December 2020 Update

README.md

@@ -1,14 +1,26 @@
 # Make School Institutional Plan
-A public repository communicating and tracking changes to Make School's institutional plan
 
 *Staff project owner: Ashu Desai (Founder)*
 
-### October 2020 update:
-
-The October update is v0.5 of our Institutional Plan github. Our intention with this github is to create transparent documentation of Make School's "feature set" and future plans. We will use this repository in conjunction with our release cycle process (see "Institutional Planning Process") to provide regular updates to students and prospective students about how Make School is iterating and adapting.
+The December 2020 update is v1.0 of our Institutional Plan github. Our intention with this github is to create transparent documentation of Make School's "feature set" and future plans. We will use this repository in conjunction with our release cycle process (see "Institutional Planning Process") to provide regular updates to students and prospective students about how Make School is iterating and adapting.
 
 We hope this creates more transparency and better information communication primarily with the student body and secondarily with the broader community. We also hope the github repository serves as a forum - alongside town-halls and feedback surveys - for students to contribute to the vision and development of our institution, an open-source, collaboratively built university.
 
 It is an experiment for a college to provide documentation and allow for discussion in the format of a software project. We will learn along the way what works, what doesn't, and how to communicate more clearly and more efficiently. We hope by doing this we can hold ourselves to a higher standard of transparency, communication, and collaboration with our students, staff, prospective students, and broader community.
 
-Our next update - which will provide more in-depth information across areas of the college - will be released the first week of December. Stay tuned!
+Our next update will be released in March. Stay tuned!
+
+## December 2020 General Update:
+
+Dear Make School community - 2020 is almost over. As we look hopefully to a new year, we are excited to share important updates to Make School to close out the year.
+
+1. Make School has applied for independent accreditation to be a non-profit college and brought on a new board of directors to oversee the next chapter in Make School's journey. We are humbled that they have chosen to join Make School - you can read the full announcement [on our Medium.](https://medium.com/make-school/make-school-has-applied-for-independent-accreditation-7ab1e243305) 
+
+2. Make School has grown our talented team of instructors and staff over the last few months. We welcome Joseph, Joy, Gina, and Jay to the instructor team, Justine to lead Science and Letters, Valdine as our new JEDI coordinator, Kaleena as our Registrar, Matt to lead finance, Emily to lead admissions, Isabelle to lead Financial Aid, Casey to lead Outcomes, and Alyssa in operations. A full directory [can be found here.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kglc066N2kefkJ5lOIHMmP0_TlWjwil7b1JhR4u45vM/edit)
+
+3. Make School will be offering the option to study fully online even after we re-open campus. More details can be found in the [academics](https://github.com/MakeSchool/institutional-plan/tree/master/academics) section of this repository. We look forward to serving learners who can't commit to 2+ years in San Francisco. Note: we are awaiting final accreditor approval for this plan which we expect to receive in March. 
+
+4. Make School will continue with online-only course delivery until at least the end of May. We all miss in-person connections, but we will only return to campus when it is safe to do so. We are exploring whether a combination of low case rates in San Francisco, rapid tests, ventilation, air filters, mask wearing, and social distancing could allow us to begin limited and optional on campus activities in the spring. No promises, but we will continue to study our options over the coming months. 
+
+Best,
+The Make School Team

_coverpage.md

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 <!-- ![logo](_media/logo-grey.svg) -->
 
-# Make School Institutional Plan <small>0.5</small>
+# Make School Institutional Plan <small>v1.0</small>
 
 > Documentation about Make School's offerings and future plans.
 

