Final Months of Title III Funding
We are entering the final months of receiving our Title III grant. Looking back over the past 5 years I feel very good about what we as a college have accomplished in Distance Learning with the various instructional initiatives Title III enabled us to pursue. All in all I believe T3 has benefited the college and all our distance learning endeavors. Looking back I would have to say that pre-planning and fluid “open / transparent” communication between the T3 Project Director and myself the Director of Distance Learning was one of key’s to the success of our campus wide distance learning professional development initiatives.
There is no doubt in my mind that the faculty and staff at Carteret Community College are more proficient both technically and in their online teaching methodology because of the funding and support that came from Title III. Since the inception of the grant the Distance Learning department has conducted over 150 DL workshops to approximately 1500 “repeat” college staff and faculty in these professional development activities, in addition to proving funds for off campus conferences, workshops and seminars.
Once CCC received the grant the first thing our T3 Project Director Don Staub did was have me create a T3 Blog to post anything and everything that related to Title III at our college. This was an effort to make the entire process transparent. Anyone can go to the T3 Blog and our CCC Distance Learning Blog and learn about all the professional development and college enhancement activities Title III supported through grants and the purchase of instructional and distance learning technologies.
The following are some of the primary distance learning highlights “successes” supported by Title III.
• Distance Learning Pioneer Program
• Online Tutoring Service Pilot Program
• Blackboard Boot Camp
• NC3ADL Regional and State Wide Conferences
• Online Retention
• Peer Review “QAP” Online Course Evaluation Project
• Assessing Distance Learning
• Moodle “Train the Trainer” Project
• Moodle Migration Initiative
As of now over 50 staff and faculty have participated in the DL Pioneer Program which has positively impacted the online courses we offer here at CCC. Faculty have more tools and technology for doing an effective (and innovative) job teaching their courses in the online environment and have been given training both on campus and off in a variety of e-learning and instructional design “best practices”.
As we head into the final months of the grant it is imperative that we expand on the strong foundation Title III has helped us build here at Carteret Community College. There’s no doubt that the culture here at CCC has changed for the better as far as embracing technology and the latest instruction design best practices for e-learning. Our online courses incorporate a variety of “rich media” in order to address the different learning styles of our students. This would not have happened so extensively across campus if it wasn’t for the aggressive and ongoing training provided through T3 funding and support.
Our challenge is to put procedures in place so we can continue expanding upon the many successes T3 has helped us attain in Distance Learning over the past 5 years. The Distance Learning Advisory committee is in the process of developing a policy and procedure manual for distance learning. Many of these policies and procedures have been inspired by what we learned through all our T3 sponsored projects and initiatives.
Our goal is to continue to build on the momentum we’ve gained over the past 5 years thanks to the Title III grant. We have seen the culture at CCC change (evolve) over the past 5 yeare to embrace technology and online tools and applications in order to be on the “cutting edge” of online education – Title III has been a catalyst for this change in attitude and has added to the confidence of our staff and faculty to make the seamless transition from the traditional classroom environment to online instruction.
Video and Written Testimonials by Staff and Faculty.
Joseph Croom from CCC Student Services commented about a Title III sponsored conference, “This was an amazing conference, it was my first NC3ADL conference…something that made me really open my eyes. I learned so much about student services, and how to make sure that they are accessible by all. I was able to meet so many different people, from different jobs, at different colleges that brought a variety of perspectives on DL, and its place in the world today. I was able to get many new ideas that I plan to work with my department Student Services and the college overall to make Carteret Community College a great place to work, teach, serve and learn.
I thoroughly enjoyed going to the sessions on the NCCCS Help Desk, the Online Student Services, Google Apps for Education, and the great Skype presentation on Moodle.
Though it scares me, it excites me…stepping out on the ledge…driving the engine of Student Services, getting them up the hill and down the other side. I came back with great suggestions, so much energy, and great comments…the Registrar’s Office decided today to add live chat to their website.
I am so excited about the ideas swirling in my mind…causing waves of DL energy!! I hope that I will be able to go next year and the regional meeting in March….!!!!
CCC Anatomy and Physiology Instructor Phillip Morris stated, I was greatly impressed with the NC3DLA conference. From the level of organization to just how incredibly informative the conference was. Kudos to those involved in putting the whole thing together. I came away with knowledge and ideas that I hadn’t even imagined. The first thing I took with me is how many improvements I can make to my online courses. It doesn’t matter how good you think they already are there is always room for improvement. I personally am now aware at how deficient my courses are in the area of accessibility for special needs students. I will certainly work to correct that. Also, seeing what is now out there in the area of online science labs impressed me. From the late-night-lab presentation and demonstrations to the virtual microscope software available, all I kept saying was “wow”. Always something new, always changing. As a new faculty member, it also gave me a chance to really get to know some of my colleagues here at CCC. It was a group of great people and great educators. People who love what they do. It was a great experience.



