St. John Joins Kodiak College, Continues With Museum

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Brianna Gibbs/KMXT
The Alutiiq Museum has seen quite a few changes in the past few months. Long-time Director Sven Haakanson retired in June, and in August the museum welcomed Alisha Drabek as its new director. Now, the organization will start seeing less of another decade-long employee, Katie St. John.
St. John has served the Alutiiq Museum for the past 12 years in a number of roles, including museum manager and interim executive director. Her current position, director of operations, will only be part time as she takes on a new role at Kodiak College.
“My title at the college is the project manager for one of the Title III Department of Education grants, the Sea Change grant, which is focused on enhancing and really improving the distance education opportunities through Kodiak College.”

Big Changes Coming to GED Tests

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Brianna Gibbs/KMXT
For those who didn’t receive a high school diploma, GED testing can offer another stab at academics. The General Education Development tests are a series of five subject tests that, when passed, are the equivalent of earning a high school diploma. They can be taken by anyone above 16-years-old and as often as needed. For more than 70 years these tests have helped folks rediscover education on their own terms. But come January the tests will undergo some of the biggest changes in seven decades, and could become more challenging to pass.
Adelia Myrick is the adult basic education coordinator at Kodiak College and said this is the last semester people can complete a GED under the current series.
“All the information we have is that we have is that the GED test starting in 2014 is going to be completely different and more challenging, longer and more expensive.”

Distance Learning Offers Freedom, Convenience for College Students

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Brianna Gibbs/KMXT
Classes started up at the Kodiak College yesterday, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the campus was flooded with students. In recent years the college has provided many more opportunities for distance learning, meaning students can complete courses online whenever it is convenient for them.
Jared Griffin is an assistant professor of English at KOC and spoke on KMXT’s Talk of the Rock last week, along with fellow professors, about the college’s shift toward distance learning.
“Over the past three or four years we have exponentially grown our distance offerings through video conferencing, through the internet and I think virtually every department has some element, some classes hat are offered that way.”

Year Two For Alutiiq Studies Offers New Course, More Online

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Brianna Gibbs/KMXT
Yesterday KMXT told you about a new program starting at Kodiak College, but an older one will be returning this fall as well. The Alutiiq Studies Program is entering its second year with the college and has three classes still open to interested students. April Laktonen Counceller is an assistant professor of Alutiiq studies and said two will be completely distance learning and one will be classroom delivered.
“The Alutiiq 101, which we taught once before, this semester we’re offering it for the first time 100 percent distance. So all of the students are going to be calling in or signing in on the Blackboard website and they’ll complete two independent class modules per week. So there’s not a regular class meeting time, the students can complete their class whenever they want – in the middle of the night, 6 a.m., everyone has different schedules and I think that’s going to be a really good way for students who want to learn the language but either don’t live here physically in Kodiak or have jobs or other schedule issues that might not allow them to participate in a regular class.”
Counceller said learning a language is hard, especially if you’re not doing it in person. She said the class will really try to ease the learning process by utilizing available technologies like VoiceThread.
“Which is an online video and audio discussion board. So you can post a question and the students can respond with little video segments of their own feelings about that reading or personal introductions with the language. So we’re excited about the growing technologies that are supporting language acquisition online.”

College Offers New Program For Medical Coding

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Brianna Gibbs/KMXT
Classes at the Kodiak College start next week and a new program will cater to those wanting to break into the medical industry. Suzanne Buie is the department chair for health sciences at the college and said the medical coding program is filling up fast, but still has spots available for interested students.
“It’s a 17-credit program. We’re offering it through three semesters, so the average student takes 6 credits a semester, which has a high success rate for Kodiak College, because as you know most of our students already work full time, they may be in the military.”
The program is entirely distance delivered, and came through a grant program from NANSLO, (nans-low) the North American Network of Science Labs. Buie said Kodiak is one of only eight colleges in the country that will be allowed to use NANSLO technology for the program.

Inaugural Alutiiq Studies Program ‘Atagua’

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Brianna Gibbs/KMXT
Classes wrapped up at Kodiak College last week, marking the end of the first year of the Alutiiq Studies Program.
The program joined the college curriculum last fall and offered classroom and distance learning courses in Alutiiq Language and culture. John Beale is the data collection and distance learning technician for the program, and said its first year faired well with student interest and community support.
“It’s looking good. I mean, we’re at baby steps at the moment. Our grant is teaching, not only an in class, but a hybrid distance class, which is something not many colleges are doing. It enables us to teach a class and distance students simultaneously,” he said.
“We’ve had students as far away as Finland, Thailand, we’ve got several students down in Oregon, California, and then in the villages in Alaska that we’re managing to reach all online at the same time and include them in classroom activities via a video conference link.”

(“Atagua” = “It’s good.”)