Progress Toward Strategic Goals

With fresh NC State and DELTA strategic plans at the top of mind, DELTA hit the ground running toward our goals in 2021-2022. A new strategic plan plus a reimagined mission and set of values guided our way in designing, creating and supporting extraordinary learning experiences. 

The DELTA strategic plan encompasses our focus on quality in everything we do. We’re leading the digital transformation of teaching and learning, partnering with others to share best practices and enhance learning opportunities, aligning DELTA services and customer needs, and cultivating a collaborative, inclusive and agile organization.

Explore the highlights and read stories from the year to see what we’ve been up to and how we got here.

• Impacted more than 6,000 students through DELTA Grants and DELTA Express Grants production support in 55 courses.
• Built sustainable and reusable content across multiple DELTA Grant projects such as the Virtual Viewer, Collection Explorer and Chatbot. 
• Facilitated 112 teaching with technology workshops with 669 attendees, eight custom departmental workshops, and eight self-paced offerings with 250 registrations.
• Supported seven DELTA Faculty Fellows in leading 28 workshops and writing nine DELTA News articles. 
• Resolved 6,708 help desk calls. And DELTA staff supported 145 individual faculty consultations to provide personalized assistance. 
• Enhanced instructional support resources such as the DELTA Knowledge Base, Teaching Resources website and the DELTA LearnTech YouTube channel.
• Transitioned Mediasite to Panopto prior to the fall 2021 semester ensuring 239 classrooms were capable of Panopto recording. The team supported 3,587,149 total views of Mediasite and Panopto content. 
• Continued to maintain robust and reliable academic technology tools at NC State. See the WolfWare Roadmap for more details about our toolkit. 
• Formed a dedicated team to support a large-scale, significant upgrade to Moodle, the campus learning management system. The redesigned interface and streamlined site navigation create a new, improved user experience. Multiple colleagues across DELTA supported the Moodle 4 upgrade efforts during the year through training, development, testing and more. 
• Supported essential tools for academic and business continuity such as Moodle and Zoom. Moodle hosted 11,852 course sections with around 335,000 enrollments. On any given weekday, Zoom supported an average of 3,865 meetings a day with more than 25,000 participants per day..
• Collaborated with NC State University Libraries to help faculty adopt, adapt and create free or low-cost alternatives to expensive textbooks. Through a significant investment toward Alt-Textbook Projects, NC State is saving 456 students more than $77,000 in textbook expenses. 
• Assisted the online Leadership in the Public Sector bachelor’s degree-completion program in earning the first Quality Matters (QM) program certification at NC State  — contributing to the program’s No. 10 ranking in the U.S. News and World Report list of best online undergraduate programs.

• Produced the second (Global Change) and third (Future of Food) iterations of Wicked Problems, Wolfpack Solutions — the multidisciplinary course impacting first-year and transfer student success at NC State. Additionally, DELTA worked with NC State University Libraries to create and maintain an open version of the course materials, and collaborated with Undergraduate Admissions to create the newly branded website. 
• Led and participated in committees, task forces and interest groups at NC State and beyond in a range of areas from interests groups in project management, instructional design, extended reality, and women in technology to convening campus task forces about student device initiatives and post-COVID lessons learned.
• Facilitated the annual DELTA-Con unconference for higher education professionals across the state with 55 participants. 
• Supported NC State Continuing and Lifelong Education (formerly the McKimmon Center for Extension and Continuing Education) with marketing and shared business services. 
• Produced more than 50 stories focused on NC State Online’s programs, students, alumni, faculty and staff. 
• Expanded marketing efforts to encompass paid social and digital campaigns, print advertising in the NC State Alumni Magazine, and other avenues. Collaborated with campus communicators to strategically plan marketing campaigns and align resources. 
• Oversaw SARA compliance for the university, coordinated the annual renewal of SARA membership with the provost, and fulfilled the university’s data reporting obligations to NC-SARA. 
• Redesigned and expanded the DELTA LearnTech YouTube channel to increase reach and share best practices within the campus community.

• Changed DELTA’s name from Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications to Digital Education and Learning Technology Applications to better reflect the reality of our services. 
• Reorganized DELTA departments to better support our audiences. The Marketing and Communications department formed by adding the senior communications lead and two multimedia specialists to the former Marketing and Partnership Development department. The Academic Technology Innovation department split into Digital Learning and Academic Technology to focus one group on the support and production of digital learning and the other on the support of facilities and enterprise tools to scaffold that learning. 
• Reviewed DELTA staff vacancies to align all new hires with priority needs. 
• Piloted tablet usage at the DELTA Test Centers as part of our review to streamline testing services and reduce paper-based testing. 
• Completed several budget restructuring changes to reflect internal organizational changes and better track expenditures. 
• Implemented a new process for renewing academic technology licenses, including a review of tool overlaps and identification of service gaps. 
• Overhauled the WolfWare Feature Request process to improve the level of responsiveness we provide to our community. DELTA received 28 new feature requests this year, completed approximately 30 feature requests, and has 32 requests approved and planned for implementation.

• Created an internal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging and Allyship (DEIBA) group. Additionally, three DELTA staff representatives participate in the NC State DEI Collaborative.
• Provided staff an opportunity to engage in a dedicated eight-hour Introduction to Systemic Racism workshop.
• Supported staff participation in DEI-focused initiatives and groups across campus such as the GLBT Advocate program, the Council on the Status of Women, The Credential, the Inclusive Excellence Certificate program and others. 
• Conducted a DELTA staff survey to gain feedback on leadership communications, preferred tools and methods of communication, and perceptions of the recent reorganization of DELTA. 
• Performed a market equity salary analysis to visualize staff’s current market rate and equity comparisons across the organization. 
• Partnered with the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity to guide our recruitment and hiring processes. 
• Refined processes and worked toward meeting our top three agile goals — embracing an agile mindset, becoming better at prioritization, and becoming more responsibility driven. 
• Celebrated DELTA staff who earned years of service honors. In addition, we recognized the Pride of the Wolfpack award recipients for their dedication to the university. 
• Embraced the university’s flexible and remote work guidelines — allowing flexibility for our staff while ensuring business continuity. 
• Planned approximately 80 staff events to promote inclusion and belonging across the organization including Zoom coffee chats, trivia, welcome breakfasts, disc golf outings, and a staff cookout.