CCCOnline FAQs

CCCOnline FAQS

·         Why does CCCOnline start classes later than the system colleges?

o    CCCOnline is a service organization to the system colleges.  Classes start later so students can register for classes that may have filled up at the colleges, or for students who are registering late.

·         Who receives the tuition and FTE for CCCOnline students?

CCCOnline students are actually the colleges’ students.  Since CCCOnline is not a college, it does not receive any FTE; this goes back to the students’ home college as well as associated COF funds.  This is important as FTE affects the system funding formula for each college.  In regards to the tuition, CCCOnline receives 51% of the tuition from CCCOnline courses while 49% of this tuition is retained by the respective home college.  CCCOnline pays instructors’ salaries, as well as the annual licensing, maintenance and support costs of the Desire2Learn platform, the Perceptis help desk costs, Turnitin, Respondus and Soft Chalk that all colleges use. 

·         Does CCCOnline report on student attendance by the census date?

o    Yes, CCCOnline's attendance policy helps to identify students who do not intend to actively participate in courses.  To comply with this policy, each CCCOnline course requires students to:

1. Participate in an "Introductions" discussion, which may or may not be graded.

2. Submit  two graded, content-related assessment prior to the census date.

-The assessment must be content related - it should not be a "syllabus quiz".

-The assessment may be a Dropbox, Quiz, or Discussion

The lists of students who do not actively participate are sent to the respective home colleges.

·         How do students contact their instructors before classes start?

o    CCCOnline tracks enrollment numbers.  Based on this they determine the number of instructors needed for a term; instructors are given class lists a couple of days before a semester starts.  Before a term starts, instructors send out welcome emails to their students; prior to this, students also receive a welcome email from CCCOnline.  If a student needs course information prior to being assigned an instructor, they should contact the appropriate Associate Dean (http://www.ccconline.org/About_Us/People/Divisions/).

·         Whom do we call for help at CCCOnline?

o    Contact information is available at http://at.ccconline.org/faculty/wiki/Who_to_Contact.  For Associate Dean Contact information, see http://www.ccconline.org/About_Us/People/Divisions/.

·         Do CCCOnline students have to meet course pre-requisites?

o    Yes, course pre-requisites are set by each college and CCCOnline students must meet those pre-requisites. 

·       

·         Is CCCOnline bookstore information available?

o    This information is available online at http://www.ccconline.org/Students/Bookstore/?type=flash.

CCCOnline Community

Hello,

In case you didn't know, CCCOnline has a community discussion board.  Here, we have educational blogs you can participate in, or just read for interest.  If you teach with us, your Academic Division will also have a "Community" set up for your Division.   If you have a moment, please visit if you haven't already.

Accessing the CCCOnline Community

• Log in to the CCCOnline portal
• Click the Faculty tab [If you do not have the faculty tab email your chair ASAP]
• From the Faculty Gateway Access widget, located on the right side of the screen, click the Log into CCCOnline Community Site [clicking this link will give you access to the CCCOnline Community and enroll you if you are a new instructor]

Hope you all are keeping warm!

Best regards,
Terry

CCCOnline and Quality Matters (QM)

We're proud to announce CCCOnline is an official subscriber to Quality Matters.  Quality Matters is a nationally recognized leader in quality assurance for online education with over 550 subscribers, including universities, community and technical colleges, and K-12 schools. We’re excited about the partnership and the opportunities it will bring for ongoing CCCOnline improvement. 

The Quality Matters program will assist us in designing consistent, high-quality courses focused on student learning.  For more information, please contact Terry Reeves at terry.reeves@cccs.edu.

Upcoming Professional Development Opportunities

Hi Folks!

I hope you all are having a great start to your Spring courses. We  have a few opportunities for professional development in the coming month that I wanted to make you all aware of.

• February 8th, 1:00 pm MST - Webinar:  CCCOnline Quality Assurance 101
• February 11th - Workshop: Managing Discussions 
• February 15th, 1:00 pm MST - Webinar: The Essential Multimedia Survival Kit

In addition, we have our last few sessions of "What's New in D2L Version 10" for those who haven't attended the required webinar yet:

•  February 19th, 1:00 pm MST - Webinar: What's New in D2L Version 10
•  February 20th, 5:00 pm MST - Webinar: What's New in D2L Version 10

And finally, we'll be hosting a second D2L Version 10 Q&A Session, to which you are invited to come and ask questions about the new version of Desire2Learn.

