Dive Brief:
- Charter Oak State College in Connecticut has approved two edX courses for credit, one produced by MIT and the other by Berkeley.
- Campus Technology reports the college sees edX as a way to offer students unlimited enrollment and a chance to pay for credits only after mastering the course material as well as eliminate enrollment barriers like the college application, fees, and transcript requests.
- As an online institution already primed to accept alternative credits, Charter Oak is bound to expand its partnership with edX beyond the computer science and engineering SaaS courses that are now enrolling students for the January term.
Dive Insight:
Charter Oak offers transfer credit from community colleges, standardized tests, military training, and portfolio assessment, increasing the pace of degree completion for its adult students by evaluating prior learning and finding nontraditional means to move students closer to graduation. EdX hosts courses developed by some of the top institutions in the world. Its partnership with Arizona State University gives prospective college freshmen a chance to complete an entire year's worth of work online. The Global Freshman Academy allows students to take courses for free, paying for credit only if they successfully master the material, and it offers the online students identical standing at the university once they arrive on campus.
With more and more nontraditional students seeking flexible learning opportunities, partnerships such as these will become increasingly common.