Annual Survey Recognizes Most Innovative Digital Community Colleges

SACRAMENTO, CA--(Marketwired - April 18, 2017) - The Center for Digital Education (CDE) announced the winners of its 2016-17 Digital Community Colleges Survey today. Now in its twelfth year, the Digital Community Colleges Survey analyzes how community colleges use a range of technologies to improve services to students, faculty, staff and the community at large.

"This year's survey indicates community colleges are continuing to improve efforts at creating cost-effective platforms, open educational resources, mobile environments, real-time resources, telepresence robots and more to create robust online and mobile environments for their students," said Dr. Kecia Ray, executive director for the Center for Digital Education. "Congratulations to this year's survey winners."

Highlights of the First-Place Colleges in Each Category:

• Thomas Nelson Community College, Va. (Enrollment 10,000 students or more)
  Thomas Nelson Community College recently launched an online platform designed to help students better prepare to enter the global workforce. The platform provides guided onboarding, academic planning and course scheduling and enables students to make program selections using real-time job data and campus resources. The platform streamlines the enrollment process and creates personalized pathways for students that align with their goals.

• Lord Fairfax Community College, Va. (Enrollment between 5,000 and 10,000 students)
  Lord Fairfax Community College recently implemented a video technology service to enable lecture capture and recording, digital whiteboarding and remote connections from anywhere in the world for any student with an internet connection, regardless of platform. The service also includes a remote-control teleconferencing robot that enables the school to interact with students remotely to better engage them and to capture their feedback. The new service provided an initial cost-savings of $750,000.

• Carl Sandburg College, Ill. (Enrollment of 5,000 or fewer students)
  Recognizing that most students are tied to their mobile devices, Carl Sandburg College includes a mobile option for all services they offer. The college also offers a learning environment rich with interactive options like gaming, collaborative spaces, virtual reality and telepresence robots. In addition, an Open Education Resource Course Initiative has saved students almost a half million dollars in textbook costs to-date.

The 2016-17 Digital Community Colleges survey also revealed insights about community colleges' technology priorities. Colleges surveyed indicated that mobility devices/app support is their top priority in the coming year, followed by website redesign/updates, cybersecurity tools and testing, and digital content and curriculum. The survey also revealed that 54% of colleges now offer professional development courses on how to use mobile apps for instruction; 28% of colleges offer professional development for teachers or provide specific policies regarding how to protect student privacy when using apps; and 91% offer professional development courses on how to integrate technology into curriculum and instructional practices.

All accredited U.S. community colleges are eligible to participate in the Digital Community Colleges Survey within three classifications based on enrollment size. CDE thanks last year's first-place winners who abstained from participation to contribute as members of the development panel for this year's survey: Montgomery County Community College, Pa.; Hostos Community College, N.Y.; and Laramie County Community College, Wyo.

View the full list of colleges honored.

CDE thanks Pure Storage for underwriting the 2016-17 survey program.

About the Center for Digital Education
The Center for Digital Education (CDE) is a national research and advisory institute specializing in K-12 and higher education technology trends, policy and funding. CDE provides education and industry leaders with decision support and actionable insights to help effectively incorporate new technologies in the 21^st century. Learn more at: www.centerdigitaled.com

CDE is a division of e.Republic, the nation's only media and research company focused exclusively on state and local government and education.