With the ink barely dry on the Final Stimulus Bill, everyone is scurrying around to see where the money will fall.  To read the entire bill will make your head spin and cause you to see dollar signs for three days.  With the failing economy and record numbers of unemployed persons, it appears the government made a good call to allocate $4 billion to job training.  Dollars dedicated to getting people back to work is crucial in the current financial climate.

This is actually good news for the technical and community colleges.  They reach a unique demographic and appeal to a wide range of ages, social backgrounds, and are easily accessible to most students.  Providing funding for job training will allow these kinds of schools to create new programs that assist in getting individuals retrained in a new field to enter the workforce.  In addition, this funding will promote partnerships with local businesses and community colleges; growing community resources and networking opportunities.  Employment placement programs are becoming more popular during periods of massive layoffs and enrollment incentives at local colleges can sweeten an otherwise bitter pill to swallow.

Distance learning is sure to benefit in the long run from these new programs.  Displaced adult workers will have to find some kind of job in the interim to pay their mortgages while attending school making an alternative schedule essential.  Online programs will offer the flexibility necessary for students to juggle family, work, and new skills training. The availability of an education for brighter days will provide the hope some individuals need to make it in these tough times.  Education will always lead the way to a clearer path.  Knowledge is power.

With the demands placed on distance learning programs it is important to make plans to have proper student services in place to accommodate the growing numbers.  eLearningToolBox.com provides a suite of products and services that promote strong elearning. 

$4 Billion for Job Training – The Stimulus Bill Gets It Right

eLearningToolBox.com is pleased to announce the availability of PRIDE - Program Review In Distance Education.   PRIDE is a process of professional review of your distance learning courses and program by credentialed, seasoned instructional designers.

The QualityCourseRecognition.com program has historically been a course-by-course review process.  Now, due to input from several schools, it is being expanded to be a comprehensive, program review process.  The new process is being referred to by the acronym PRIDE – Program Review In Distance Education.  Both PRIDE and QualityCourseRecognition.com are built on the deeply vetted IDECC Course Review Standards which have been used to review over 2000 distance education courses.  IDECC has been the industry standard for course review in many forms of professional education for several years and their course review standards are now available to the higher education community. 

The PRIDE process is distinguished from other course review services in that it is a “professional review” conducted exclusively by persons with terminal degrees and years of experience in instructional design and the administration of distance education programs.  It is not a peer review process conducted by faculty from other schools.  One of the strengths of PRIDE is the Course Management System through which all documentation and all communication between the course reviewer and the school during the iterative course review process is archived. (View multimedia demonstration.) This provides a resource which is strong documentation for the reaffirmation for accreditation process.

The PRIDE process begins with you completing the Application Packet.  The Application is a 41 page document in which you provide evidence of how the course meets the 27 IDECC Standards of Good Practice for Distance Education Courses.  Completing the Application is a very valuable self-study experience in itself.  In addition to reviewing your Application and the appropriate courses, the PRIDE process also involves four thirty-minute phone interviews conducted by the professional reviewer with four constituent groups: students, faculty, administration and leadership.  This phone conference is conducted using our toll-free conference service at times convenient to your participants.  The purpose of the conference is to identify qualitative facts about your distance education program which may not have been made evident in the Application Packet.  The primary deliverable of the PRIDE process is a detailed program review document clearly stating the findings of the review, identifying commendations and stating recommendations for improvement.

Click HERE to view a document which maps the PRIDE standards to the SACS Best Practices for Delivering Online Courses.   More information will be available soon at www.PRIDEProcess.com.

Take PRIDE in your distance education program