How do we ensure every college student has a chance to be successful? For the breadth of today’s university students -- their academic needs and life challenges -- this session showcases one innovative partnership between a third-party course provider and Liberty University designed to overcome students’ barriers to success.
Students face a variety of challenges as they work to earn their college degree. At StraighterLine, we help students earn college credit through self-paced, general education courses that are designed with the needs of a breadth of undergraduate students today, from modern, working adult learners, to new high school graduates entering college for the first time. We don’t do this alone -- we do this in partnership with over 150 universities. At its core, StraighterLine partners with colleges and universities to help students earn credits as a pathway into the university, or as a way to persist with their degree, all while staying tethered to their home institutions -- your school.
This presentation showcases one case study of an innovative partnership between one third-party college course provider, StraighterLine, and one large institution, Liberty University. This refer-and-return partnership serves several strategic purposes for the university, from creating enrollment pathways to serving existing students by helping them continue their degrees and graduate, this innovative partnership fulfills the needs of a variety of student challenges. At Liberty, students are referred to StraighterLine when a student needs to catch up on undergraduate general education courses, for example one who desires to take classes over the summer or enroll in a StraighterLine course during a term when a flexible, asynchronous course augments the students’ academic schedule.
As a refer-and-return partnership, a variety of students’ needs can be met: those who are seeking a gap year, but want to continue to prepare for college; students who haven’t fully decided where they want to go to college yet but want to try out college-level coursework -- and see if a particular university, such as Liberty, is a good fit for them. And students who want to catch up and graduate on time are served by this partnership -- they take courses to stay on track with their degree program.
This session shares why and how the university works with StraighterLine to refer students, and then return those same students back to either start their degree program or continue with their current studies at Liberty. Our discussion puts a face behind student success by presenting student outcome data, enrollment data, and the financial benefits to the institution, in addition to showcasing the student services and support all college students need -- and should have -- to successfully achieve their academic goals.
In addition, this session’s interactive components include the use of polling around specific case study elements and data, discussions in think-pair-share formats, and reflective questioning to get participants linking the learnings and data from this session to their experiences and challenges within their own student populations and institutions.