Regional Discussions 1. What opportunities and challenges does Continuing Education face in your region – economic, de

2. Regional Discussions 1.   What opportunities and challenges does Continuing Education face in your region – economic, demographic, social, or political? 2.   Where are the gaps (e.g., between what we provide and what is needed)? Are these the same from region to region? 3.   Is our role to support the development of knowledge or skills? 4.   What is our role within our community and how do we meet our community needs while addressing our global obligation?

3. opportunities themes access messages obligations demand policy drivers challenges reciprocity engagement

4. Regional Discussions

5. 1.     What opportunities and challenges does Continuing Education face in your region – economic, demographic, social, or political? Challenges: Central • Parts of the region are in an economic slump with an industry decline / lack of interest / wanting to be a part of what we doing / it’s expensive • Colleges are stepping up and entering ‘our’ space / colleges seem to be in a more favourable light compared with the university / we’re not getting the same respect and financial support that colleges are • Invisible within our own institution • How degree and non-degree programs differ on how they are defined within institutions / for that matter, how CE is defined.  Western • Economic challenges: - Shrinking budgets and increasing expectations are consistent issues. • Demographic challenges: • -          Increasing student expectations, especially with mature learners. • -          Varying types of minorities needing to be served. • -          Varying ages of the demographics. • Political: • -          Changing politics and policies in the government impact the kind and amount of funding received. • -          Identifying who is a continuing education student? Atlantic • There needs to be an appropriate amount of investment by the universities to develop new programs. • Resources are not equal among universities. • Physical distribution with small markets.  • All are viewed as competitors before being viewed as collaborators.  There is currently a lot of duplication that could be used in a collaborative fashion. 

6. 1.     What opportunities and challenges does Continuing Education face in your region – economic, demographic, social, or political? Opportunities: Central • Opportunity to articulate value proposition to these age cohorts / make it easy for them to do business with us. • The opportunity is to reach outside of what we are used to and seek out additional markets • Let them know that there is an opportunity to access university through CE. • International, educated, professional: U of T sees this as a great opportunity to tap into. Western • Need to get out the message and prove benefit of the strategic enrollment priorities, but then to claim the ground CE owns. • Carving out our role within institutions and within the programming we are trying to seek. • We need to lobby and how do we do this? • We need to communicate and market the concept of who we are as continuing education divisions. Atlantic • We’re all on the same schedule, but can we alter it? • On the product side, we could share face-to-face programming, i.e.,: coordinating scheduling.   • Online delivery is harder to collaborate on as they’re developed by individual profs.  • Potential chance to collaborate on online delivery for government-supported P-to-K

7. 2.     Where are the gaps (e.g., between what we provide and what is needed)? Are these the same from region to region? Western •  Allowing access to students and enabling them to succeed. • We need more data and marketing to communicate about what we do to make learning meaningful for students. • Provide and enable access to education for minorities is a gap. • Lack of graduate programs for working adults. • The way we run our institutions, such as admission requirements and not having a say in what faculty are selected to teach are gaps. • Not allowing prior learning assessment recognition is a large gap across the board. • How can we come together to speak as an organization to have prior learning assessment recognized where it’s a systematic issue? •  Accepting credentials from more than 10 years ago is a huge issue. Central • Our ability to articulate our value proposition and differentiate ourselves from others at the course level and price level.  • The buy-in in terms of what we know and getting our senior leaders to buy in and agree.  We are appealing to a demographic that is going to grow, but institutions at the senior level are not on aware of it, we need to make them more aware. • CE is aligned to the social mandate of the university, but not necessarily the financial mandate. • Baby boomers will be working for a great number of years and what will this work look like for this generation? • The gap in having more flexibility in terms of being able to deliver the 'just in time' training, skill development program that doesn't fall into the traditional university schedule. Lack of flexibility within the institution to adapt.  A willingness to accept that school happens all year round.  • Not able to respond under the current model to what people are expecting when participating in programming.  • CE's lack of access to international students.  Atlantic • The market is small in Atlantic Canada and we're all competing with each other.  • It doesn't mean we can't collaborate, we just need to know what each institution is doing. • Collaboration in niche markets, i.e.,: aboriginal population; develop collaborations on programs that are not being currently done.

8. 3.   Is our role to support the development of knowledge or skills? Western • Our role is to do both: to provide the accessibility and skill ability. • We need to provide the soft skills for students as well. • We need to provide people with the ability to function with both the knowledge/education they require and the skills needed to become critical thinkers. • We need to act as advocates for critical thinking within the skills learned, instead of separating the knowledge from the skills learned. • We need to deliver on the program outcomes and design them in a way where both knowledge and skills are tied together and function as a unit, where the critical thinking and knowledge is imbedded within the learning. • There is a need to share information across the country on how we can be more socially responsible in building human capacity through sharing curriculum. Central It is both: shouldn’t just be practical application or just knowledge. As a CE unit we have an obligation and responsibility to develop both skills and knowledge.  Atlantic Hell, Yes - depends on who the audience is.  Skills and knowledge are thesame.

9. 4.   What is our role within our community and how do we meet our community needs while addressing our global obligation? Western • Thinking more broadly about what communities need by reaching out to fellow institutions and businesses to collaborate in meeting those needs. • Embracing “open sources” of sharing information enables local communities to affect global issues. • Doing what we can within our communities is a part of our global obligation. • Weaving global responsibility issues into curriculum is something that should be done. • Recognizing that the “traditional” student needs to be redefined and their needs have changed, because our world isn’t as large as it was prior to the internet. • Establishing a spirit of engagement and responsiveness. Collaboration is richer when we focus on what we can learn and do instead of focusing on what the competition is doing. • Celebrate others’ successes, because we are stronger when we all work together as a global educational community. • Remove the “us” and “them” and “here” and “there”. • Universities need to redefine what community engagement is; the universities’ view and CE’s view of “what is” community engagement can be very different. Central • Role in community - address local obligation while meeting the needs of our global enviro. • Identify small projects that have an impact - successes don’t have to cost a lot, but have a huge impact, such as pathways to education.  • Students benefit from the connections they make in the classroom - they are building relationships in the community that they wouldn’t have had; this is built through course work and projects and strengthened by classmates and faculty. • Globalization for the community is important in how we do business.  • With CE, it’s less about the content and more about the experience you provide the student; technology provides the opportunity for local to have a global experience and vice versa - global can have a local experience. • CE has a role to bring issues of a global nature out into the open at a local level closer to the community and facilitate the conversation around that.  • How can we engage the university to be a good citizen? Atlantic • Create some initiatives that are collective; collaborate on those issues;make them sustainable. • Education and money is what it boils down to.  • Take the education to the community (Gordon suggests each university take 2per cent of their profit to work collaboratively).

10. Thank you!