_sidebar.md

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 * [Home](/#make-school-institutional-plan)
 * Academics
   * [General](academics/general.md)
-  * [Computer Science](academics/computer-science.md)
+  * [Academic Updates](academics/academic-updates.md)
   * [Sciences and Letters](academics/sciences-and-letters.md)
   * [Outcomes](academics/outcomes.md)
 * Student Affairs
@@ -16,6 +16,9 @@
   * [Tuition and Financial Aid](operations/tuition-and-financial-aid.md)
   * [Housing](operations/housing.md)
   * [Campus](operations/campus.md)
+* Admissions
+  * [Admissions](admissions/admissions.md)
+  * [Marketing](admissions/marketing.md)
 * Organizational Development
   * [General Updates](org-development/general.md)
   * [Mission and Objectives](org-development/mission-and-objectives.md)

academics/academic-updates.md

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+# December 2020 Updates
+
+## Curriculum
+- We are conducting Track reviews at the end of Term 2 to evaluate any course changes needed to better meet student learning needs and current industry standards. 
+- We have updated Term 3 offerings to include more technical and S&L courses.  See the current list of courses on make.sc/course-schedule or in your Term 3 registration. 
+- We are moving more of the outcomes related instruction into technical and SPD courses to provide students more support and accountability in completing this work that is vital to securing an internship and job post graduation.  Curriculum like technical interview practice and building your portfolio will now be emphasized more within courses as well as in specific outcomes programming. 
+
+
+## Delivery
+For Fall 2021, we will be offering the BACS program in two different formats: On Campus in San Francisco, and Online. We are in the process of finalizing the details of online delivery, but are sharing what we know so far in the name of transparency. 
+
+Industry norms have shifted significantly, and remote work is likely to figure prominently in post pandemic tech life. Meetings will often include both in-person and remote employees in the same meeting given that many tech employees have shifted to permanent remote work. Showing up to the office from 9-5, 5 days a week is less likely to be the daily norm, with the office used as a collaborative workspace and for social events. Make School program changes for next year are inspired by this industry shift. 
+
+We welcome your feedback and questions and we finalize our online offering. 
+
+**Please fill out this survey [make.sc/bacs2021-survey](https://make.sc/bacs2021-survey) and post questions in the #bacs2021 slack channel.**
+
+### Details: 
+
+Students will attend the program either On Campus in San Francisco or Online.  
+- The On Campus experience is available for students who are living in the SF area and can be on campus at 555 Post St. from 9:30 - 5:30 PST M-F.  
+- The Online experience is offered for students who can live anywhere and will not access the SF campus at any time. These students will be online from 9:30 - 5:30 PST M-F.  
+
+The primary difference between these two options will come in orientation, courses, and career support. 
+
+### Orientation
+If it is safe to do so, Fall 2021 orientation will be held at the end of August in San Francisco. All On Campus and Onsite students will be invited to participate in a 3 day orientation. Attendance will be highly recommended but not mandatory for Online students. 
+
+### Courses
+All courses will continue to use project based, active learning to provide the highest quality learning experience and mirror industry practices. Courses consist of four major components; lectures, guided work time, group work and frequent feedback on your work and learning process. 
+
+**Lectures:** The purpose of the lecture is to give students the opportunity to learn from our faculty’s industry expertise. The lecture portion of a course provides the motivation and context for the topic to be explored.
+- Make School is investing in high quality, pre-recorded video to augment lectures, with the goal of further shifting lecture time to an asynchronous model where students can listen to the lecture on their own time and the time with the course instructor can be dedicated to guided active learning, discussion, and live Q&A. 
+- All lectures will be delivered online whether you are an On Campus or Online student. 
+- Some lectures may be recorded from a classroom in SF, so On Campus may have the option of attending certain classes in person that are simultaneously being attended by Online students streaming the same class. This will be confirmed at the time course registration opens for next fall. 
+- The SF campus will be reconfigured to support students tuning into online lectures in groups.
+- On Campus students will also have the flexibility of attending lectures from their dorms or housing if they prefer.  
+
+**Guided Work Time (Lab):** Provides the opportunity to learn while building projects and working on real world applications of concepts. Students work on class projects with support from a mix of senior student TAs, professional TAs that have worked in the industry, and class instructors. 
