Colleges that don’t have the means to develop specialty workforce development courses and programs offered at a distance in disciplines that may fill an education need or desire in their local communities can look no further than Project SAIL, a Sloan-C and League for Innovation in the Community College initiative that is quickly gaining ground, primarily at the community college level, but also moving into the four-year higher education space.

Project SAIL (Specialty Asynchronous Industry Learning) got its start with a $40,000 phase-one Sloan-C grant in early 2003. It has since been awarded two more Sloan-C grants, totaling more than $900,000.

Exchange System

Project SAIL is a curriculum and content exchange system that enables provider and recipient institutions to enter into licensing, leasing or purchasing agreements for specialty distance learning courses and programs. It has built a growing catalogue of distance learning offerings that are supportive of unique industry-driven needs rather than general studies courses. For example, “if a college is interested in funeral directing and has a market for it, they can call up St. Louis Community College and deliver those courses,” says Project SAIL Director Stella Perez. The most recent online catalogue consists of more than 550 courses from 28 institutions. There are 122 certificate and associate degree programs, ranging in areas from power plant technology, occupational safety, and fire technology to travel and tourism, and geographic information systems.

While a good number of the Project SAIL courses are offered in a fully online modality, others are made available as hybrid options, or delivered in an online or CD-ROM-based self-study mode (with or without a facilitator/instructor). Also, courses with lab or apprenticeship requirements can be coordinated through local college services and community networks.

Pay-As-You-Go
 
To date, Project SAIL has facilitated 619 college-to-college transactions in which a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was created to lease, license, or purchase distance learning courses or programs. One of the value-added propositions of a typical Project SAIL licensing or leasing MOU is that it is pay-as-you-go oriented, meaning recipient institutions are not charged anything until a student(s) enrolls in a course. Plus, the recipient institution receives the tuition dollars and the state FTE for each enrollment, while the provider institution agrees to a per-student license fee or lease agreement. The students enroll in the Project SAIL courses through their home institution, allowing them to continue to take advantage of all the home-institution student services they are accustomed to.

Moving Off-Shore and Into a University

Some of these 619 transactions have occurred with a recipient organization based in Singapore called Factor Learning. Plus, Project SAIL recently added its first 4-year institution, the University of North Texas, to provide a certificate in volunteer & community resource management, a certificate in gifted education, a series of online continuing education tutorials titled “Library Education @ Desktop” and a course titled “The Multiracial Family.”

“We are expanding beyond the community college realm,” noted Perez. “The transactions have taken over, and we are expanding and want to bring in more colleges with online programs.”

Great for Rural Students

In the meantime, a recent and unique recipient partner that is seeking to enhance its distance learning course and program offerings is the Community and Technical College System of West Virginia (CCTSWV). CCTSWV is a new, 1.5-year-old, state-wide consortium of 10 relatively small community colleges with a combined total population of about 20,000 students, many of whom live in rural areas. CCTSWV has agreed to offer seven Project SAIL programs, from seven different institutions, to its students. CCTSWV is in an early phase of testing out these programs. The system has just started to implement a marketing strategy to promote the seven programs as well as plans to solidify the administrative infrastructure to support everything. “When I look at what is now available (through Project SAIL), especially for our rural counties, the potential is great,” says CCTSW Vice Chancellor Kathy D’Antoni. “These are programs we cannot start up ourselves. I get excited about it, because I can see what we can do. But it is a slow process. It won’t snap into place over night.”

Learning How to Learn Online

One of the early challenges that has come to the surface for CCTSWV is that some of these rural students are not in the least bit familiar with online learning. “They don’t have the access or the technical skills,” says D’Antoni. “It is not an easy match for them. They are non-traditional, first-generation college students.” Consequently, CCTSWV has held some of the Project SAIL courses in a live classroom where a facilitator can help students learn how to learn online. However, D’Antoni adds that “our system is getting more accustomed to online learning. So as these programs take hold and are put in place properly, I see a much heavier volume of SAILS transactions happening here in West Virginia.”

A Tool in Your Distance Learning Toolbox

On the provider side of Project SAIL arrangements, Kirkwood Community College is an interesting example of an institution that has taken this concept and put it to good use. Kirkwood’s Hazardous Materials Training and Research Institute (HMTRI) partnered with Project SAIL to offer a hazardous waste site worker training course, as well as certificate programs in solid waste environmental technologies, wastewater treatment plant operations and water supply and distribution operations. HMTRI has been partnering with about 150 institutions and various organizations, including the United Nations University, prior to the existence of Project SAIL. Since joining Project SAIL in 2003, HMRTI has added about 20 new SAIL partners, says Doug Elam, HMRTI’s distance learning manager. “We are there as a resource. We are a tool in their tool box. You may not use it all the time, but when you reach for it, it’s there.”

Ala-Carte, On-Demand Education

Elam says he sees Project SAIL as a catalyst of ala-carte, on-demand distance education provisions that can be offered quickly, where students and educators can easily find bits and pieces of distance education courses and modules to suit their needs. As an example, he points to an online terrorism biological agents class from HMRTI that was recently offered as a unit inside a post-graduate University of Tennessee nursing program course. Another example can be found in some of HMRTI’s hazardous waste courses that people who are involved in post Katrina clean up have been able to enroll in. He also points to some states tightening up their wastewater regulations and thereby demanding more workforce training in that industry. “Some colleges have figured out that this is a great way to take a little pressure off their own infrastructure,” he concludes.

Providing Benefits

Project SAIL has become an organic experience that has taken off, adds Perez. “When people first become of ware of it, they ask ‘what’s the catch’? Any dollars that are exchanged from these agreements are really between the colleges. What we have really hoped for is to provide benefits to the partners who are promoting their courses through Project SAIL; giving them new markets; giving them new opportunities for funding; helping them expand their service areas; and giving benefits to the home college, so that all of a sudden they do not have to develop anything.”

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