DCMOC
Department of Content Management and Online Collaboration
Feeling optimistic
I recently joined Chris Cassirer and Paula Stechschulte (dean and associate dean from the school of human services) at the 2007 AUPHA conference in Orlando.(AUPHA = Association of University Programs in Health Administration. Insiders pronounce it “ay-YOO-puh,” apparently.) We gave a presentation on Capella and the role of multimedia in health care education. The audience primarily comprised faculty members from “traditional” higher ed institutions, as well as some other health administration industry leaders. Our presentation and the comments of those who attended reinforced, for me, much of what is exciting about Capella. I’ll try to put this excitement in a nutshell.
<nutshell>OK, start with the fact that there’s a huge population of people who want additional formal education for whatever reason, and who prefer (or even need) the convenience of an online experience. This population isn’t going away; in fact, it’ll get bigger. Therefore, an organization that can deliver quality educational content AND a quality online experience is best positioned to meet the needs of this big, growing market. Many traditional universities simply aren’t structured to provide this combination of quality content plus quality online experience. But Capella is.</nutshell>Think about it. Every course we build and offer includes, off the top of my head:
- curricular rigor
- subject matter expertise
- professional instructional design
- engaging, relevant, attractive multimedia
- content editing
- a robust technical delivery system
- a process for ongoing content maintenance
Faculty at other universities (who are Subject Matter Experts, of course) who want to create online programs and courses usually are well equipped to do maybe the first and second things on this list, but they don’t have the infrastructure for all the other items. They simply cannot do it all, so they have to cut corners that Capella doesn’t have to cut. You could tell that some of our audience at AUPHA was downright envious of what we’re able to do.
Anyway, our AUPHA talk focused on courseroom content, but with the Content Management & Online Collaboration team, I’m eager to continue to develop that same sort of quality content PLUS quality experience for online experiences outside the courseroom. I’m talking about these kinds of experiences:
- collaboration between faculty members
- learner networks
- learner-alumni networks
- collaboration between co-workers
- interactions between faculty SMEs and curriculum and course development
- interactions of learners/faculty/staff with administrative resources
- interactions of learners/faculty/staff with corporate “knowledge” (support resources, training) — both creating it and consuming that knowledge.
- etc., etc., etc.
The existence of our CM&OC team and the collection of skills we bring together means that it’s darn likely we’re going to do this well. I’m feeling downright cheery.
2 Responses to “Feeling optimistic”
Erika Says:
AS support services certainly bolsters learner retainment or persistence, or whatever the official term is for keeping people from dropping out . . . Of course, though the stats from other universities back me up . . . we may be biased. 
That just seems like it should be up there with the priorities, though.
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Kate Says:
to add on to the “etc.” for experiences outside the courseroom–I would add:
interactions of learners/faculty/staff with academic support services (Library, Writing Center, Academic Success Center, Research/Scholarship). I think many of these places have the potential to connect and foster learning and collaboration between learners/learners (even in different schools), learners/faculty, learners/staff and so on about scholarly and academic content.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:53 am