Participating in the College Consortium – Part 2

In this post, I am continuing my series of topics on the College Consortium.  Click here to read Part 1 of Participating in the College Consortium.  Or, click on the Academic Technology category on the right (or on the bottom, for mobile) to see all posts about the College Consortium, including my conference presentation at NISOD.

College Consortium

The College Consortium is an online platform that facilitates information sharing between colleges so students from one college can take online courses at another college.  Colleges can participate in the Consortium as “Enrolling Institutions” and/or as “Teaching Institutions.”  As Enrolling Institutions, colleges allow their students to enroll in online Consortium courses – see Part 1.  As Teaching Institutions, colleges enroll students from other schools into their online courses.

College Consortium provides a platform for Teaching Institutions to expand the enrollments (and revenue) of their online courses.  Students who enroll in your school’s online courses through the Consortium register as a “non-degree-seeking student” or as a “student at large” (schools have different names for this enrollment type).  The information below provides some guidance for participating in the Consortium as a Teaching Institution.

Participating as a Teaching Institution

Teaching Institutions accept students from other colleges into their online courses.  These courses are taught by your school, but they are articulated and transcribed as the home school’s courses.  Nevertheless, your school charges a course fee and counts these students in the credit hour calculation.  Here are several questions to consider if your school participates as a Teaching Institution:

• Which courses will you make available?  And who will decide?  Teaching Institutions need to upload to the Consortium website a list of online courses that will be available through the Consortium.  In order to do this, the school will need to establish a process for selecting courses to offer.  Will the school offer all online courses or only some of them?  Will it offer only General Education courses or major-specific courses as well?  Will your school offer all types of online courses:  undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education?  Will your school offer courses that are likely to fill with your own students, or will it offer low-enrollment courses that could possibly be cancelled?  Will academic administrators (deans or department chairs), faculty, online program managers, or other enrollment/advising administrators decide which courses will be offered?
• Course-Level and Program-Level Pre-Requisites.  Many programs limit enrollment only to students with declared majors.  Will your online course require enrollment in an equivalent program at the student’s home institution?  For example, if your course is available only to MBA students, will you require that all Consortium students be enrolled in an MBA course as well, or can any student enroll in that course?  If the course has a course-level pre-requisite, how will your school verify that the student meets the pre-requisite?  Will your school need to articulate pre-requisite courses from partner schools?
• How much will you charge?  Schools offer online courses through the Consortium at discount prices.  What will be your one-credit and three-credit course fee for undergraduate and graduate courses?  Will your school try to make a profit or only cover teaching expenses?  Does your school want to compete on price or other factors (such as quality and availability)?
• Who will approve enrollment requests?  Can the Registrar’s Office approve enrollment requests, or should the approval come from the faculty, the department chair, dean, Provost, or Admissions Office?
• What is the enrollment process?  Do Consortium students have to complete your school’s admissions application, and do they need to meet your school’s minimum admission requirements?  Besides this issue, your school’s Admissions, IT, and Registrar will need to establish a process for creating a student account (on the Student Management System such as Banner and on the Learning Management System such as Canvas or Blackboard).  They will also need to create a process for enrolling the student into the online course (whether automated or manual), for creating a differentiated financial statement, and for submitting final grades.  In order to do this, several cross-functional teams will need to collaborate on a process, and your SIS and LMS will need to allow for these alternative student enrollment options.
• Who will collect and store course syllabi and assessment reports?  The course upload form requires a link to an online syllabus, and the requirement to provide assessment documents may be coming soon (it is currently optional but helpful for demonstrating quality).  The syllabi could be generic course syllabi or fully-developed syllabi for a particular section, but they need to be available online without a password.  If your school does not have an online repository of syllabi and assessment documents, someone will need to collect all of these documents and create an online storage site – a portion of the school’s website, a Dropbox folder, or an open Google Drive folder could work.  If courses change, someone will need to update the collection of syllabi.  Each year, this person will also need to link new assessment reports.
• Marketing and Recruiting.  With currently around 100 schools from the Consortium of Independent Colleges participating in the College Consortium (plus other schools from other consortia), it will be difficult for your school’s courses to get noticed.  Someone at your school may need to reach out to other schools to develop partnerships.  Who will do this – professors, deans, the Provost, Admissions, Marketing?

These are a few topics to consider when joining College Consortium as a Teaching Institution.  In a future post, I will provide additional strategies for ensuring the quality of Consortium courses and partner schools, and for maximizing your use of the Consortium platform.

Feel free to post a comment or question below, or to contact me privately via the “Contact” link above for more information.  I am also available for advanced strategic development consultations.

Lirim Neziroski, Ph.D., MBA is an academic leader and an assessment and technology expert at a liberal arts university in the Chicago area. Contact Lirim directly for additional resources and speaking, consulting, and writing opportunities.