The Colorado Community College System in conjunction with the Colorado Helps Advanced Manufacturing grant has created a number of courses utilizing open educational resources and blended learning methods to help make better use of face to face classroom time, helping students master competencies in an innovative way.
As a part of the Colorado Helps Advanced Manufacturing (CHAMP) grant, The Colorado Community College System has developed a number of Advanced Manufacturing courses utilizing blended learning techniques and open educational resources. Through this process, we have learned some valuable lessons and would like to share those lessons with others. Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses present some unique challenges when looking at how to design and implement blended learning. The challenges have ranged from changing attitudes of administrators, faculty, and students, to finding OER materials for very specific machines and dividing the online and face to face time.
To face these challenges our instructional designers and subject matter experts worked closely together to create innovative solutions to achieve student success. A digital badging initiative is among these innovations and allows students to prove their mastery over specific competencies outlined by employers. Additionally, in creating individual courses for individual colleges we found a great deal of overlap within our own system which has allowed for sharing and collaboration from college to college.
In this presentation, we will cover these challenges and triumphs as well as answering any questions about the lessons we have learned along the way.