Montgomery College in Maryland serves 50,000 students on three campuses and has offered courses online for more than a decade. To reach their online students, the college created the Virtual Campus to bring comprehensive support services under one digital roof.
Community colleges, HBCUs, and other broad access institutions face pressing challenges related to enrollments, equity, and preparing students for citizenship and meaningful careers. Faculty are key to solving all these challenges.
When college students take courses online, technology is only one of many challenges that they must navigate to successfully engage in and complete a course.
Some skills can be learned and coached, but not taught. Instruction about skills like leadership, creativity, and self-directed learning reduces them to a formulaic recipe that the learner follows, without mastering the essential capabilities of recognizing the unique characteristics of a particular situation and of improvising an approach suited to the occasion.
In spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic compelled colleges and universities to quickly move their courses online—despite evidence that students are less likely to complete and get good grades in online courses as compared to in-person learning.
Welcome to the Collaborative’s new blog! This blog is one way we will foster conversation around the many complex issues around self-directed learning.