Dive Brief:
- Thirteen community colleges in the state of Washington plan to offer self-paced online courses for an associate degree, starting in January.
- The 18 courses required for the business transfer degree will use open educational resources instead of textbooks, with college faculty members and Lumen Learning developing and defining the competencies required for mastery.
- Lumen is developing the course materials from free and open-licensed textbook, video, images, and other materials.
Dive Insight:
The goal is to save students time and money — they won’t have to buy textbooks, and they can skip past material they already know, using embedded assessments to demonstrate mastery and finish the course in as little as 18 months. The courses will use Lumen’s Candela Mastery Platform. Lumen says it will provide the platform hosting, courseware support, and updates for a quarter of the price of commercial textbooks. The colleges come under the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, and Columbia Basin College is the lead school.