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TERRY NORRIS: So a little bit about the
college in Southern Nevada.
We are located, as I said, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
We have three main campuses throughout the valley.
And we average about 35,000-40,000 students every
semester at the College of Southern Nevada.
As Chris said, I've been there almost 10 years.
And this is our third learning management
system in those 10 years.
When I started, we were on WebCT, and then Blackboard
bought WebCT.
And we had poor customer service, so we said we're
going to move from WebCT.
So in 2008, we get a RFP to set up a
learning management system.
We selected Angel, and in 2009 Blackboard bought Angel.
So here we are doing an RFP again.
This time though we did a joint RFP with my counterpart
from Truckee Meadows whose here in the audience, Fred
[? Lockin. ?]
We were both on Angel, and both decided that we would do
a joint RFP so that we could go through the
process at the same time.
And if we reached the same decision, then we could
collaborate and share resources as we moved forward.
A little bit about the background of higher
education in Nevada.
Until recently, there hasn't been a lot of collaboration.
For a while throughout the state, we have--
how many community colleges, Fred?
Four?
Four community colleges, one four year state college, and
two land grant universities in Nevada.
And with those, we were using three different learning
management systems in one of those institutions.
There wasn't a lot of collaboration.
As a matter of fact, three years ago, the fall before we
did our RFP, our system computing office tried to get
together a meeting of all the institutions to talk about
moving to the same learning management system.
And one of the institutions says that if this is not about
moving to Blackboard 9.0 I'm not coming.
So we never had that meeting, but it worked
out in the long run.
So two years ago, Fred and I decided we'd do a joint RFP to
select a new learning management system.
We actually got eight proposals for that RFP.
And each institution took a different approach to how we
looked at the process and made a decision about that learning
management system.
We had two presentations from each of the top four vendors
on our campus to faculty, because it was faculty who
often made decision.
Fred did some webinars with the vendors, and we've had
faculty involved.
One of the things, and this I can't take credit for, our
director of purchasing told me to do this as we were
preparing our RFP, he said include language in the RFP
that would allow any college in Nevada System of Higher
Education to join the RFP at a later date.
And we had several institutions that were
looking, but they weren't sure what they wanted to do.
We had one that was on Moodlerooms, which was also
bought by Blackboard.
So we had language in there that would allow any other
college that was part of the Nevada System of Higher
Education join at any time in the future.
So as I said, both Truckee Meadows and CSN took different
routes, but we ended up both selecting Canvas by
Instructure.
And I think that was the end of 2012 that
we make that decision.
Well since the initial selection of Canvas by CSN and
TMCC, Great Basin College, Western College and Nevada
State College in Nevada have all joined the contract.
So what we have in our contract now is the four
community colleges and the one state college.
There are two [INAUDIBLE] universities that made the
decision to stay with Blackboard and not join in
with us as we moved to Canvas.
And what that's done for us is it's resulted in a
collaborative work between the institutions as we move
forward with Canvas.
Fred has an individual who knows about this great
interface we're all in Nevada or on PeopleSoft.
And we have an interface between PeopleSoft and Canvas.
And [INAUDIBLE] and Fred's staff developed this great
interface that we're all using and we're just
sharing best practices.
And this is something that's really important in
Nevada right now.
Our chancellor, about a year ago, commissioned an outside
consultant to come in and look at e-learning in Nevada and
publish a report with 18 recommendations.
And one of those said we need to collaborate more, so it's a
good start here that we're doing this.
Now, when talking about higher education in [INAUDIBLE], it's
not really the topic of the presentation here.
At same time we were doing the RFP process, I was asked to
serve on a task force for the Clark County School District
Blended Learning Task Force.
Las Vegas is in Clark County, so it's in the country that
we're located in.
A little bit about Clark County.
They this past spring had over 300,000 students enrolled in
Clark County schools K through 12.
So it is a very large district and it's sometimes very
difficult to coordinate efforts in
that large of a district.
So what we were doing on this task force is that the
superintendent of the school district had set a goal that
by 2015 there would be 100,000 students in Clark County
involved in online [INAUDIBLE]
learning.
And so it was the mission of this task force to come up
with a way to meet that.
And with Clark County it's not going to be easy, because one
of the things that they were struggling with in the county
is they didn't have one learning management system
throughout the county.
They have a Clark County virtual high school that was
using Blackboard, but then beyond that it was up to
whatever each individual school wanted
to do in the county.
