Strengthening Online Learning
Cleveland Community College has identified and selected SOL: Strengthening Online Learning as the topic for its Quality Enhancement Plan. SOL is focused on the overall goal of improving student success in online courses. The SOL QEP is directly related to the College’s institutional mission and strategic goals and arose from ongoing, comprehensive planning and evaluation processes. The development of SOL included a broad-based group of constituents. The Strengthening Online Learning (SOL) Quality Enhancement Plan defines two specific student success goals:
- Improve student success in a cohort of online courses by 7.5 percentage points.
- Decrease student withdrawals in a cohort of online courses by 3.5 percentage points.
The strategies in the SOL QEP will support student success and persistence in online courses by developing a faculty training and peer mentoring program focused on improving online course quality, providing diverse opportunities for engagement in online classes, creating an orientation module and open-access course for students, and by offering student support staff an online learning experience designed to enhance their ability to support online students. SOL’s five-year implementation plan includes broad-based college involvement, continuous improvement of online course quality, formative and summative assessments to measure indicators of success, and feedback loops to adjust the initiative, as necessary. Through the implementation of the SOL QEP, the College anticipates improved student success in online courses.