staff, students and communities.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, on Monday, Aug. 8, 2011, ordered agencies, including community colleges to prepare for budget-cutting scenarios of 5 percent and 10 percent for the coming year. Across the state, that would mean another $838 million to nearly $1.7 billion.

“Given economic conditions, as well as the uncertain impact on states of pending federal budget reductions, there is a distinct possibility we will face further revenue losses in the coming year,” Gregoire’s budget director, Marty Brown ,wrote in a memo to all state agencies.

According to information from the state Office of Financial Management, a 5 percent cut would mean about $53 million to the state’s community and technical college system with 10 percent doubling that to $106 million. When counting other state support beyond the general fund, state board officials have advised college officials to use 4.6 percent and 9.2 percent to estimate the potential cuts at individual campuses.

For Shoreline, that could mean cutting another $1 million-$2 million, perhaps by Jan. 1 and perhaps sooner if Gregoire calls a special legislative session this fall. The Governor said she’ll know more after the scheduled Sept. 20, 2011 revenue forecast.

While this is not unexpected news, it is disheartening. With cuts we have sustained over the past several years, Shoreline now receives less than half of its total budget from the state. Unfortunately, it appears that this is no longer just a temporary dip, but a new reality not only for Shoreline, but all of higher education.

We’re working hard to move away from reliance on state funding and not just continue the state’s solution of shifting the burden to students by raising tuition.

Our strategic initiatives are in place to help Shoreline continue to meet the needs of students. Education and training are keys to help get the economy moving again, but the old funding model is broken. We’re working to build a new model.

We’re working in three strategic areas: online classes, international students and industry partnerships.

We’re expanding our capabilities in online education, building on our already terrific offerings. Some of the first work will be to give a better online experience in the student services area such as being able to pay. That helps all students, too, not just online students.

For international students, we’re building on our strong existing program, which has about 600 students from 34 countries. We’re creating what internally we’re calling the China team, which will focus on mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

While bringing more international students here helps the college, the real benefit is to the students, both international and domestic. We live in an increasingly global society. Global awareness and global competencies are increasingly valuable. If we can bring the world together at Shoreline, we’re all better off.

The idea to develop more industry partnerships also builds off another existing strength we have at Shoreline: the Professional Automotive Training Center.

The automotive program shows how to meet student’s needs and industry’s needs. We’re working to apply that idea with other programs and other industries such as aerospace and biotechnology.

Still, we have the reality of the reductions announced by the Governor. I’ve asked the Senior Executive Team to begin immediately to find how the college could the cut levels called for by Gov. Gregoire. We’ve shown we can do a good job of planning ahead for state cuts. We’ll need to continue to do that while we also work toward replacing those lost state dollars.”