Online? Hybrid? Web-enhanced?

What, from your perspective, should Lincoln most productively be doing with respect to online teaching and learning?  

• Should we be developing more totally online courses?  (If so, should they be options for our current students or just for new, non-resident populations?) 
• Should we be developing totally online programs?  (If so, in what disciplines and why?)
• Should we be focusing mainly on hybrid courses [= classes still meet face to face but some of the normal seat time is replaced by online activities]?  (If so, how do you see them enhancing student learning?)
• Should we at least be encouraging web-enhanced learning in our classes [= regular seat time but more assignments using Internet-based resources] ? (If so, what training/resources do you need to do so more effectively?)

Please add your thoughts, whether by raising additional questions or by providing your answers for any of the questions posed above.

How Do Lincoln Graduates Measure Up Against Expectations?

A recent article in Inside Higher Ed, entitled “Well-Prepared in Their Own Eyes,” summarizes an Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) survey that found—good news for liberal arts institutions like Lincoln!—that employers care less about student majors than they do about their range of general skills in thinking, communication, and team work.

It also found—here’s the negative side—that students leave college feeling they have gained better job skills than their employers judge them to have.

What struck me more than this perhaps-to-be-expected disconnect between student self-assessment and employer perceptions, however, was the table showing the skills that employers find least available.

Fewer than one-fifth of the employers surveyed agreed that college graduates are well prepared in

• working with people from different backgrounds (18%),
• staying current on global developments (18%), and
• foreign language proficiency (16%). 

The lowest score of all (15%) was given to “Awareness/experience of diverse cultures outside US."

How do you think our Lincoln students fare against this national profile?  What makes you think that? What are we doing to create/develop/enhance our students’ skills in these four underrepresented categories?  What could we be doing better?  If we were creating an academic master plan for the future, what must it include to ensure that our students leave college with the skills deemed necessary for success?