A Statewide e-Learning University-Community College Partnership for Increased Access to Post-Secondary Education and Workforce Development
Session Abstract
This presentation discusses challenges of increasing access to post-secondary education and workforce development and how a collaborative partnership between Northwestern State University and the Louisiana Technical Community College System is leveraging e-learning to meet these challenges by creating engaging online experiences through “master” community college courses that are distributed statewide.
Target Audience
This session is designed for adult educators, instructional designers, e-learning developers, online teachers, workforce developers, and post-secondary faculty from across the globe who are engaged in or about to grapple with the task of creating or reinventing e-Learning experiences to create a scalable model of consistently engaging and effective online courses.
Session Description
This session discusses the partnership between Northwestern State University and the Louisiana Community and Technical College System and presents strategies for statewide reinvention of online instruction through creation of “master” courses for community college programs. These “master” courses ensure statewide, high-quality coursework distributed to, and available for use by all Louisiana community college campuses. The goal was to create educational experiences as compelling as the consumer experience; meet a variety of traditional and non-traditional student and career needs; increase student motivation, engagement, and retention and maintain a model providing a scalable consistency of quality across a statewide community college system. The session addresses:
• Can we create scalable student experiences meeting a variety of traditional and non-traditional student and career needs?
• How do we leverage the capabilities of technology to create better outcomes with experiences not practical in a traditional classroom?
• How do we foster collaboration and individualized learning in the online environment on a large scale?
• Can we ensure consistently effective online instructional practices and teacher roles across the organization?
• What are elements every high-quality online course should contain to promote self-awareness, reflection, and student choice, that are also constructive, collaborative, and research and practice-based?