When midyear reductions in the State’s budget were adopted by the Legislature and approved by the Governor two weeks ago, they included a deletion of $2.9 million for the California Virtual Campus during 2003-04. That amount had been appropriated by the Legislature last August. We planned to begin using it this summer. But it is now gone.
However, this development does NOT mean that the CVC will cease to function after June 30. We expect at this point that, per the Governor’s January 10 budget message, we’ll have during the coming year about 55% of the funds that we’ve had each year until now. This will require a re-organization of the project and the reduction or elimination of some services. The CVC Professional Development Center, for example, will be closed during June in order to help stretch our existing funds into the summer. Additions to course listings and other institutional changes in the CVC catalog can be still made during that month, but technical support will be very limited. We’ll re-open on July 1. The other CVC centers will not necessarily be closed during part of the summer.
During the coming year, all five CVC centers will focus on maintaining the core functions of the project. These include course-hosting and maintenance of the CVC catalog. They also include faculty and staff training, insofar as resources permit. We’ll continue to provide information through various CVC listservs and through our websites.
In the meantime, work on the learning objects repository will continue this spring. So will development of an easy-to-use and free web conferencing system and an improved version of our online survey generator. The latter, “CVC Evaluator,” can be used for a variety of purposes, including course and training evaluations, assessing campus climate and needs, and measuring technology usage. (CVC Evaluator is available to registrants at the PDC website. Once you’ve registered, go to “myPDC” and then to the CVC Web Services page, where you’ll find a link that can be used to request access.)
Joe Georges
Director
California Virtual Campus Professional Development Center