Boulder, Colorado — The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) has accepted the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) as its newest member.
CNMI is the first of the Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands to join WICHE, whose other members are the 15 Western U.S. states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawai‘i, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
Boulder, Colorado - The WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2012 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) award, a competition that recognizes innovative uses of educational technologies in higher education. Since 2004, the WOW award has been presented to colleges, universities, and organizations for exceptionally creative, technology-based solutions to a significant problem or need in higher education.
The 2012 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) award recognizes these member organizations for their notable contributions to higher education:
Boulder, Colorado — U.S. colleges and universities must ensure that college degrees reflect a high level of student achievement and commit to publicly reporting evidence of student learning. That’s the message of a new publication from the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability, endorsed by 27 national higher education organizations, including the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE).
Boulder, Colorado — The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) has been awarded a $550,000 grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York for a pilot project that will focus on the college transfer process. Inefficiencies in the transfer process can create major stumbling blocks for students trying to earn a degree. The Interstate Passport Initiative will attack the transfer problem at an interstate level, with the goal of improving graduation rates, shortening time to degree, and saving students money. Institutions in five Western states—California, Hawaii, North Dakota, Oregon, and Utah—will participate.
Boulder, Colorado — College Choices for Adults (http://www.collegechoicesforadults.org), an information-rich online resource that helps adult learners make informed choices about distance education options, has added a new data item, learner progress. “As institutions who serve adult students, we recognized that the IPEDS measures of graduation and retention rates were not wholly representative of our student populations,” said Ed Klonoski, chair of the Executive Committee for Transparency by Design and President, Charter Oak State College. “The Learner Progress metrics open up the students counted to include part-time and transfer-in students, thus giving a more inclusive view of how our students progress and complete.”
Boulder, Colorado — The North American Network of Science Labs Online (NANSLO) has been awarded a grant from Next Generation Learning Challenges, an initiative working to improve U.S. college readiness and completion, especially among low-income individuals, by identifying and accelerating the growth of effective education technology. The 15-month project, funded at just under $750,000 and including a consortium of institutions in the Western U.S. and Canada, aims to add a powerful new component to online science courses: students will have access to a remotely located science lab and the ability to control remote instrumentation, allowing them to perform experiments, practice scientific observation, and conduct data analysis, as students in classroom-based courses do.