Curricular flow

When I hear about online degrees, especially those that are designed around liberal studies, it sounds like you have to read some books, write a couple of papers and earn college credit. Is it really that hard to get your degree this way?

One of the biggest misconceptions about online education is that it is easy. It most assuredly is not. Many regionally accredited universities that offer online courses employ curriculum developers who work with faculty members to design courses. Often curriculum developers have advanced degrees themselves.

Online curriculum for liberal studies students is not merely a word document with some reading and writing assignments posted on a website. Curriculum is designed to invite the learner into deep engagement with provocative issues that were germane for the past, present, and future while opening up intense interactions with passionate and deeply knowledgeable professors.

Imagine taking seminars with names such as Roots of Chaos: The Cultural Antecedents of Political Upheaval in the Twentieth Century, Music and Popular Culture During the Swing Era, and the Ethical Frontiers on the Sciences and Humanities and courses from Art and Medicine to Police and Policing.

The rich tradition of liberal studies curriculum continues to inspire students to think using a scaled-up process designed to incorporate a unique blend of structure, technology, and active learning philosophy.

Just as a river has many sources of flow, every person involved in curriculum development contributes to the end product. Each pours themselves into the effort to transfer into a course the knowledge, understanding and passion of the subject matter expert that inspires the student to learn and apply fully their unique gifts.

An online degree program typically offers its courses using a structured process with multiple entry points – internal and external evaluations and reviews across a broad spectrum of people, from faculty members to state regents and chancellors for higher education.

To create significant learning experiences that contain more than just an aggregation of content materials and resources, here are some centered guiding values for online curricula:

• Rigor – Curriculum that embodies strength, depth, and breadth in the content and learning strategies.
• Agility – Curriculum that is pragmatic in multiple ways with a long term view.
• Profitability – Curriculum that adds value to all constituents – students, faculty, college and society.
• Significance – Curriculum that centers on the major constructs, concepts, ideas and issues in the students’ lives.
• Inspiration – Curriculum that exploits the tension between passion and reason through human interaction.

As you can see, there is a great deal of academic rigor applied to the development of curriculum for online courses and degree programs. You want to be intellectually challenged. That is what you should expect when embarking on such a journey.