Complete College America Launches National Course-Sharing Initiative to Increase Student Success

Nonprofit network launches partnership with Acadeum for colleges to share open courses to meet learners' needs

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Sep 30, 2021, 10:00 ET

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Complete College America (CCA), a national non-profit organization on a mission to raise postsecondary attainment in the United States and build a more effective and equitable system of higher education, today announced the launch of a national course-sharing initiative across a network of states and institutions devoted to solving the completion gap. Built in partnership with Acadeum, the creator of an online course-sharing platform used by more than 380 colleges and universities , the groundbreaking CCA Online Course Sharing Consortium will help institutions equitably implement CCA's evidence-based strategies to increase persistence and student success. The consortium will bolster CCA's recently-announced work to focus on supporting Predominantly Black Community Colleges (PBCC) and Historically Black Community Colleges (HBCC) to advance student success transformation strategies through increasing course access.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the unique circumstances and challenges facing students across the country. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to help learners succeed," said Dr. Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of CCA. "This is about helping colleges implement a number of proven practices that depend on having courses available at the time and manner that a student needs them. By leveraging existing, high-quality courses, we can enact overdue changes that take a student-centered approach to completion."

By sharing courses with each other, institutions can advance CCA's proven strategies to promote completion, including:

15 to Finish/Stay on Track: Helping learners access courses they need to persist, even when those courses are not offered at home institutions at the time or sequence needed.
Smart Scheduling: Providing flexibility for students to enroll in courses based on their availability and in their preferred modality.
Math Pathways: Expanding curricula to offer math courses that are most appropriate to a student's program of study, including corequisite remediation.

The new initiative builds on the recently announced grant from Lumina Foundation focused on supporting adult learners as well as Black, Indigenous and Latinx students at PBCCs and HBCCs. Course sharing will help ensure students have access to well-sequenced pathways that can embed stackable certificates to help adult learners increase opportunities for economic mobility. Courses offered through the consortium will count fully toward GPA, financial aid, and graduation requirements at students' home institutions, ensuring that they don't waste credits or time on their path to a credential of value.

The pandemic has negatively impacted Black, Indigenous and Latinx learners, in particular, who have faced significant job losses. College enrollment continues to decline among these groups, with studies pointing to the demands of work and family care as a critical reason why students have discontinued their education.

"The relationship a learner has with their institution is critical to their success, particularly at minority-serving institutions. However, in some instances, learner options are limited by schedule anomalies and limited course availability," said Roslyn Clark Artis, president of Benedict College. "This new initiative is about harnessing the collective power of online learning in equitable ways, to improve persistence and completion."

Members of CCA's reform network will have the opportunity to participate in the CCA consortium as home institutions, which gives their students access to other members' online courses. They can also join as teaching institutions, allowing other consortium members to enroll students in their online courses with excess capacity, helping peer institutions to support student progress while also generating revenue. Courses offered through the consortium will count fully toward GPA, financial aid, and graduation requirements at students' home institutions, ensuring that they don't waste credits or time on their path to a credential of value.

In recent years, online course sharing has steadily grown in popularity with institutions, systems, and higher education associations, including the League for Innovation in the Community College and the Council of Independent Colleges. Acadeum's course-sharing platform has helped more than 26,000 students access courses to keep them on-track for timely completion.

"This past year has illuminated the access and achievement gaps in postsecondary education like never before," said Josh Pierce, CEO of Acadeum. "This partnership is about extending equitable opportunity to all learners to ensure that access to high-quality online courses is never a barrier to student success."

Institutions interested in learning more about the CCA consortium are invited to join an information session on October 14 at 2 PM ET. Register here.

About Complete College America
Since its founding in 2009, Complete College America (CCA) exists to make student success the number-one priority of colleges and universities by collaborating with state leaders to shape policy, re-frame critical issues with data-driven reports, and connecting a national network of higher-ed leaders determined to change the status quo. CCA seeks to support: Black, Latinx, adult, rural, first generation and students from low-income backgrounds, working with courageous and forward-thinking higher education leaders on campuses which serve the most marginalized and under-resourced students. CCA utilizes outcomes data to identify best practices and advance the policies, perspectives, and practices that meet the needs of students who have been systematically excluded for far too long.

About Acadeum
Acadeum helps colleges and universities create academic partnerships with like-minded institutions to support student progress and equitable access. Today, more than 380 higher-ed institutions use Acadeum's course-sharing network to place students in online courses they need to stay on track for timely graduation. Institutions gain new revenue from courses they offer through the network, by sharing tuition dollars from courses taken by their students, and by keeping at-risk students enrolled. To learn more about Acadeum, please visit acadeum.com.

SOURCE Acadeum