The Distance Education in Focus: Improving Course Design and Strengthening Student Support (InFocus) grant provides $2.68 million to support work that will increase student persistence, retention, and success for Hispanic and other low-income students. From the grant abstract, InFocus will accomplish this via:
- Improving academic support in high-risk online courses: InFocus will provide seed funding to help ACC phase in employment of three full-time Embedded Tutors who will, along with the college’s existing seven part-time online Embedded Tutors, support any of the approximately 4,600 credit students who are struggling to succeed in one or more of the college’s 14 online “high-risk” courses each year. High-risk courses are defined as those that are required for many associate and bachelor’s degrees but are successfully completed by less than 70% of the students who enroll in them each semester.
- Enriching learning in high-risk online courses: InFocus will provide funding to train distance education faculty in the nationally recognized Quality Matters rubric through the College’s Online Course Redesign Academy (OCRA) and to certify all online high-risk course curriculum via the QM certification process.
- Providing targeted, intensive advising support to online students who are struggling: InFocus will help ACC build its capacity to implement an evidence-based, intensive approach to intensive academic advising for online students who are struggling in high-risk courses.