Tuesday 29th October – Shoreline Community College (SCC), Seattle
Today we visited SCC in North Seattle. Situated in a leafy suburb of Seattle, SCC, has the smallest catchment of the Seattle Community Colleges and has on average around 5000 (fte) learners mainly from the local area but several of these are also foreign students from mainly East Asia. The site is set in 80 acres of woodland and has great feel to it.
The Group
We were greeted by Ann Garnsey-Harter, the Executive Director of the Virtual College based at SCC. We also managed to meet the President of the college, Daryl Campbell where we got an overview of the US education and the way in which colleges operated within it. Interestingly one highlight here was how closely the colleges work with local businesses to create programmes of study that result in employment by looking at the skills gaps and producing courses to meet that need.
- Ann Garnsey-Harter, Executive Director of the Virtual College and Resource Development
We were given a tour of the campus and popped into several live classes. Many of the top subjects included Dental Hygiene, Motor Vehicle and Music based subjects. Interestingly all music students have to learn the Piano no matter what course they take and we were lucky enough to see some of these students practising ready for assessments. In the Biotech labs were told how learners can go onto to work in the Biotech industry in Seattle and that research projects from the college are passed down to high school learners to help create a track of progression for learners into the industry. Also, the Motor Vehicle learners took classes on most of the major car brands and are supported directly by the manufacturers and dealerships who supply a range of cars to work on. This also leads directly into work on a good salary as a Motor Vehicle technician within one of the businesses.
After lunch and being serenaded by a student Jazz band (who were great by the way) we discussed the Virtual College programme at SCC. We heard how SCC have grown their online provision to account for 20% of their student numbers and providing 154 different courses either fully online or blended (Hybrid) learning. Interestingly SCC charge additional fees for the online and blended programmes but this is not too much in comparison to tuition costs. We were lucky enough to see some examples of the Virtual Courses on the new LMS called ‘Canvas’. Canvas has a look and feel to the newer versions of Moodle but has some additional tools installed and good integration with Social Media to better interact with learners. One key feature of the Virtual College courses is that they all seek to attain the ‘QM’ or ‘Quality Matters‘ standard of approval. The QM mark is assigned to courses that meet the national benchmark for online courses. A rubric is used to judge the quality of the course for supporting teaching and learning. It is not concerned as much by the content but has a focus on how effective the delivery is. This was really interesting to see and gave SCC a token to aim for to help make their courses more competitive in a busy marketplace.
This has been a brief overview of the days events and there has been much to take in. There are some similarities between UK and US education provision and there has been much to take away. More interestingly has been the differences and some interesting ideas that will help further inform the courses we are writing and also the strategies to take back to our own institutions.
Here are some pictures of our day.
North America E-Learning Trip 