Eastern Gateway gets OK for online degrees

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Eastern Gateway Community College’s ability to educate area residents is now enhanced with the approval from the Higher Learning Commission to offer online degree programs.

HLC, a commission of the North Central Association, notified the college that it may begin developing degrees from its online courses. The first online degrees to be developed will be the associate of arts, associate of science and associate of applied science, said Dr. James Baber, executive vice president of academic and student affairs.

“We are planning to have the associate of arts online degree ready by the spring semester,” he said.

More than a third of Eastern Gateway’s students take at least one online course. These courses are becoming more popular as they fit into the lives of the students who are busy with jobs, families and other commitments.

“The future of learning is competency-based instruction, and online learning is a powerful tool to help students learn at their own pace and to help them master principles before moving forward,” said President Laura Meeks.

The college is closely following the learning outcomes of online as well as land-based courses to gauge student success, Meeks said. “We have been doing this for years, and this fits well with the state’s new completion funding agenda. We have worked to improve the outcomes.” For the 2013-14 academic year, the pass rate of “C” or better was 73.7 percent for land-based courses and 71.2 percent for online courses. This covers the 21,340 courses the college offered during the academic year.

Baber said the college is working to have more-comprehensive courses ready to offer online.

“These will be supplemented with land-based courses. We are building a quality product while staying student-connected,” he said. “We expect enrollment in online courses to continue to grow and expect at least half of our student body will be taking at least one online course in the near future.”

Eastern Gateway offers its online courses through the Blackboard9 format as well as partnering with Pearson, a leading education-service company that offers self-paced, online courses. The Pearson courses allow students to begin later in the semester while still finishing within that grading period.

The HLC approval process “requires a lot of review by the college and completion of much documentation,” Baber said. “I thank everyone involved in bringing this important step for our students forward, especially Lois Rekowski, director of library services.”