September 2, 2020

Fellows:
Amanda Bylczynski, Edison State Community College
Drew Felberg, Stark State College
Lori McKee, North Central State College
Dee Dee Pfister, Cuyahoga Community College

Project Advisor:
Jonathan Dryden, Lorain County Community College

Executive Summary:
The method in which community colleges create course schedules, in general, does not provide a fool-proof mechanism for student success and completion.  Some community college scheduling inefficiencies that create barriers to student success and completion include:

• A lack of integrating student feedback into creating course schedules
• A heavy reliance on utilizing historic scheduling patterns versus utilizing forecasting data (i.e. rolling schedules)
• A heavy reliance on utilizing traditional delivery methods and modalities
• A lack of interdepartmental faculty and dean scheduling collaboration

The OACC Leadership Academy Group #3 was charged to focus their project work on Pillar #1 and explore ideas to create course schedules that align with program maps and delineate the course sequences that include critical courses, embedded credentials, and progress milestones. The OCAA Leadership Team #3 proposes integrating a collaborative method to course schedule creation that addresses both the aforementioned challenges and the ideals of Pillar #1.  This proposal would allow for the integration of student feedback data to determine needs/student demand for offering alternative delivery models and modalities.  More specifically, OACC team #3 proposes the development of a data collection portal/mechanism for student feedback/voice to make course scheduling more efficient, customized to meet student needs, and, ultimately, improve student success and completion.