And so as we talked on the task force we realized if
we're going to be successful and get that 100,000 students
involved in online blended learning by 2015, there has to
be that same [INAUDIBLE] spread across the county.
So as part of our implementation of Canvas by
Instructure, we're still in a pilot program.
We did a pilot in the spring, we continued it in summer.
But we wanted to make sure that our faculty who were in
the pilot got the best training.
We felt that we weren't at that point yet where we could
provide that.
So Chris came down and brought Jordan in the
back there with him.
And we did some trainings, both in August and
October of last year.
And the one in October, we invited the Clark County
School District to participate in that training, just to get
a feel for how Canvas functions and how it works.
So we had several faculty and staff at the training.
In conjunction with the training, the K through 12
sales rep, Linda over here, was in Clark County and
meeting with the representatives.
And I could sense there was an interest, but when you look at
a county that has 300,000 students in it,
it's a large county.
And trying to get them to come to any consensus was a
difficult process.
Linda could tell you how long it went on and on.
I keep emailing Linda [? saying, ?]
Linda, have they said anything to you recently?
And she said, no, but I'll email them.
So they always include me in their replies, but
it took a long time.
Even if they technically said that they were going with
Canvas, they still had to get approval of their Board of
Trustees and then legal counsel, and it just took a
long time for that to happen.
I forgot to tell--
I had this story I wanted to tell about CSN when we made
the decision to go with Canvas.
So I let our faculty know that we were doing RFP again, after
we just did one [INAUDIBLE]
Angel.
I had a faculty member email and say, I don't care what LMS
you pick, as long as it's not bought by Blackboard.
And so I said, I wish I could guarantee that, but that's
beyond my control.
But we've been told by Canvas that they have no intention of
working with Blackboard.
And I can't myself [INAUDIBLE]
working with Blackboard because we're running Angel
concurrently to Canvas.
So we still have that contract with Blackboard, but just
can't wait to get out of dealing with that.
So discussions were starting between Clark County and
Instructure about working together.
The one nice thing about how we were able to collaborate on
this process is that their purchasing group decided that
they could use the documentation from our RFP to
fulfill their requirements so that they would not have to go
out to RFP.
Because if they would have had to go to RFP--
I know our RFP probably took a year in total to finish.
And so if Clark County would have had to do that again,
we'd probably still been waiting to hear from them.
So it was great that they decided to use our
documentation from what our selection process was.
At the same time in Nevada, Elko County, which is up North
and it's where Great Basin College is located, started
the discussion with Linda as well on going to Canvas.
And again, their purchasing--
and this is something that made it easy--
their purchasing again agreed to us the RFP documentation
from our RFP.
So we've started to get that collaborative process going,
and even sharing the RFP.
So eventually Elko went first and entered into a contract.
Because when you look at the scope of things, Elko is
fairly small and were able to move quicker and make their
decision, and then Clark County joined along.
This facilitated that seamless K through 12 transition,
because most of the students we get at the College of
Southern Nevada come from Clark County School District.
And to have them coming to us already familiar with the
Learning Management System and ready to jump in, that's just
going to make it easier for us to be successful when the
students are out of CSN.
What we've done to continue that process of facilitating
with Clark County, we're in the process of setting up a
task force that will work with Clark County School District,
CSN, Nevada State College, because Nevada State College
is in Clark County as well.
We'll talk about working on sharing and doing things
together as we move forward with Canvas.
So it's been real successful, that [INAUDIBLE]
venture.
And I have to say, it was really pretty lucky that the
timing of me serving on the task force was just
really key to it.
Because when we went from WebCT to Angel, I tried to
find somebody at the school district who had had anything
to do with their Learning Management System so we could
possibly talk about working together [? for the report. ?]
And no one at that time wanted to talk with us at all.
So we got really lucky that this opportunity existed for
me to join the task force.
In addition to those two counties, Washoe County School
District, which is where Truckee's [INAUDIBLE] is
located, [INAUDIBLE]
that's where Reno is, and Carson City School District
had met with Instructure.
And I don't know what the update is on both of those,
but I know there's still discussions
going on with those.
And so if we were to be lucky to get both Washoe and Carson
on-board, we'd have a real strong initiative in Nevada.
And it's been a long time--
I think Fred could attest to that since he's been in Nevada
longer than I have--
that it's very unlikely to see these types of partnerships
among, not just higher education, but to get K
through 12 involved in those partnerships.
[INAUDIBLE] run though it quickly.
Yes, Fred?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY NORRIS: Well, I see a couple of advantages.
