Educating Colorado

Educating Colorado Group Project Feedback

Title of the project and URL

Educating Colorado. http://educatingcolorado.coloradodjlabs.org/index.html

Members, classifications and emails

Sarah Horn 971-570-7315, sarahmhorn@gmail.com

Kristen Painter 651-500-9230, Kristen.Painter@Colorado.Edu

Keith Moore 303-886-8181, keith.moore@colorado.edu,

Division of Labor (who did what?)

Sarah: Wrote a feature article. Researched funding and figures. Created a number of graphs using the figures she found. Helped with Web design. Edited stories.

Kristen: Wrote a feature article. Produced a slideshow. Researched and then created a timeline of a history of education in Colorado. Took the lead designing and modifying the website, as well as the banner and navigation bar.

Keith: Wrote a feature article. Produced two slideshows. Edited stories. Gathered budget information from the relevant government agencies. Helped with Web and banner design.

Resources (a list of sources with contact information, research materials, major electronic resources used, etc.)

Kati Dugan: 303-249-6673.

Chad Marturano: 303-866-3174

John Karakoulakis: 303-866-4742

Brad Bohlander: 970-491-1545

• Ashton Harper:
malevolentpixie93@yahoo.com
720-934-8514

• “The Incremental Marketization and Centralization of State Control of Public Higher Education: A Hermeneutic Interpretation of Legislative and Administrative Text” Harbour, Clifford. International Journal of Qualitative Methods; 2006, Vol. 5 Issue 3, p1-14, 14p

“History of Funding for Higher Education.” http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1988/Federal-Funds-Higher-Education.html

Daily Camera coverage of CU Budget Cuts

Denver Post coverage of the CU Budget Cuts

Bronson Hilliard – Communications officer at CU 303-735-6183

Amy Beckstrom – Director of Dining Services - 303-492-6325

University of Colorado system: "https://www.cu.edu/" https://www.cu.edu/

FY 2010-2011 Summary of Budget Balancing Measures

University of Colorado Boulder website:

Flagship 2030 Plan - "http://colorado.edu/flagship2030/" http://colorado.edu/flagship2030/

Chancellor Distefano’s Budget Updates

Colorado Community College System: www.cccs.edu

Colorado Higher Education Strategic Planning: http://highered.colorado.gov/Publications/General/StrategicPlanning/default.html

2010-2011 Budget Package: http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/jbc/10LBNarrative.pdf

http://www.denverpost.com/localpolitics/ci_14856621

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_14386418

http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_14423024#axzz0mQmSal3J

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14933064

Colorado Resident Undergraduate Fees: http://highered.colorado.gov/Publications/Reports/Budget/FY2010/201001_tf_30hrsresundergrad.pdf

Colorado Higher Education Overview: http://highered.colorado.gov/Publications/General/StrategicPlanning/Meetings/Resources/Background/HigherEd_Overview_Jan2010.pdf

V. Strengths of the Project

As for strengths, this project’s topic was rich with content possibilities, which allowed ample options as far as directions to go. Since the issue is extremely timely, there were several current media sources as well as a heightened awareness among many of our interviewees. We definitely were not short of ideas.

Because the topic is rather data heavy, we had several opportunities to visualize our content in graphs, charts, and timelines. This definitely gave our project visual enhancement.

Also, the bureaucratic nature of education gave Keith several expert sources. With any news story, this factor is always helpful for verifying and credibility purposes.

Lastly, because we ourselves are direct subjects of the issue, we were able to do our own opinion piece on what our education has meant to us and for it to actually be relevant to our story.

VI. Weaknesses of the Project

Because our project was so meaty, we had to be careful not to make the website overly wordy and we had to be somewhat creative with the multimedia components. The soundslide presentations turned out well, but we really didn’t have a ton of video options.

Just as the data was a strength in one sense, it also was a bit of a weakness. It is always good to have solid numbers to work with, but the tricky part was to make them understandable and interesting for our users.

If we would have had more time, we would have liked to have had more feature articles to contextualize a wider scope of the issue, such as historical, national, state-by-state analysis, etc. However, with the time constraints, the background research and interviewing that those stories would’ve required was not a feasible endeavor.

VII. Lessons Learned (positive and negative)

In designing and creating our site our group learned that planning and preparation should never be underestimated. There were steps in the process that looking back were extremely important to staying on track:

Mapping out early the different aspects of the site each of us would be responsible

Drawing out the pages, media, stories and links for our site before we even started building it

Documenting problems as they arose so we could consult with Rick all at once

Have a timeline of deadlines and keep each group member accountable

Budget more time than you think you need

Get started on content before completely designing and creating the website because the content is bound to shift around and evolve

There were certain aspects that we did not anticipate that without the assistance of Rick, it would have added hours on to our website development. We hit walls during the second stage of our website design, which we had to remedy when Rick was available to help us. We expected to have problems, but did not realize the degree to which little things could stall the progress of our site. Open discussion, communication and constant testing is a must.

I realized in doing my media searches for stories on Colorado's budget, that I had previously been skimming over the stories with the attitude that, I couldn't do anything anyway so why get frustrated. I am disappointed with myself, because the problems facing Colorado's public education system won't solve itself. Other students probably have the same perspective, which worries me, because students are near the top of the list of who will be heard.

Today we met as a group with Rick on campus. I feel good about getting the template and pages set up and ready for content. Tonight I am babysitting and trying to make my audio slideshow for the site. Unfortunately, Audacity has the audacity to stand defiantly against me tonight. I am not being allowed to play the sound once I import the mp3 into the program. So, it looks like I am going to have to take it to campus for yet another technical issue. This program really sucks in my opinion and there are so many basic improvements that would make it a much more efficient system.

Everybody tells me that it's a tough time to be graduating college because of the lack of jobs right now, back home in the U.K., here in the U.S. – all over.

On the front page of today's Denver Post was a story about how the state is going to possibly try to make up for a shortfall in higher education funding beyond 2011. I already knew about the possibility of the bill allowing tuition flexibility, but the rest is interesting.

In hopes of finding important legislative bills that have impacted funding for higher education, I have spent countless hours digging through Colorado's potential databases, google timelines, and other online resources. The unfortunate side of things is that there really is no central location to find such information. I sought help from a local political guru and he basically said that isn't really possible for the state.

I've been tasked with trying to make sense of the main reason why we're working on this particular project – the higher education budget cuts.