+On Campus students will have access to in-person and online guided support.
+- Online students will have guided support through scheduled zoom room time with TAs, 1:1 office hours and always open online forums like Discourse.
+- Unlike lectures, labs will often (but not always) be grouped by modality. On Campus students will have in-person lab sections with other On Campus students, Online students will have online sections with other Online students. Sometimes, small class sizes may require us to blend lab sections with On Campus and Online students. 
+
+**Group Work:**  Group project work allows students to learn from each other and learn how to operate on a team. 
+- Unlike lectures, group work will often (but not always) be grouped by modality. On Campus students will be placed on teams with other On Campus students, Online students will be placed on teams with other Online students. Sometimes, small class sizes may require us to create hybrid teams with Online and On Campus students.
+
+**Feedback:** Feedback is vital to the learning process and a major part of the Make School pedagogy.   
+- Feedback on coursework is provided asynchronously through rubrics, automated testing of programs, written comments from instructors and TAs.
+- Students will often present work through formal presentations or technical interview formats and receive live feedback.  These may be online or in-person.
+- Student portfolio projects are reviewed asynchronously and then in 1:1 conversations with instructors and other experts. 
+
+### Career Support
+Career support at Make School is provided through dedicated outcomes staff, outcomes events, and industry guest speakers.
+- Meetings with career support staff will occur on campus for On Campus students and online for Online students. 
+- All industry guest speakers will be available to stream online and Online students will have the same opportunity to ask questions as On Campus students. Some may come in to the SF campus to speak, others may be fully online
+- Career fairs will be held in two different formats:
+  - Online career fairs will use Spatial Chat and our proprietary online demo infrastructure and will target employers hiring remotely. 
+  - On Campus career fairs will happen in SF and target employers hiring locally.
+  Online students are invited to fly to SF to participate in the On Campus career fairs if they prefer. Dates are announced at the start of the school year.
+- Field trips to partner companies will only be offered to On Campus students
+
+### YOUR INPUT WANTED
+We are just beginning to make decisions about the Fall 2021 BACS format and would love your input.  Throughout Term 3 and Term 4 we will be innovating on our program to meet the demands of this new format.  
+
+**Please fill out this survey [make.sc/bacs2021-survey](https://make.sc/bacs2021-survey) and post questions in the #bacs2021 slack channel.**
+
+## Faculty & Staff
+We have several new hires on the team: 
+- Joseph Catanzarite: Data Science Instructor - will teach DS courses starting in Term 3  
+- Jay Lowe: Full Stack Web Instructor - will teach FEW & BEW courses starting in Term 3  
+- Kaleena Findley: Registrar - support all registration and academic advising  
+- Casey Spurgeon: Director of Career Outcomes and Talent Partnerships - support getting internships and jobs  
+
+See #important-announcements for full details on these new team members and be sure to reach out to give them a warm welcome. 
+
+# October 2020 Updates
+
+## Curriculum
+
+Course schedule changes:
+
+The schedule for when classes are offered each term is determined based on the hours the class needs to be in session (5.5 hours per week for a 3 unit course in 7 weeks) and optimizing for student, instructor, community schedules. The list of courses offered each term is determined on a year to year basis and published here: [make.sc/course-schedule](https://make.sc/course-schedule). Each term, we evaluate if any additional courses are needed for our students and (when possible) offer these courses as well. Occasionally a course that doesn't have enough enrollment will be moved to a later term.
+
+Course changes:
+
+For fall 2020, we updated our foundational curriculum to include CS 1.0 Introduction to Programming and WEB 1.0 Web Fundamentals to provide a better onboarding into our program for students with no previous programming experience. High pass rates in Term 1 indicate this was a successful change that will increase student success.
+
+## Delivery
+We are currently committed to delivering all courses online through the end of Term 4 (May 13, 2021) to support 
+student safety during the ongoing pandemic. We are exploring having some online modalities available after the pandemic and will provide updates on a regular basis.
+
+## Faculty
+One of our Data Science Instructors is leaving Make School at the end of Term 1 so we currently have two open roles in our technical faculty.
+- Data Science Instructor
+- Full Stack Web Instructor  
+
+We have increased the number of TAs available in classes to support while we search for new instructors.  We anticipate filling these roles soon.