Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Last Minute Sign-ups

In my program area I am experiencing higher than normal last minute sign-ups. This causes a big problem for me and for the instructors. You may have experienced this. The problem is we don’t know whether to cancel a class or let it run. Case in point, on a Wednesday I had 3 people signed up for a class. I needed to cancel it by Thursday and needed, in this case, 5 people for it to go. On Thursday I got number 4 with a possible number 5 so I let it ride one more day. The class ran on Monday with 7 people in it. Had I cancelled on Thursday as I had planned…well, you get the point.

I wish I could say this is something we can fix but it isn’t. With the tight economy, last minute planning and the current culture, this kind of thing may be with us for a long time.

What is an instructor to do? Decide a cut off time that works for you and communicate it to your programmer. If you are good to wait till the last minute, great. If you aren’t, that is great too. Just let us know. Make extra copies of your handouts for those last minute arrivals. Be flexible with your class plan. If you believe you are going to have 5 in class and 10 show-up, be ready to make some changes. No, this doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Finally, be aware we are watching the registration numbers but can’t monitor them all the time. We do our best to let you know who and how many you will have in class.

Please share with us any thoughts you have on this subject and what kind of challenges you face.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Building and Classroom Updates

Mark June 18th on your calendars because that is the day Community Learning staff leave the COCC campus and move to the Chandler Building. The Chandler Building is located off 9th street on the west side of town. The exact address is 1027 NW Trenton Ave.

Renovation work has already begun and we are excited about the move. Of course the actual moving of all our stuff isn’t exciting but it will be nice to have our own place. We will have an 18 station computer lab and a meeting room that seats 49. The SBDC will be there with us, as they are now, and the Bend Science Station will be there as well. Plan to stop by for a visit this summer when you have the chance or go have a look and let us know what you think.

Also, the college has given Community Learning priority over three classrooms in the Boyle Education Center. By this I mean that we control access to these rooms and have first choice at them. They are rooms 151, 152 and 154 which are down the hall from our current office location. This will go a long way in helping eliminate the issues we have with getting classrooms on campus and help with holding ongoing classes that cross terms.

Friday, March 23, 2012

COCC Names Schulz Head of Continuing Education

Central Oregon Community College’s Board of Directors recently named Gerald A. Schulz the director of the college’s continuing education department.

Schulz’s duties include ensuring overall profitability of the continuing education program, organizing contracted training and events throughout the district, monitoring and managing the department’s budget, researching and developing new continuing education programs, expanding the awareness and availability of the continuing education program throughout the region and supervising a staff of nine.

“Significant changes are taking place in the way education and training are delivered,” said Schulz. “My immediate goal is to guide a transition from traditional lecture-style classes to newer methods of engaging our students. I truly enjoy planning and collaborating to bring education to adults.”

Schulz came to COCC in 2010 as the office operations manager, a position that focused on automating and streamlining processes. He also teaches evening classes for COCC Community Learning: “Staying aware and involved with the students and the classroom experience enables me to be a better manager and discover new offerings and improvements for our program.”

Schulz earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of California. A native of Pasadena, he worked as a research chemist before he and his wife developed and managed a computer training school for adults, growing it from 1984 until 2006 to become one of the largest private schools of its kind in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Monday, March 19, 2012

How many in my class?

Wondering how registration is going for your class? You can check it online at any time. Click on the link below to take you to our new registration system and do a search for your class by class title. For instance, I did a search for Macintosh Basics. It brought up the screen showing there were 7 seats. This means that there are 7 seats available. Now I happen to know that this class has a total of 20 seats so that means that there are 13 students signed up for this class right now.

If you don’t know the maximum seats for your class you can find it in two places. It is on your contract which was emailed, mailed or otherwise sent to you or you can call your Program Manager and ask her/him. We will send you a roster before your class, but knowing the number ahead of time can help you prepare.

http://selfservice.cocc.edu:7001/flexibleregistration/index.jsp?frc=CLMAIN

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly--PowerPoint Best Practices

COCC Community Learning has planned another opportunity to continue your professional development as an instructor. There is no charge for this evening session.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - PowerPoint Best Practices for Classroom Instructors. If you currently use or are considering using PowerPoint (or a similar presentation tool) to accompany your teaching, why not put some more pizzazz into your presentations? There is an art to preparing and delivering audience-engaging presentations. Come and explore . . .

* Best practices for effective presentations
* Tips and techniques to enhance your presentation
* A group work session on critiquing and improving slide design and flow

The details:
When: Thursday, January 26, 2012
Time: 6:00-8:30 pm
Where: COCC Bend Campus, Boyle Education Center
Room 151
Facilitators: Annette Witzel & Charlene Schulz

(This is not a hands-on software class. It is a group session to discuss and view best practices.)

How to Register: Email Nancy Jumper, Program Manager at njumper@cocc.edu or call 541-383-7273 and let Nancy know you'd like to attend. In your email, please indicate your experience level with using PowerPoint. Do you use it regularly in your teaching, occasionally, or not at all and would like to start? Please register by email or phone by Monday, January 23.

Friday, January 6, 2012

New Year, New Changes in the Department

Flexreg, new director, new staff, new phone system, we have a lot of changes happening at the office. We are also into the Winter term and classes have started.

First, you can check the attendance in your class by going into Flexreg and seeing how many seats are left in your class. If you don’t know your max number of seats just give your programmer a call. Remember the seats showing are what is left. Also, if there is a waiting list, it starts at 40 seats. So if your class is full and showing 35 seats on the waitlist, then you have 5 people waiting to get into your class.

We are in the midst of choosing a new director for Community Learning. More on that when it happens.

We have a new staff person who is taking Natalie’s place as a graphic designer and marketer. Her name is Denise Rucci and she starts on January 17th.

Finally, the new phone system which is an IP phone. We can see who is calling us now and many other features. If we do it right, you’ll never know the difference.

Have a great New Year and thanks for teaching for us.

Paul