A faculty-led project tested two pilot courses to address access to online instruction for under-served students. The goal was to maximize student success and retention in larger online classes at San Mateo Community College District. Branded XLOnline™, a threefold model was built on the team’s existing teaching experiences online.
This work was an eighteen-month project undertaken by a team of science professors to improve student success and retention in online classes at the San Mateo Community College District. The need to be addressed, identified by the California Community College system, was to provide access to high-demand courses, while maintaining a quality student experience. Currently, limited course offerings have resulted in nearly 500,000 students being shut out of the system statewide. One approach to address this need was to use fully online classes. Fully online classes can be available to a wide population of students, unencumbered by having to access our campus. Online classes continue to grow throughout the community college system. This project was undertaken to explore a higher enrollment class size with two pilot courses, while maintaining quality instruction with the equivalent staff resources for lower enrollment classes. If successful, this approach would possibly address the needs of unserved students. An important goal was to ensure effective student-student and faculty-student contact in larger classes, while preserving the use of faculty time devoted to the course. Branded XLOnline™, the model built on the project team’s existing teaching experiences and expertise online. The pedagogic thinking built on this experience was threefold. First, the development of professional quality video lectures, designed and delivered by the faculty team. The videos were designed to have a long-term shelf-life, so lectures would not have to be updated as often. The videos were shot in HD, and designed to be independent of a particular textbook, or instructor. This allowed flexibility within the course outline of record, while delivering highly engaging lecture videos. Second, investment of time and resources in recruiting and training in-house tutors to support certain aspects of classes, freeing up faculty time. The team tested whether local tutors, familiar with the campus and the course, could unburden faculty time for some specific routine student questions. Third, part of the course was opened to guests, thereby inviting in the community. By making some course content available to the community at large, potential students could examine the course to prepare for registration. Further, the community would be able to look inside our college and what it offers to our students. The faculty team will present the process we used to prepare high quality videos that went beyond the typical ‘home grown’ web-cam online lectures. We will discuss the time commitment and outcomes of locally recruited and trained tutors in the pilot classes. Finally, the robust guest access data we collected affirmed the potential community interest in our college courses. The high number of guests looking into the courses suggests greater outreach to potential students currently not being served.