WCET Strategic Priorities: Practice, Policy, and Advocacy
Published by: WCET | 2/24/2015
Tags: WCET
Today we hear from Peter Smith, Founding President, Open College @ Kaplan University and chair of the WCET Executive Council. Thank you Peter for your insights today and the leadership you provide your Cooperative.
It is a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to serve as the Chair of the WCET Executive Committee, especially as the “Abbiatti Era” dawns at WCET. Once again, WCET has identified the right leader at the right time to address the challenges and opportunities that we and our members face in the educational technology space.
As those of you who have worked with Mike know, he moves quickly and surely to define objectives and create clarity of direction and purpose. Since he arrived, Mike has worked with the staff, members of the Steering Committee and the Executive Council, to list, prioritize, and select a limited number of three strategic focus areas for WCET. They represent, I believe, appropriately diverse levels and types of activity that are at one and the same time aggressive, important, and achievable.
Practice
There are three areas which have been identified for strategic focus, each distinct from the other two, but all intertwined in an organizational DNA that will prove extremely valuable. Historically, WCET is a membership organization which focuses on best and emerging practices in the use of technology in Higher Education at the institutional level. This will continue to be the organizing vision and purpose of WCET: to serve the practice-related needs of our institutional and other members in the use of technology. In my opinion, no one does it better than we do. But by choosing it as an explicit strategic focus area, it will drive a more operational focus, and hence improvement, going forward.
Policy
At the same time, we all know and understand that the policy arena in higher education will be significantly occupied by technology-oriented issues as well as the disruptive consequences of big data, abundant information, and new technological capacities emerging every day. Therefore, it makes all the sense in the world that WCET should lead the analysis of policy that impacts technology-enhanced teaching and learning. This year, it will undoubtedly involve the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. But as we have seen from other initiatives, such as PAR and SARA, the policy conversations of the future will be as diverse as they are, in some cases, unanticipated.
Advocacy
Finally, when you consider the sum total of these first two priorities, it suggests that WCET’s third area of strategic focus should be advocacy, guiding proposed regulations and policies so that they result in practices that benefit students while also balancing the needs of institutions and governments. While we can and should engage in joint advocacy with other groups, and there will be, and should be, other voices in this discussion, WCET’s membership base, focus on practice, and history in the advocacy field position us well to be a major national and global voice.
I look forward to an exciting and productive year working with Mike, his extraordinary team, the Executive and Steering Committee members and all the members who make WCET the vital and important organization that it has become. We are standing at a crossroads in higher education. The leadership opportunity in practice, policy and advocacy in and for technology –related issues has never been bigger or more important. Working together, we can seize the future.
Peter Smith
Founding President
Open College @ Kaplan University
2 replies on “WCET Strategic Priorities: Practice, Policy, and Advocacy”
No surprises here but a great team in place…..personally, we need clarification on which issues have priority…all the policy and institutional services mean nothing if priorities aren’t identified…still not clear of this…even WCET can’t do it all.
Fran, great comment, and it is wonderful to hear from you. WCET has always been an organization prioritizing proven success in technology-enhanced education.This will not change. Next, over time,the need to stay on top of evolving policy has become very important, and WCET will have an eye on the policies that impact our member community( i.e. SARA and SAN). Last, but not least is the need to be an advocate for our area(s) of interest at the national, state, and institutional levels. We are new to the formal advocacy area and will take small, but carefully considered steps.
Your point about the need to have clear priorities and courses of action to keep the events and activities focused on the priorities is well taken. Rest assured that WCET will stay on target, on task, and leaning forward to success in the three areas mentioned above. i am just to the right of Attila the Hun when it comes to
knowing where we are going and how we will get there. The key to sustainable success is situational awareness constantly revised by quality input such as your excellent request for clarification.