Information about TVDEC

TVDEC Goals

TVDEC members view distance education as a way to:

• enhance learning opportunities
• invigorate current curricular programs
• increase educational opportunities for adult members of the community
• further involve Nebraska citizens in their schools.
  

The Tri-Valley Virtual Campus provides full-motion, two-way, interactive audio/video connectivity to 35 districts within an eighteen-county region in Central Nebraska. Project partners include Educational Service Units 7, 10, and 11, theUniversity of Nebraska at Kearney, and the Central Community College system. The region is predominately an agriculture-based rural area with three medium-sized urban areas. The consortium's total K-12enrollment is approximately 16,500. The interactive video network system provides a way for the school districts to combine resources and pool students who are interested in classes that normally could not be offered.

In 1994 and 1997, schools from central Nebraska met to do a need sassessment to guide and inform for the development of an "area virtual campus". Through this assessment, interested schools from ESU7, 10, and 11 applied for financial support through the Nebraska Lottery Grant (Excellence in Education) to provide funding for equipment and engineering of the system.

The grant was approved and in the fall of 1999, 21 schools in ESU10 and 11 began transmitting two way interactive video classes over the system. In the fall of 2000, 11 more systems in ESU 7 and ESU 10 created another system to provide similar services. Seven additional systems have or will be added between 2001 and 2004.

A second Education In Excellence grant was awarded to theTri-Valley Consortium in 1999. Two additional schools, SEM and Amherst, were added to the Tri-Valley south side. SEM began receiving classes in the fall of 2001 and Amherst in the fall of 2002.

Through legislative funding in 2002, four schools applied for creating distance education centers and membership in the Tri-Valley.  Litchfield Schools began receiving classes in the fall of 2002,  St.Paul in 2003, and Lexington in 2004.

Members in the Tri-Valley Distance Education Consortium are provided the following benefits:

• Service and maintenance of distance education equipment.
• Grants are written to seek funds to support distance education training.
• Staff inservice on using distance education technology and instructional strategies to support distance education instruction.
• Coordination and scheduling of distance education offerings.
• Additional funds from grants to support distance education.
  

• When an instructor is hired for purposes of providing a distance education class, receiving sites will share in the contractual cost for that class period. An interlocal agreement will be created and signed by contracted parties.
• When districts both send and receive a class between each other, they could agree to no compensation for this exchange of classes.
  
• When a distance education class is offered, the sending site may charge a standard rate of $150 per student per semester

This Page was last update: Tuesday, October 18, 2005 at 9:35:51 AM
This page was originally posted: 8/10/05; 10:45:39 AM.
Copyright 2008 Tri-Valley Distance Education Consortium - TVDEC

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