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Quality Enhancement Plan

GOAL 8

GOAL 8: The College will provide two totally online degrees.

While CVCC has no immediate plans to become an institution like the University of Phoenix and offer exclusively web-based programs, this goal clarifies that the College intends to make available at least two associate degree programs online by the conclusion of the QEP timeline. These two initial degree programs are the General Studies and Technical Studies Associate in Arts and Sciences programs. The General Studies curriculum is designed to provide students with fundamental general education requirements that they can then transfer to a senior institution to complete a Bachelor’s degree program.

The Technical Studies program allows students to specialize in one of ten different concentrations after completing their first year of program requirements. These areas of specialization include Building Trades, Electronics Manufacturing, Electronics Technician, Welding, Machine Technology, HVAC, Precision Instrumentation, Electrical Technology, Electrical & Control Technology, and Industrial Maintenance (2 versions).

This objective involves more issues than might be apparent on the surface, and this objective will insure that the College sorts through these issues and comes to some decisions regarding them. On one hand, for example, it would seem obvious that a course advertised as an online course and thus without a designated time and place to meet, and in which all activities are conducted through Blackboard from the teacher’s delivery of instruction to students’ completion of all required activities and assignments would be classified as a “totally online course” with little or no argument.

However, can a course which meets all the above criteria save that students must come to campus for a single orientation session or to take one or more proctored tests during the semester also be classified as a “totally online course”? What about a class like SPD 110, Introduction to Speech Communications, which occurs online but also requires students to come to campus four times during the semester to meet the public speaking requirements of the class? Or a class like BIO 101, General Biology I, which also occurs online except that students must come to campus twice to complete the labs and at other times to take tests? This objective will allow CVCC to clarify what constitutes an online course and provide, if necessary, for those classes which demand certain kinds of exceptions.

Once the previous objective has been satisfied, the College may find that this one has already been accomplished. Many of the courses that comprise the General Studies curriculum, for example, may meet the definition already “totally online courses.” Additional online classes continue to be added to the curriculum as more faculty members become interested in developing them and as more students become interested in distance learning.

In the aggregate Objectives 2-6 call for the development of 55 “totally online courses.” According to the spring and fall 2003 class schedules of Central Virginia Community College, twenty-one classes would seem to qualify as “totally online courses” since none of them require students to come to campus for any course activity. Seventeen more classes require that students come to campus for a single orientation session at the beginning of the term but are otherwise totally web-based. An additional eleven classes are offered largely via the Internet but require students to come to campus at least a few times for labs, presentations, or to take one or more tests. Depending on the definition that comes as a result of the deliberations for Objective 1 of this goal, CVCC might already have a number of classes which qualify as totally online.