Featured Network: Northern Wisconsin Educational Communications System
Mar 03, 2008
We have been providing distance education programs since: Northern Wisconsin Educational Communication System (NWECS) just celebrated its 15th year of operation, offering educational opportunities to students, community members and business/industry.
Number of member sites: The NWECS membership is strong, extended over 29 locations with a total of 40 BCN classrooms.
Our membership includes (type of sites, eg, high schools, technical colleges, etc.): A focal point of NWECS is its diverse landscape, including members from high schools, technical colleges, private colleges, UW campuses, tribal colleges and libraries.
Our member sites are located in these Wisconsin counties: NWECS members span across Ashland, Bayfield, Barron, Douglas, Dunn, Iron, Langlade, Marathon, Price, Sawyer, Shawano, St. Croix, and Vilas counties.
An interesting program we recently provided was: An interesting session we recently provided was an informational financial aid session from WITC to Winter HS, reaching out to students and their families who are starting their college search.
A showcase program we are offering is: A showcase series we are going to offer is entitled “Career Exploration.” Our NWECS Higher Ed partners will be highlighting career paths, education needed and job potential after graduation.
The number of programs we offer on a typical day is: Our network averages 45-50 programs on a daily basis, most of which are credit-based K12 to K12 or Higher Ed to K12 programming.
Audiences attending our programs include: The diverse NWECS membership affords our network to provide educational opportunities to a variety of audiences, including K-12 students, college students, continuing education students, community members and business/industry.
A typical day at our network involves: The NWECS operations office, based at WITC Rice Lake, continues to be a flurry of activity on a daily basis. We are currently responsible for scheduling, maintaining and troubleshooting over 400 sessions per week, by making ourselves available 80 hours per week to our members.
Our most surprising success story was: For the first time, our network ran a 4-night ACT Prep session this past fall semester. We were successful on two levels as 9 sites and 47 students attended, and the student response was overwhelming as to the class’s content and instruction. We will now be running ACT Prep twice per school year for our K12 members.
Our favorite tip for distance education teachers is: We ask instructors to not be a “talking head” on screen. Instructors need to reach students remotely by using all of the tools available to them in a stimulating and engaging way.
A popular topic area for our courses this year is: A popular topic area for our courses this year is in the medical field. Both K12 and college students are receiving Medical Terminology, Nursing and Occupational Therapy classes.
On average, the number of people attending our programs last year was: On average, the number of people attending our programs last year was over 2800.
Students taking our programs often comment on: Students taking our programs often comment on how they wouldn’t have the opportunity to earn college credits while in high school if it wasn’t for distance learning.
A Virtual Field Trip we offered helped students learn about: A demo we offered helped K12 faculty and staff learn more about distance learning and creative ways how to use the technology to captivate the interest of their students. We used a “Deal or No Deal” format to initiate involvement and excitement at the remote sites.
An interesting thing about our network is: NWECS was one of two networks selected to participate in the pilot portion of the 2006 BCN conversion. Our staff provided valuable data and suggestions to help make the BCN the reliable network it is today.
At our network, we try our best to: The NWECS network prides itself on exceeding customer expectations by providing reliable and prompt technical support, as well as valuable programming to students of all ages.
For more information contact: holly.scharf@witc.edu or distancelearningstaff@witc.edu
Our Network's web site url is: http://www.nwecs.net/