New Article on Accelerated Programs

I received my copy of The Journal of Continuing Higher Education yesterday and discovered a new article. The article is entitled "Working Adults in Accelerated Cohorts: More than a Learning Community." The article describes the administrative and support services that many accelerated programs at small liberal arts institutions use. Mount Olive College in North Carolina is the setting for most of the article; however, Bluefield College in Virginia and Bay Path College in Massachusetts are also highlighted for their successful programs.

This one of the ways Accelerated Programs will become known and understood as more research is conducted and more articles published. Kudos to Robin Spaid and Evan Duff. Check out
The Journal of Continuing Higher Education, 57 (2), pages 104-109.

Successful Workshop

Thank you to all the CAP workshop attendees on Monday and Tuesday. The workshop was a success because of the participants and their willingness to explore new ideas. We concluded the workshop on Tuesday with wikis, blogs, Microsoft Life, and Google Tools. I know that I will not be able to use all these tools, but I am very glad I am a little more knowledgeable. I am thankful for learning about the ones I will be able to add to my repertoire. I think we have great potential to strengthen the accelerated program network.

I hope all the workshop attendees had a safe journey home. My Wednesday started with a fire alarm going off in the hotel and a mandatory evacuation. My worst fear was realized. I wondered what I would do if I were in the shower when an emergency happened at a hotel. I now know...dry off, dress quickly, and run out the door with my hair in a towel. I am so glad I did not run into anyone I knew. Just as we made it to the first floor, the hotel maintenance personnel were letting us know that it was all clear. I was very thankful I was only on the seventh floor as I climbed the stairs back up. As my Aussie friend would say...It was all good!

Faculty Development thru Technology

The first day of our workshop was kicked off with a presentation on Second Life. We moved from that session to a session on how to build a technologically enhanced classroom through prototyping and faculty development by recording presentations. The afternoon was filled with vodcasting and podcasting, webinars and online teaching panel. Everyone was taking notes and learning new skills to take back to their campuses.

The best session for me personally was the podcasting/vodcasting. We created a short one minute video. I understood how I could easily do this on my laptop for my courses and contribute to my onground and online courses. With a camera on the computer and a microphone, I can create short videos for my courses. It is a great way to create an introduction for new faculty and communicate updates for all faculty. What a great, inexpensive tool, that is easy for a non-techy.

Executive Planning Meeting

The CAP Executive Committee met today at Chad Gruhl's house in the mountains outside Denver. It was a lovely, peaceful setting for some indepth discussion about the organization's future. The Executive Committee meets face-to-face twice a year once at the workshop and once at the Annual Conference. These meetings in addition to the monthly conference calls keeps the organization moving forward the spread the word of accelerated programs. At the meeting, we got the opportunity to walk through the next two days of workshop as well as plan for the conference in November. In addition, we had a report of CAP's consulting service. CAP is growing and creating our own system for social networks with (this blog) and a new wiki that will be unveiled on Tuesday, July 21st, at the workshop.

Come back often for updates.

Welcome!!

Welcome...you have found the blog site of the Commission for Accelerated Programs, an organization dedicated to professionsals who teach, lead, and conduct research in accelerated programs in higher education. As an advocate for accelerated education, CAP enhances collaboration and shares best practices and research findings among its members to design and deliver the most effective accelerated learning for adult and nontraditional students. For more information visit us at CAP.

This blog is intended to provide a forum to answer questions about CAP and to provide information about the organization and its activities. A recent addition to the CAP social networking environment is the accelerated programs wiki hosted on Wikispaces. The link is located in the upper right corner of this blog under the title "My Wikispaces"...come join us to collaborate on the important topics in the profession.

What are Accelerated Programs?
Accelerated degree programs were created to market to the working adult students. Entrepreneurial thinkers in the 1970s looked at they way the higher educational scheduling system eliminated working adults from attending and earning a degree. A new format model was developed which allowed adults to attend classes in the evening, but if the system continued to follow the traditional semester system it would take them forever to complete the necessary number of credit hours. This resulted in two formats being created: 1) Compressed or Intensive Scheduling and 2) Accelerated Programs.

First, compressed or intensive scheduling took the face-to-face time of a semester length course and compressed it into an eight-week time period. Courses still met for 32 to 45 contact (face-to-face) hours.

Second, accelerated programs were developed which took the semester length course and lowered the contact hours for a three credit hour undergraduate course to about 20 hours, Graduate level courses were generally lowered to 24 contact hours.