California Community Colleges Unveils Course Exchange System
California Community Colleges (CCC) will soon allow students to cross-register for online courses through a new course exchange system. The largest system of higher education in the country will debut the Online Education Initiative (OEI) this fall at eight of its 113 community colleges.
A collaborative program, OEI enables CCC students to sign up for an online course at another CCC without having to enroll in the other college or reapply for financial aid. The CCC system will be able to accomplish this through custom software — developed by the CCC Technology Center — and a set of business processes that let colleges share student data for matriculation purposes. Furthermore, the exchange courses will be taught in Canvas, which incorporates assessments, online tutoring services and other resources, according to the OEI website.
To test out the course exchange, CCC will launch the OEI Full Launch Pilot program at the following colleges:
These colleges will pilot 20 C-ID courses, with five seats per section dedicated to the exchange to enable a small-scale testing of the system. The program will begin with the 2017 winter quarter, as well as the subsequent spring semester when an additional 16 college will join. OEI has plans to expand college participation for exchange courses in Spring 2018.
Further information is available on the Online Education Initiative site.
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Sri Ravipati is Web producer for THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at [email protected].