Title III funded our Instructional Technologist position and enabled us to hire Pre-Ah Hill who has been instrumental in coordinating and developing so many of our professional development initiatives. She has also worked “one on one” with over 50 faculty and staff over the past 4 years.
Soon after being awarded the Title III grant the distance learning department initiated its









We were also tasked with creating a Technology Boot Camp assessment and training Blackboard to be used to assess where everyone at CCC is as far as the level of their technical skills with computer literacy, word processing, powerpoint, excel and navigating the internet. Campus wide assessments and training will begin in the coming weeks with a goal to have all CCC employees assessed by April 15th. After that the assessments will be evaluated and targeted training will be given to the staff and faculty that need their technology skills upgraded.

We are now 3 weeks into the Fall semester and the Distance Learning Team in working on a variety of professional development initiatives, in addition to making sure all online courses at CCC are meeting the Quality Assurance Standards we established last year. We have cross referenced a sampling of our online courses and I must report it is good to see how all the Blackboard training has paid off and so many of our faculty are implementing more creative and innovative instructional design strategies. Our Title III funding and support has played such an integral part in the progress we’ve made over the past 3 years.
Our fourth DL Pioneer team has been selected and we had our kick-off meeting last Friday. We have an excellent team made up of both faculty and staff and they’ve all made commitments to retool and upgrade their online courses, attend professional development activities in their disciplines and essentially take their knowledge of online learning and distance education to a higher level in the next year all made possible by Title III funds. Our staff members on this team will be exploring and implementing new and creative ways (blogging, Youtube, facebook, twitter) to work with our student in the online environment
My constant goal is to make our online classes every bit as viable, interesting and dynamic as our traditional classroom lectures and labs. Thankfully there are a host of new and powerful communications tools that are making it easier and less time consuming for our faculty to do this. Carteret Community College has a Title III grant resources to help us implement our various professional development initiatives and put these tools in the hands of our faculty so they can take their online teaching to a whole new level of technical and pedagogical excellence.



The statewide budget crunch is impacting everyone and the Community College System is no exception. Carteret Community College may have to pay the Blackboard licensing fees after June, 2011. We are budgeting for this reality and should not have to discontinue using Blackboard as our primary Course Management System any time soon, however Carteret Community College is now a part of the Moodle “open source” CMS consortium developed by the System Office and we are training a cross section of our online faculty this summer on Moodle (thanks to a Title III Professional Development Grant) just to be on the safe side and be proactive regarding this important issue.
This summer are conducting Moodle training (train the trainer model) to approximately 9 of our CCC faculty. I have developed a comprehensive Moodle training program on a Moodle platform and will make it available to anyone interested in learning more about Moodle.
Distance Learning End of Year Report
As of December 17, 2008 my team of online course reviewers have evaluated 85 online (hybrid and total) courses. This initiative could not have been possible without the financial support of Title III, and dedicated efforts of Pre-Ah Hill and the faculty (content specialists) who assisted in this process. The QAP’s (spread sheets) are currently located on my computer and backed-up by Pre-Ah as well.
We also were awarded a second NCCCS Technology Center Grant to produce instructional web resources for
Our Online Tutoring Initiative (service) has exceeded all expectations and our tutors have submitted their final reports for the year and recommendations for making the service even more successful here at CCC.











2. I am very excited about the Online Tutoring service we’re developing. Lisa Taylor Galezia (CCC English/Photography Adjunct and online veteran) is working with me in creating (designing) an interactive blackboard to act as a communications hub for online tutoring. This service will be available to both traditional students and our online / hybrid students. Last week (January 24th) we had our first kick-off meeting for potential tutors. We had eleven highly qualified applicants attend this first information session representing the disciplines of Math, Biology, Anatomy & Physiology and English. They came with lots of good ideas to incorporate into our plans for tutoring students in the online environment. Pre-Ah and Lisa have researched and incorporated some very viable communication tools into the Blackboard such as Instant Messenger, Skype, Virtual Chat and a Whiteboard for doing Math equations. We are still in the early stages of developing this service and are now evaluating the resumes left by those who attended the information session. We plan to begin incrementally offering this service to our students on a limited basis by end of February. Once we get Online Tutoring up and running at CCC I hope to hand it over to the tutoring wing of Academic Support. This would not be made possible without the support and funding of Title III. I believe we will see a positive impact on retention once this service is in full swing.
3. In the last 2 weeks we’ve had 2 Distance Learning Pioneer meetings with our DL Phase I and II online faculty. We discussed the QAP and also identified some professional development needs of the group that the Pre-Ah and I plan on addressing in the next two months. I was excited to hear all the innovative and creative things our DL Pioneers are doing with their online classes, both technically and in their instructional design strategies. They are incorporating the things they learned in BB Boot Camp (graphics, podcasts, video, camtasia) into their classes and even going beyond and researching dynamic new ways to communicate and assess their course content. I believe our “train the trainer” model for the DL component of the T3 Grant is working effectively and is creating a cadre of DL mentors across our campus. Pre-Ah is also working “one on one” with our pioneers to assist them with their course retooling, especially in adding rich media content such as audio and video lectures and teaching them new software that will help them do this.
Title III Project Director Don Staub and I have followed up with Dr.’s Abbie Brown and William Sugar, Program Directors of the Instructional Technology Program at East Carolina University from our initial