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

PROJECT: Hispanic Educational Telecommunications System (HETS)

Members Only

HETS is a consortium of community colleges, private institutions, state and city universities established to expand Hispanic higher education access through telecommunications and distance learning initiatives.

HETS invited IAA staff members to present the Great Plains IDEA model for inter-institutional academic programs to the HETS Board of Directors in January 2003. Subsequently, the IAA was asked to lead the First HETS Workshop on Online Collaboration Initiatives. In preparation for the workshop, the IAA conducted an online survey of HETS institutional members to help identify academic programs for collaborative development. Later that year, the IAA and HETS conducted an inter-institutional meeting of faculty and distance education administrators to discuss specific potential collaborative programs. Three programs were initiated: 1) Bilingual Journalism, 2) Cross-Cultural Health Care, and 3) Security Management.

In January 2004, the IAA staff and an IAA consultant in inter-institutional program finance met with the HETS Board to discuss program implementation. In June 2004, the IAA co-sponsored the Second Annual HETS Workshop: Reaching Policy Agreements for Collaboration Initiatives among HETS Partner Institutions. The IAA encouraged each institution to create an program implementation team. The teams were given a DVD and a sample team meeting agenda. They were asked to provide an institutional response to the IAA Online Policy and Practice Survey, designed to collect the information needed to make decisions regarding inter-institutional program implementation. Finally, the IAA developed a briefing book that was distributed in advance to workshop participants.