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California Community Colleges overhauls nation’s largest virtual catalog of online courses

Colleges mark progress on system-wide improvement to distance education.

online-california-courses [1]Chancellor Brice W. Harris today announced that the California Community Colleges has upgraded its web-based catalog of online college courses, California Virtual Campus, to make it easier for students to find transferrable courses, marking what Harris says is a major milestone in the system’s bid to improve student access and completion rates through enhanced distance education services.

Thanks to the upgrade, classes required to earn an associate degree under a streamlined guaranteed transfer program with California State University known as Associate Degree for Transfer, will be prioritized on the website’s course search results page.

“The exciting upgrades we’ve made to the catalog will allow students to clearly and quickly see what classes fulfill transfer program requirements and serve to improve pathways to CSU, a significant step in our drive to foster student success through improved online education,” Harris said.

The California Community Colleges [2] is the largest system of higher education in the nation composed of 72 districts and 112 colleges serving 2.1 million students per year; community colleges supply workforce training, basic skills education and prepare students for transfer to four-year institutions.

The California Virtual Campus provides information on more than 2,500 courses that satisfy Associate Degree for Transfer requirements and 1,400 other academic degree programs offered entirely online to students. In total, the catalog offers information on more than 19,000 online courses in California offered by the community colleges, CSU, UC and private colleges, and is available to students at all of these institutions.

(Next page: How the upgrade will directly benefit students; the improved virtual catalog)

The upgrade will supposedly make it easier for students to use the tool on their phones and provides online support if they have questions about navigating the college system. It also allows students to search courses by geographic location and narrow course search results by subject or college. The website can be found at www.cvc.edu [3].

“This improved virtual catalog is part of a broader offering of services developed as part of the Online Education Initiative,” Harris continued. “The investment made by the governor and Legislature in this initiative places a heavy emphasis on support services tailored to the diverse needs of our 2.1 million students.”

Other online education improvements being developed by the initiative to increase student success and retention rates include:

The improvements are possible through a five-year, $57 million investment in California community college online education made by the governor and Legislature in 2013. The initiative is a partnership between Foothill-De Anza Community College District and Butte-Glenn Community College District.

The improvement are critical, noted Harris, as California community colleges “lead the way in online education.” For example (data provided by California Community Colleges):

Material from a press release was used in this report.