Building their new model on an open approach, a university found exceptional student outcomes.
[1]Since their launch in fall of 2014, Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU) has had approximately 4,000 unique learners access their course website, and enrolled in 4,800 courses. 104 have developed portfolios for assessment, and college credit has been issued for 711 courses—translating to what the University says is over $1M in tuition savings at Kaplan University.
And though the current enrollment numbers may not be record-shattering, considering OC@KU relies only on word-of-mouth marketing, and uses an all-open, “Amazon”-like platform, the outcomes are certainly food for thought.
For today’s learners, “the expectation for an educational experience doesn’t differ much from their Amazon experience!” exclaimed Susan Huggins, co-author of a report [2] on OC@KU’s model, and director at the University. “OC@KU represents the power of technology and open resources to increase the personalization and quality of both informal and formal higher education while reducing cost.”
In fact, OC@KU has found so much success in their open approach model, Huggins and Dr. Peter Smith, co-author of the report and president of OC@KU, believe that the model can be used in multiple delivery environments for a number of institutions.
(Next page: 3 ways OC@KU created an innovative higher-ed model)
OC@KU launched with an initial 13 open courses, developed specifically to be delivered as free and self-paced, with no formal enrollment, explained Huggins and Smith. The competencies and outcomes of the open courses aligned with their sister Kaplan University courses and were developed internally by what Huggins and Smith said are credentialed faculty with subject-area teaching experience.
The University looked to some existing best practices such as Walden University’s Concierge Service [3], Capella University’s Flex-Path [4], and Thomas Edison State College’s For Adults with Higher Expectations [5], then selected and developed open courses, placed them in an openly accessible environment with live support, and a formal degree program designed for open courses.
“Within months, hundreds of learners were using the open courses,” said Huggins. “Keeping the original goal in mind of organization, purpose, and personalization, the next logical step was to develop the purpose and personalization: course assessments by which learners could earn and apply college credit for the open courses toward a degree.”
3 ways OC@KU is unique in their open approach
1. Multiple tech-supported offerings. In addition to the free, open courses, the authors highlight free, or low-cost, resources that learners can use to customize their learning. A few of the suite of products available as part of what OC@KU calls their “learning concierge service,” includes:
- Open Portfolio [6]: A tool that aims to allow learners to track and manage their open courses. Built with an integrated API for Open Education Consortium [7] courses, the Open Portfolio is a free tool for users to develop informal learning plans around personal or professional interests which can be shared or kept private. “Equally important, as part of this technological and web-driven disruption, learners’ capacity to develop and store evidence of learning in electronic portfolios—carefully organized around career, academic, or personal interests—has also been transformed,” said Smith in a recent EDUCAUSE article [8].
- CLA+ [9] : A low-cost skills assessment tool. For a minimal fee, say the report’s authors, learners can take an assessment that will evaluate “real-life, cross-cutting intellectual skills.” The skills that CLA+ test for include analysis and problem solving, scientific and quantitative reasoning, critical reading and evaluation, and critiquing an argument—skills which employers have stated matter more than a particular major or GPA, noted the authors.
- Learning Recognition Course [10] (LRC100): As the first open course developed by OC@KU, the LRC100 guides individuals through the process of documenting their training and experience in a portfolio which is evaluated by university faculty for college-level credit. The LRC100 is free and self-paced with personal support provided by assessment specialists that have many years of experience with adult learners, say the authors. The portfolio is a curation of the individual’s prior learning, experience, and informal learning.
Other resources include LearningAdvisor [11], StraighterLine [12], and CareerJourney [13].
2. A unique degree program. For example, the Bachelor of Science in Professional Studies (BSPR) at OC@KU is designed with “self-motivated students in mind and provides the opportunity to create a customized degree plan to meet professional goals,” explains the report. The degree program is focused on professional knowledge and skills, problem solving, and strategic planning and culminates in a capstone class with a portfolio project. “Built on a proprietary platform, technology brings together the use of open courses, assessments, and other learning resources to provide learners with an Individualized Learning Plan, a customized learning path allowing the learner, with the guidance of a faculty mentor, to develop a personalized degree path,” says the report. This model is unique to the learner, said Huggins, and includes: a career goal statement which enables the student and the faculty advisor to identify potential course assessments and learning options to fulfill the degree requirements that relates to a career; a review of previously earned college credit; an analysis of previous experience that can be evaluated for college credit so that the learner does not duplicate learning that has already been acquired; potential open courses to meet degree requirements, and; course assessments (credit by exam) to meet the degree program learning outcomes.
[For much more detailed information on the degree program, as well as OC@KU’s partnerships with select open course providers, faculty mentorship, and the integration of multiple types of assessments, read the full report [14].]
3. Mobile-enabled learning. According to Huggins and Smith, OC@KU focuses on supporting adult learners through multiple mobile-ready tools. These include:
- Live Seminars using Google+ and YouTube: A tool that combines video, Google+, and YouTube to stream a live, real-time interaction with the instructor. Students can see and hear the live lecture and chat with the instructor at a set time. Students can access a recorded, archived Live Seminar if they miss the live version.
- Social Media: Some of the open courses contain social media activities. Classroom responses, communication, and feedback are delivered via social media.
- Live support and feedback in the courses: Even though the courses are open and self-paced, live course support is available by phone or email.
- Forums and discussion boards: Faculty are assigned to the open courses on a rotating schedule. They are visible, accessible, and aim to engage the learners in communication.
To date, OC@KU says approximately 4,000 unique learners have accessed the OC@KU open course web site and have registered for 4,800 courses. 104 have developed and submitted a prior learning portfolio for assessment. Learners have received college credit for 711 courses as a result of the prior learning portfolio assessment, which the University says translates to over $1M in tuition savings at Kaplan University. The students currently enrolled in the BSPR are on target to complete their degree for under $10,000; and faculty are using the open courses as supplemental material to their college credit classroom.
“We likened the unharnessed information on the Internet to a blizzard and the unsupported user trying to organize it to a skier without goggles in that blizzard,” concluded Huggins. “Hence, we developed the concept of developing and offering free sense-making services. These services addressed organizing and understanding prior learning, career investigation, and the curation of informal learning as the preliminary steps to identifying a learning path forward that could be followed informally, with individual assessments, or in a degree program. To that we have added low-cost diagnostics as well.”
The authors note that their open approach model can be used “effectively” in multiple delivery environments beyond the exclusive online, self-paced model the University has created. For example, institutions may be able to use the model to “support a weekend or a different low-residency model, adapt it to groups of learners using the BSPR or other degree programs and individual assessments, use it in a business environment, or put it in a blended learning environment.”
For more information, read the full report [14], which was presented at the 2015 Open Education Consortium Global Conference [15] in April, 2015, and peer-reviewed by Open Praxis [16].