I have a passion for “strained metaphors” and use them on a regular basis in the classroom.  Students sometimes audibly groan, but that only encourages me!   Metaphors provide more “aha” moments than most other teaching strategies.  It is important to know this so as to understand the following story - - metaphor.  

The Strained Metaphor:   My wife and I took a drive a week ago.  As we passed this pasture, I noticed the situation captured in the photo – essentially, a large number of cattle were grouped under the only shade tree in the pasture.  But there were a lot of cattle that apparently didn’t fit under that tree, so they were scattered hither and thither – and totally ignored by the cattle grouped under the tree.

The recent Federal Government announcement that Title II Accessibility compliance was being delayed for a year was quite a surprise.  I know so many of you had been working so hard this past year to ensure you would be ready by the original deadline – I actually heard more frustration than relief.

Why?  For those who work directly in the world of accessibility compliance, it has often been hard to get others on campus to buy into what is needed to comply.  The Federal deadline had finally gotten everyone on the same page – and the unexpected delay, may now be counter-productive to the progress made.   There can be no expectation that the new deadline for next year will be extended, so it remains “all hands on deck” in identifying deficiencies and framing a set of solutions most appropriate for your institution.  

When I served as our campus’ dean of WebCollege, I was able to enshrine a set of “Standards for Teaching Online”.  Honestly, it was edgy for the time.  And the proposal met with headwinds from those that wanted as limited set of expectations as possible.  Nonetheless, the Online Standards were adopted and have provided a baseline of quality for the past several years.

Fast-forward to this semester, and the WebCollege Committee – now a standing committee of the Faculty Senate – has been developing a set of updates and timely improvements to the original document.  I had the opportunity to review their draft – and was very pleased to see how they had further strengthened – and expanded the document.  It still has to go before the Faculty Senate for approval, but keeping my fingers crossed.

We’ve discussed before the profound impact of The Pandemic on our community college online programs. I’ve had numerous conversations with administrators, designers and faculty – all have shared the trauma of the rapid full shift to online, the lack of staff and training to facilitate this, and the overwhelming day-after-day workload this represented. 

We are now “years” away from The Pandemic, but a variety of stress points are still present in our online programs. Specifically, the shift to fully online led to an increase in the number of faculty that wanted to teach online (it also increased the number of students as well). This fostered greater demand BUT our programs have not experienced increases in staffing, and especially have not been able to increase the number of instructional designers needed to address chronic issues with our online classes. Chronic issues????  Yes, for most of use, our online classes lack consistency, often are not compliance checked (ADA), are woefully lacking the benefits of professional design, and many of our faculty lack the training needed to create a learning experience that is engaging and embraces the unique needs of learning online. As a result, we have actually witnessed a decline in online student learning experience and completions.