• February 28th, 1:00 pm MST - Webinar: D2L Version 10 Q&A Session

As a reminder, webinar registration closes 24 hours prior to the session, and workshop registration closes 10 days prior to the session. For information on how to register for these sessions, visit the CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Page.

As always, send any questions about upcoming professional development to training@ccconline.org.

Sean Renner
CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator

Congratulations to David Chatham!

Congratulations to David Chatham for being recognized as the Admin/ProTech of the Year for CCCS!  David is a very deserving recipient and we're proud he is part of CCCOnline.

Welcome to Spring 2013!

Hi everyone,

I hope you had a good holiday break – it’s hard to believe the semester is starting next week!  First, let me thank you all for teaching with CCCO this spring.  I know the start has been a little rough with the D2L upgrade; with hard work and a pinch of luck, hopefully all will be smooth by the start of next week. 

I wanted to give you the link for whom to contact for help:  http://at.ccconline.org/faculty/wiki/Policies_&_Procedures_-_Who_to_Contact.  Please also remember to remind your students to access NetTutor for add’l tutorial services; for Development Ed courses, the Online Tutoring Lab (OTL) is also available.  For Online Library assistance, Mary Cash is ready and willing to help – please contact her at mary.cash@cccs.edu.

If I can be of assistance to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.  Happy New Year to everyone, and best wishes for a smooth and rewarding semester.

Best,

Terry

"What's New in Desire2Learn Version 10" Webinars

The end of the year is fast approaching, and with it approaches our switch to D2L Version 10. The required webinar sessions have been filling up fast, and most of the sessions are full. The remaining open sessions are as follows:

Pre-Session I

January 11th, 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Pre-Session II

February 19th, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
February 20th, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM

As this webinar is required for all instructors prior to teaching in the Spring, be sure to register for an available session soon!

You can register for these sessions on the Training and Professional Development Database.

Thanks!

Sean Renner
CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator

Hi folks,

As most of us know, captioning videos can be one of the biggest challenges when adding media to our online course. Captions are required for any video content that we add to ensure that our courses are ADA compliant.

However, video content can be extremely valuable to student learning experiences, and the task of having to create captions shouldn't discourage us from creating multimedia for our courses.

YouTube has one of the best auto-captioning tools, which now includes the ability to edit the auto-captioning mistakes right in YouTube, making it one of the fastest and easiest captioning solutions. This new video on our Technology Resources Training and Professional Development page gives you a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the tool to caption your videos:

http://www.ccconline.org/Training_and_Professional_Development/Technology_Resources/Media_and_Web_Tools/Captioning

Hopefully this will prove to be a valuable resource for you when creating videos for your courses!

Sean Renner
CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator

Greetings CCCOnline Instructors,

As many of you may already know, over the 2012 holiday break, the Colorado Community College System will be updating its learning management system to Desire2Learn version 10. This new version of Desire2Learn has a number of improvements that will help make your online teaching and student learning experiences smoother and more efficient.

While there are many improvements to the tools in Desire2Learn version 10, the biggest change is cosmetic. Courses will have a new, cleaner look and feel to them. However, while they may look different, the basic functionality, along with all of the tools you're used to using, remains the same.

CCCOnline is committed to educating our online instructors about the changes in Desire2Learn version 10 to prepare them for teaching using this version in the Spring semester of 2013. To help fulfill this commitment, all current CCCOnline instructors will be required to attend one session of the “What's New in D2L Version 10” webinar prior to the start of their Spring 2013 classes. This one-hour webinar will help instructors get familiar with D2L version 10, and help them understand what changes might impact them in their teaching.

