Early College

Early College Classes

The project will offer four free virtual Early College Classes that will be open to any student from the 25 participating high schools. Priority on the selection of the courses will be: 1) classes that will develop skills related to ensuring GEER project success; 2) classes that are currently offered in some participating schools but not readily available to students in other participating schools, mainly rural or smaller schools because of insufficient enrollment; and 3) student requested courses.

Early College Component Results

Results:

This deliverable was exceeded. Six Early College classes were offered, two (2) more than proposed.

Successes:

Six Early College ICS 101 Digital Tools for the Information World were offered to the students from the 25 schools,
The four University of Hawaii system campuses, bookstores, and willing instructors stepped up and made this deliverable a reality. In some cases, this was the first time these institutions made exceptions to their standard procedures to make the classes a reality. (Review the challenges below to understand how difficult it was to achieve this success).
Students who completed the course received three (3) Early College credits,
School personnel had opportunities to work with their colleagues at other schools,
Students who enrolled in the class shared the opportunity with students from other schools.
Individuals and institutions went beyond the customary to make this deliverable successful
Before the Grant, schools on a small scale had adopted this concept of partnering with other schools to offer smaller, more rural schools the opportunity for their students to enroll in Early College classes. This effort has expanded this school year.
BONUS Activity: With some remaining funds, a 2-day Design Thinking Boot Camp was held for five (5) of our high schools by Oceanit.

Challenges:

Time frame reference: This opportunity was available to the schools in early August, during the period when the school year was beginning. Administrations and school staff were focused on starting the school year strongly. This phase was an effort that had never happened previously, so the action had to be built from the ground up. The Early College phase of the project was a tremendous effort that required the cooperation of four institutions, Kapiolani Community College (1 class), Kauai Community College (2 classes), Maui College (1 class), and Windward Community College (2 classes); the four bookstore managers, the course instructors, Early College advisors at the colleges, DOE administrators, school principals, and Early College coordinators at the high school.Once the structure was developed, approved, and set, there was a short time to enroll students. In some cases, there were only about two weeks because of the timelines set by the college. Therefore, the following challenges should be viewed with the understanding that the coordination and collaboration among various entities was a tremendous effort to offer the students the opportunities.

The cost for each Early College class went from $6000 per class to $6900,
There was a delay in the start because, confidentially, we could not inform our schools that we had received the Grant until an official announcement was made.
By the time we were able to inform our schools that we had received the Grant and we wanted to offer Early College opportunities:

1. the community colleges had already completed their schedules for the Fall semester ,
2. many students who qualified for Early College had already registered for other courses,
3. we needed to develop an alternate process that had never been done before to offer the classes.

There was a very tight timeline for registering students.
Not all schools decided to participate for the following reasons

1. Schools with a very small population had students involved in sports, student government, clubs, and other Early College courses. As a result, there were not enough prospective students available.
2. Schools found the logistics too difficult for their situations, and the extra efforts were too burdensome for the school. In addition, overwhelmed essential school personnel viewed this as an additional task and were not committed.,
3. The course had already been offered at the school,
4. One of the instructors who taught two of the courses at Kauai Community College required students to use PCs (the business standard) for the course, while the DOE schools had made Chromebooks its standard platform. As a result, some schools incurred additional costs to purchase PCs.

The Grant was an opportunity to test this concept of working across school borders. However, it is doubtful that another effort on this large scale will be initiated in the future unless additional special funding exists.

Evidence: See Supporting Documents – Early College.