Virginia McBride
Mt. San Antonio College
Project Director, "Connecting the Campuses"

With the deployment of 4CNet, what awaits refinement are collaborative/programming strategies which will permit the system's people to truly work together. Anticipating this problem, the California Community Colleges Board of Governors established as one of its Basic Agenda items for 1997 that "the human infrastructure of the California Community Colleges (CCC) must be enhanced, better organized, and better utilized" within the system. The question is how to do this cost-effectively with broad-based involvement.

"Connecting the Campuses," a Chancellor’s Office Fund for Instructional Improvement project, accepted the challenge. Targeting the entire system's involvement, the project team, working collaboratively with Latitude Communications of Santa Clara, chose a combination of telephone and computer technologies to reach directly to the desktop. Participants, using tools at their fingertips, could stay in their offices, dial-in to the conference by telephone, and connect to web sites through their networks.

In September 1997, the project team held its first statewide conference. In a three-hour span, participants, who were technologically savvy decision-makers at 30 sites, heard and saw presentations from several vendors and higher education representatives. Developing this conference took approximately two months. The content focused on the collaborative technology needed to make the system work, and on similar uses of the technology at the University of Minnesota and Rio Salado Community College in Arizona.

From December 1997 through March 1998, under the guidance of Cristina Mora-Lopez at the Chancellor's Office, several one-hour virtual conferences have covered a variety of Distance Education topics.

One conference, attended by approximately 50 sites hosted by Distance Education Coordinators, provided an update on the deployment of library systems, status of "pilot student-services" applications, wording of legislation related to distance learning, 4CNet progress, issues related to disabilities, and other related topics. This conference, which took about 6 weeks to develop, showed how "timely" information could be delivered quickly throughout the system.

A second conference allowed Larry Toy, Director of System Advancement and Resource Development for the CCC Chanellor’s Office, to explain the status of the California Virtual University (CVU). A diverse collection of participants interactively shared concerns and problems regarding the CVU. This conference of approximately 80 sites, also took about six weeks to develop, and showed the system's potential for collaboration in decision-making and problem-solving.

By March 1998, the conference had grown to 85 registrations. During March's interactive hands-on presentation, David Diaz of Cuesta College took participants to his web site, the campus web site, and a web site in Hawaii. Using the telephone keypad, participants who were concerned about web-development issues, raised "electronic" questions ranging from equipment he used to the possible theft of David's electronic efforts. This conference, taking less than four weeks to develop, demonstrated the system's capability for building upon innovations while avoiding duplication of efforts and repetition of mistakes.

Regardless of the "head-count," each conference costs approximately $30/hour/site for telephone "connections." Web-site access was through campus-based Internet connections, so no additional line costs resulted. In other words, aside from the planning and development costs, a one-hour, highly interactive conference of 100 sites statewide would cost approximately $3000. As the project team learned from its mistakes, development time dropped dramatically and site-participation grew and improved.