The "What's New in D2L Version 10" webinar will take place on the following dates:

• December 14, 1:00 PM MST
• January 8, 1:00 PM MST
• January 9 , 11:00 AM MST
• January 9, 5:00 PM MST
• January 18, 1:00 PM MST

January 22: Session I Begins

• February 19, 11:00 AM MST
• February 20, 5:00 PM MST
• February 22, 1:00 PM MST

February 25th Session II Begins

In addition, there will two, one-hour Q&A opportunities, in which instructors are invited to ask questions about version 10. (Please note that the Q&A sessions will not fulfill the requirement to attend a "What's New in D2L Version 10" webinar.) These Q&A sessions will take place on the following dates:

• January 24th, 1:00 PM MST
• February 28th, 1:00 PM MST

As with all Training and Professional Development Webinars, registration is required and takes place on the Training and Professional Development Database, which you can access here: http://at.ccconline.org/training/

For instructions on how to use the database, visit this page:
www.ccconline.org/Training_and_Professional_Development/Training_and_Professional_Development_Opportunities/Registration

Please direct any questions you have regarding D2L version 10 Training and Professional Development to me at Sean.Renner@cccs.edu, and any general questions about the D2L version 10 upgrade to Terry Reeves at Terry.Reeves@cccs.edu.

We look forward to sharing this new and exciting version of D2L with  you!

Sincerely,

Sean Renner
CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator.

CCCO Executive Director Update

CCCOnline Instructors

I am delighted to announce that Dr. Eric Lee has accepted the position of Executive Director for CCCOnline.   His official start date will be Monday, November 26^rd.  Prior to that date, he will be attending the Educause annual conference and potentially attending one or two CCCS/CCCOnline meetings.

I want to thank both Eric and Kyla Hammond for their strong candidacy.  It was wonderful to have two top-notch candidates for this important position.   Kyla will continue in her role as program chair for CCCOnline.

I appreciate the dedication of the search committee in seeing the search through and the patience of the CCCOnline staff as we continued our search process.   I know you will make Eric welcome as he transitions into the Executive Director role.

Julie

Julie Ouska

CIO/VP, Information Technology

Colorado Community College System

(720) 858-2781

julie.ouska@cccs.edu

Survey Request

Hello,

Below is a survey request that has been approved by Geri Anderson and Julie Ouska.  Note that your responses in the survey will be anonymous, but in participating, you can elect to enter a raffle drawing for a Kindle Fire.  I know you are all busy, but if you have about 15 minutes to do the survey, I know your feedback and efforts would be appreciated.

Thanks everyone,

Terry

Dear Instructors and Academic Administrators,

You are invited to participate in a research study designed to solicit perceptions from faculty and academic leaders within the Colorado Community College System (CCCS).  This study is part of a dissertation project at the University of Denver entitled: Faculty Engagement with Learning Outcomes Assessment: A Study of Public Two-Year Colleges in Colorado, and is conducted by Jennifer L. Williams, PhD candidate.  Jennifer can be reached at jenwilli@du.edu or 720-937-0376.  This project is supervised by Dissertation Chair Dr. Cheryl Lovell, Morgridge College of Education, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208, 303-871-2479, cdlovell@du.edu .

Participation in this study should take about 15-20 minutes of your time.  Participation will involve responding to seven demographic questions and 31 questions about faculty engagement with student learning outcomes assessment.  Additionally, 27 items from a separate research study are included that have different scales and may seem unrelated to the initial research questions presented.  However, these items are essential to estimating the survey instrument’s validity, thus your responses to these questions are very important as well. 

Your responses will be anonymous, which means that no one will be able to connect your identity to the information you provide.  You may, however, elect to enter a raffle drawing for a brand new 2012 Kindle Fire HD electronic tablet (http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Fire-HD/dp/B0083PWAPW) by entering your email address or telephone number into a secured comment box at the end of the survey.  This response selection is not used for identification purposes and will only be used to contact the winner of the raffle.  You will be asked at the beginning of the survey if you consent to participate in this project.

Survey Link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MVP95YJ 

This survey will be open from October 22 - November 18, 2012.

Thank you for your participation!

CCCOnline Academic Updates - October, 2012

Hi everyone,

I hope you are enjoying the beautiful fall weather and colors.  I wanted to give you a few updates from the Academic side of the house at CCCOnline:

• We had record attendance at the Annual Conference this year -- our attendees were at about 270!  If you have feedback you'd like to give me regarding the conference, please feel free to let me know.

