Email: iaa@ksu.edu             Phone: 785.532.1999               Fax: 785.532.5946

PROJECT: Early Childhood Higher-Education Options (ECHO)
ECHO is a collaborative effort of early childhood faculty to address the new unified early childhood (birth through age 8, special-education integrated) teacher license in Kansas. ECHO includes early childhood faculty members from eight higher education institutions in Kansas, including public and private colleges and universities.

ECHO invited the IAA to present the Great Plains IDEA model for inter-institutional academic programs. Initial reactions were very positive since the Model provides an exciting and innovative framework to implement the ECHO vision. Subsequently, ECHO faculty decided to develop a set of online early childhood core courses to increase accessibility to early childhood higher education throughout Kansas. The IAA conducted an online survey of ECHO faculty members to obtain their perceptions of early childhood distance education needs. The results were used by the IAA to lead an ECHO workshop to identify core courses for distance education delivery. Ten online courses for inter-institutional delivery are in various stages of development. The IAA interviewed each of the ten course development teams at their May 2004 meeting to assess their progress and identify problem areas. The IAA will begin work with ECHO institutional and inter-institutional program implementation teams.

Project Members Only