Recommendations

III -- Recommendations

The following recommendations are designed to encourage HBCUs to use more components and to outsource more courses in their distance learning programs. Each strategy has a primary target, i.e., a type of HBCU or HBCU program that might be able to implement that recommendation cost-effectively. Whenever the DLL is aware of HBCUs that are already implementing these ideas, they are identified.

The ten recommendations are grouped into three categories: outsourcing, components, and technical. The categories are ordered by the level of IT skills required for the faculty and IT support staffs of the HBCUs. Hence the recommendations that implement outsourcing strategies come first, followed by those utilizing components, with the technical recommendations coming last.

Outsourcing

#1 -- Partner with vendors who provide turnkey courses hosted on the vendors' servers for workforce retraining programs.

Primary targets: community colleges, two year colleges, continuing education programs

Some HBCU practitioners: (Grambling <--> InfoSource) ...(Howard University <--> CLS)
... (Trenholm State <--> Gatlin)

Comments: Turnkey programs have not been widely accepted in four year undergraduate programs nor in graduate programs, perhaps because their 3rd-party staffing arrangements may pose greater challenges in tenured environments.

#2 -- Become active participants in existing online/distance learning consortiums in order to increase the potential pool of students for their own courses and to provide their own students with access to a wider range of courses offered by other member of the consortiums.

Primary targets: all HBCUs

Some HBCU practitioners: (Lawson State, Southern A&M, Bishop State, Bluefield State,
Grambling, North Carolina A&T <--> SREB's Electronic Campus)
... (North Carolina A&T <--> Consortium of 5 Universities = NC A&T + Indiana State , Bowling Green State, East Carolina, Central Missouri State)

#3 -- Form "consortium" partnerships with other colleges to provide faculty with access to course components developed by other members of the consortium.

Primary targets: all HBCUs

#4 -- Form "consortium" partnerships with other colleges to receive volume discounts from vendors for CMS platform licenses and to receive volume discounts from consultants for online course conversion & development.

Primary targets: all HBCUs

#5 -- For new online courses, consider hiring telecommuting adjunct faculty who are subject matter experts AND who have experience with the HBCU's chosen course management system (CMS).

Primary targets: all HBCUs

Comments: Current distance learning technologies are not suitable for all faculty; therefore some faculty may not be as effective in online classrooms as they were in their traditional face-to-face classrooms or may take longer to make the transition to online operations than anticipated.

Components

#6 -- Hire consultant/developer firms to convert existing traditional course materials into online formats and to develop new online courses; alternatively, an HBCU could hire a team of full-time consultant/developers to perform these course conversion and course creation tasks.

Primary targets: all HBCus

#7 -- Use "cartridges" produced by textbook publishers for online courses.

Primary targets: all HBCUs programs except those at Doctoral levels

Some HBCU practitioners: (Morgan State <--> Pearson)

Comments: Doctoral programs are not targeted for this recommendation because publishers are not likely to have produced suitable cartridges for the small markets their advanced courses represent.

#8 -- Hire consultant/developer firms to help develop courses for export into the rapidly expanding global market for distance learning, especially courses having distinctly "black" content. "Black is beautiful" ==> courses having Black content have global appeal, e.g., Black History, Black Literature, Black Music, etc.

Primary targets: four year undergraduate programs and graduate programs.

Comments: The departments that embody this expertise are more likely to be found in four year undergraduate programs and in graduate degree programs.

Technical

#9 -- Keep up with the latest developments in distance learning by becoming active members of the national and international organizations that have significant influence on distance learning technologies, e.g., Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL), EDUCAUSE, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, the Sakai Educational Partners Program (SEPP), and the Sloan Consortium.

Primary targets: HBCUs having substantial IT expertise, e.g., engineering, computer science, and business information programs

HBCU practitioners: (44 HBCUs <--> EDUCAUSE)

Comments: EDUCAUSE and Sloan offer programs of value to faculty and staff at all technical levels, but the other organizations referenced in this recommendation operate at more advanced levels

#10 -- Consider adopting an open source CMS, at least for limited groups of courses.

Primary targets: HBCUs having substantial IT expertise, e.g., engineering, computer science, and business information programs

Comments: At the present time, open source CMS platforms do not have the 7 by 24 technical support provided by the proprietary CMS vendors. Users of open source platforms need to be more self-reliant, i.e., have substantial technical expertise.