• We have filled many staff positions at CCCO recently.  Please join me in welcoming Vanessa Bravo (Instructional Designer), Nazli Nomanbhoy (eLearning Specialist), John Ragan (QA Auditor), Justin Sherrill (Academic Technology Professional), Jonathan Sherrill (Academic Technology Administrator), Eden Haywood-Bird (ECE/EDU Program Chair) and Maggie Gaddis (BIOProgram Chair).  We are happy they have joined us!

• We are in the process of interviewing for the Arts and Humanities and Physical Science Chair positions.  We are also hopeful that our Executive Director will be on board soon.  

I hope the semester is going well for all of you.  If you have questions or concerns that I can help address, please let me know.

Best regards,
Terry

Upcoming Workshops and Webinars

Hi folks,

I hope you're all having a great start to your Fall classes. There are a number of Professional Development workshops and webinars coming up in the next few months that I wanted to let you know about.

There will be 3 Managing Discussion workshop sessions this fall, taking place on the following dates:

October 15th - October 26th
October 29th - November 9th
December 3rd - December 14th

Registration is currently open for all three of these sessions, so head on over to the registration site if you'd like to participate. Remember that registration closes 10 days before the start of the workshop.

Additionally, over the next several months we'll be hosting webinar versions of sessions from this year's Annual CCCOnline conference. The following webinars are currently scheduled, but check the registration site or the faculty calendar on the portal for more webinars, as they'll be added soon!

October 19th, 1:00 PM MST - Quality Assurance 101
Facilitated by Liz Dzabic, CCCOnline Quality Assurance Coordinator

October 26th, 1:00 PM MST - The Essential Multimedia Survival Kit
Facilitated by Sean Renner, CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator

November 16th, 1:00 PM MST - A Flipped Classroom with Students as Curators
Facilitated by Sherry Jones, CCD/CCA Instructor

Again, head over to the registration site to register for these webinars, or to read more information about them. Registration for webinars closes 24 hours prior to the webinar.

As always, feel free to send any questions or concerns you might have to training@ccconline.org.

Sean Renner
CCCOnline Training and Professional Development Coordinator

Thank you!

 

The Annual Conference Committee and all of us here at CCCOnline wish to thank our instructors for participating in Friday’s Annual Conference. We appreciate everything you do for our students, and we’d like to once again congratulate the Instructional Excellence Award winners for 2012!

JoAnn Gilliland

Jodi Holzman

Ed Raetz         

Lea Stage

Claire Vacanti

These winners were chosen by their Program Chairs for demonstrated strengths in innovation, involvement, leadership, instructional quality, and collaboration. They also exemplify the CCCOnline Academic Mission Statement:

The Academic Instruction team is committed to supporting the CCCS Colleges and their students through high quality content and innovative instruction.

A full list of nominees for this award is available here. Congratulations to all of them for this honor, and thanks again to all of you for your work in cultivating excellence in our online classrooms.

We’ve opened a discussion within the CCCOnline Community (see Cultivating Excellence) asking folks to share their favorite takeaways from the conference; please feel free to join your colleagues there.

Fall Managing Discussions

Greetings!

We're looking forward to seeing you all at the CCCOnline Annual Conference this Friday! In the meantime, we've just opened up our Fall Managing Discussions workshops for registration. We have three workshops this Fall that begin on the following dates:

October 15th
October 29th
December 3rd

Please note that registration for these workshops is required, and closes 10 days before the workshop begins. As always, you can view these scheduled sessions register at http://at.ccconline.org/training .

See you on Friday!

Sean Renner
Training and Professional Development Coordinator

Doing Research from a Distance: The Online Student's Experience

On September 21st our CCCOnline Instructional Librarian, Mary Cash, will be hosting a webinar on the process of doing research in distance learning. Come take a walk in your online students' shoes and find out what resources are available to help your students become more successful researchers.

This webinar will run on Friday, September 28th, 2012 from 1:00-2:00 PM MST.

Register at http://at.ccconline.org/training