Strategic Planning

May 2022

Summer is just around the corner. For many organizations, summer is the best time to do some Strategic Planning. However, with everything going on these days, planning seems to be an ongoing process in response to all the changes. This year, our division has been working diligently in aligning our operational plans with the college’s strategic goals. The following outline highlights a few priorities and ideas that we are currently working on in collaboration with internal and external stakeholders:

Increase Enrollment

• Streamlining Early College processes and enhancing EC programs/partnerships through implementation of FIPSE Grant and collaboration with the internal and external stakeholders. 

  • We have seen a steady uptrend in Early College enrollment since the creation of DII/EC in 2020, and the FIPSE Grant Project has set a goal to increase EC enrollment by 15%.

• Exploring and implementing instructional innovation projects such as OER and HyFlex initiatives to provide flexible, accessible and equitable learning modalities that meet the needs of a diverse student population. 

  • The 3-year Open Textbook Grant Project currently has enrolled 10 NPC faculty and 15 courses. For Year 1, projected total savings from replacing commercial material with open content are $2,043/student and adoption of OERs will reduce the cost for approximately 2,500 students. This will also help increase enrollment. For example, according to Professor Ryan Jones, many of our TALON and Dual Enrollment partners have let us know that using OERs for ENL 101 and 102 makes it possible for them to offer NPC courses.  When we had required textbooks, most area schools were not able to replace them to keep up with newer editions on even a 5-year schedule. TALON composition courses, which account for a very large number of our students, may not be possible at all without OERs/free resources. 

  • Research shows the HyFlex model can potentially help increase student enrollment and retention, but we still need more data from the pilot to support that.

• Supporting curriculum updates/changes, AZTransfer, and academic scheduling to meet the academic needs of our students and partners. 

  • Helping faculty efficiently propose and implement curriculum changes, making updates to AZTransfer especially to CEG, integrating Ad Astra to optimize course scheduling, and developing academic calendars are critical to enrollment growth.

Improve Student Success

• Providing multimodal and multi-layer faculty readiness and student readiness. ITCS, FIPSE Grant Task Force, EC Team, OAI, and Library Services are working together to support faculty and students to enhance their teaching and learning experience. The College Immersion Year, EC (Dual Enrollment, TALON, NAVIT, and other concurrent enrollment) instructor and student readiness programs are being developed to improve student outcomes. New faculty mentoring/orientation, ISW, monthly workshops, instructional design/consulting, and the eResource site provide a multimodal, multi-layer readiness mechanism.

• Enhancing Library Services with integration of Tech Hubs and exploration of a transformative Learning Commons. Information Literacy and Library Instruction sessions provide students with research and information literacy skills that are important for learning outcomes, but also with lifelong learning. Students with research and information literacy (i.e. critical thinking) skills are better adept at life in our fast-paced and information-intense world. Library staff regularly provide research and information literacy instruction inside of courses. The concept of Learning Commons will bring together a variety of resources and staff in order to support student learning and retention as NPC is moving towards a One Stop Shop framework.

• Facilitating open and flexible pedagogy initiatives to promote equitable and accessible learning. AZ Open Textbook Grant, HyFlex Pilot and other pedagogically sound delivery modalities will help provide a more equitable and accessible learning experience for our students. More options will be explored to meet our community’s diverse learning preferences and academic needs, leading to greater success.

• Transitioning OAI from the medical model to the social model. Improvements have been made to both OAI webpage and the comparison document for how services differ in high school and college. OAI is working on breaking the barrier associated with siloed beliefs regarding students with disabilities attending college and misunderstanding of accommodations between high school and college. Additionally, students with disabilities struggle to complete their programs through inconsistent support from 3rd party payers. OAI assists in this process through advocating active students apply for available scholarships to diversify their options for funding their education.

• Implementing and managing grants that enhance student learning (Perkins, FIPSE, etc.). Perkins grant provides state-of-the-art equipment for students, in response to faculty and advisory board identified needs. Both CTE and NAH receive considerable amounts from Perkins annually. It also funds several eligible faculty and staff positions, as well as provides partial funding for several innovative projects. 

Improve College Sustainability

• Working with cross-functional teams to implement multiple grant projects that do not rely on college funds. These projects will have a significant impact on college sustainability, and DII will continue to participate in future grant opportunities. For Perkins, we have robust processes of gathering information from Deans and connecting the Perkins cycle to the college budget cycle. A succession plan is being developed to combine the administration and reporting responsibilities and ensure NPC continues to receive this $400K+ grant.

• One of the primary functions of the OAI office is to monitor legal trends nationwide and ensure that NPC processes are compliant. Sustainability is best ensured by reducing the college’s likelihood of a legal complaint that could result in significant financial penalties. Another key area where OAI helps improve the college sustainability is in working with ITCS and the Instructional Innovation Division to purchase software like Read&Write which is available to anyone with an NPC email address to download free of charge from the OAI webpage and support the purchase of software that converts instructional files loaded in course shells in Moodle like Ally.

• Serving as a bridge between various academic stakeholders and a change agent that promotes collaboration and innovation. An important aspect of DII is to facilitate collaboration and innovation among stakeholders to consolidate resources, streamline processes, and expand partnerships. We aim to build a cross-functional team that works collaboratively to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity, thus to optimize academic support and improve sustainability.

I welcome your input as we move forward with the above plans and ideas. I'd like to thank our team for their hard work, and a big thank you to those who supported DII as we continue to improve and grow in the past two years. I wish everyone a safe and enjoyable summer!

Wei Ma, PhD

Dean of Instructional Innovation

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