Life alone presents many barriers for adults when returning to school. Minimizing cost and time, and maximizing course relevance is the goal of Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU). A new initiative that launched in 2014 is the result of creating and organizing a one-stop-shop for all things ‘open’ with the goal of awarding college credit. Like other open courses, learners can access courses and resources in a self-paced environment at no charge; what makes OC@KU unique is the opportunity to earn college credit by filling course gaps in a degree program and earning credit for open courses.
Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU) is focused on supporting adult learners in their educational journey. OC@KU provides adult students the opportunity to earn college credit through various assessments including the assessment of prior learning. This may sound like business-as-normal however, in this case, this initiative was placed in the ‘open’ environment, allowing learners to browse and consume the course and ePortfolio platform at no charge, at their own pace, with no formal enrollment. Launched in June 2013, OC@KU’s first course, the Learning Recognition Course (LRC100), yielded 1,200 participants by year end. The success of the course is attributed to a personalized learning service combined with an open environment. To date, students have earned an average of 32 credits per portfolio.
Being the first of its kind in an ‘open’ environment, the OC@KU provides learners with a suite of services that meet an individual’s career and academic goals. The intent of OC@KU is to not only revolutionize the traditional approach to learning in higher education but to also increase the awareness and use of open resources to help learners accelerate their time-to-degree, reduce the cost of the degree, and to give learners more control over their learning. OC@KU is a ‘sense making’ venture; a strategy to reduce the cost by utilizing open courses. Sense making for learners in that it combines no risk, open access, self-paced, and relevant courses with the opportunity to earn college credit in a one-stop-shop.
Built on the Moodle platform, OC@KU allows learners to build an Individual Learning Plan (ILP) and a learning portfolio. The ILP, developed with a faculty advisor, guides the student through their degree program. The faculty advisor helps the student find open courses to meet their degree requirements. To earn credit for the open courses, students build a portfolio to document the learning acquired toward courses in their degree program. Students may also supplement their portfolio by bringing in open courses that they may have taken elsewhere; in fact we encourage it! Partners such as Udemy, Sophia, and Straighterline provide the added value that this brings to learners is the opportunity to earn college credit in one of multiple ways.