Fred asked what would be the advantages of having K through
12 and higher educational on the same
Learning Management System.
I think there's several, actually.
One, I know at CSN, we have part-time faculty who teach
full-time for Clark County School District.
And so if they're getting trained on the LMS at school
district level, it'll make their teaching for CSN that
much easier.
And then also, as I just said, when students coming to CSN
having learned and already mastered the Learning
Management System, I just think that makes it really,
really easy for our students to be successful and hopefully
lead to better retention.
And successes, as we know, [INAUDIBLE]
when you look at retention for courses for online students in
higher education, it's lower than it is
for students on campus.
So anything that we can do to support those students I think
will be helpful.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY NORRIS: We had the experience of moving, not the
entire school-- like I said, we're on [INAUDIBLE].
We volunteered to go down to Clark County
to work with that.
Their faculty as they get ready for the fall, they're
really jumping in quickly.
They just signed the contract in spring sometime, Linda?
March.
And they're going live with Canvas with their fall term.
Now, they're not going live with the
entire county initially.
They're focusing on the virtual high school,
initially, and some other small projects.
So there's doing sort of a pilot, too.
But they have to move about 130 courses into Canvas for
the fall semester.
And so just having us as a resource, I think, is good to
help them move their content over.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY NORRIS: I don't think-- what?
Oh, she asked if the state's Chancellor's Office was
involved in this process.
I would say no.
They've become aware of it after the fact.
As I said, there was a 105 page report done on e-learning
in the state of Nevada.
There's only like 10 pages that really mean anything,
because that's where the recommendations are.
What's that, Fred?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY NORRIS: But one of the things he pushes for is
collaboration.
So one of the other things we do in Nevada is, every other
year the Nevada DE director--
because we all don't have the same titles, so we just call
our group the DE Director's group--
put out a e-learning report.
So this year we were able to focus on that part of the
collaborative process in that report that goes to the
Chancellor's Office, so I think he's become aware of it.
We're also looking at putting together a statewide
e-learning task force that he was going to [INAUDIBLE].
These findings and the fact that there are these
collaborations will be very helpful for that e-learning
task force.
Other questions?
Yes, Fred?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY NORRIS: Fred says he doesn't know if other states
have the special high school tuition
rate for online courses.
In Nevada, and it used to be until I guess this spring, I
think a high school student could take an online course at
any institution of higher education in
Nevada for a $25 fee.
Now, they would actually have to pay a couple of other fees,
but they wouldn't have to pay the full tuition.
So I know at CSN, we had students who were graduating
from high school who had also finished their Associate's
degree because of that $25.
Our regents met in the spring sometime and upped it to $50.
But still, at $50, that's a bargain.
To take a three credit online course from a college for $50
plus a few extra fees-- we have a technology fee they
have to pay and things like that.
But no full tuition for the high school students.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY NORRIS: It was separate in most cases.
We do have some dual enrollment options in Nevada.
But for the most case, these students would be enrolled in
high school and then taking the college courses beyond
their high school courses.
I know at CSN, and I believe this is at Truckee Meadows as
well, we had a community college high school.
So we have an actual high school presence
on our college campus.
And we have high school students who are there taking
college course while they're in high school.
I think a lot of those are dual credit courses.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY NORRIS: No.
If they're taking on campus courses, they have to pay the
full tuition.
They didn't get that through.
I'm assuming the deal's for online because you don't have
them physically be there and support them on campus.
Even though, as Fred would say, there's a lot of things
to support them online.
So it's a great deal for them.
And I think as we move forward, I know--
and somebody from Clark County just walked in in the back
there, Kim.
I know that we talked and we worked together about doing
more dually-enrolled options for students, especially in
the online environment.
So that's something we want to talk as we move forward.
Kim, did you want to say anything about the whole
process moving with Canvas?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
TERRY NORRIS: I think this is really an exciting time for
higher education and K through 12.
Because as I said, it's not just Clark County, but all
four counties coming on-board.
Washoe's looking, which is up North, and Carson City
District is looking as well.
So we could be in a situation where we have a lot of
collaboration going on in the state, which is something that
we've lacked a lot of in the past.
Any other questions?
There's my contact information.
If you have any questions about how we handle the
process, I'd be glad to talk with you or email with you.
It was a perfect timing for us, and
things just came together.
And I was even lucky to be at the school district.
Because one of our faculty members was friends with one
of the board of trustees for the school district, and said
you really should have Terry and one other person come to
some of your meetings about technology.
So it was just by chance that it happened.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]