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ERIC Number: EJ1224775
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Jul
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-
EISSN: N/A
Blending Credit & Non-Credit Courses: Best Practices, Opportunities, Barriers
Samuels, Keisha; Estes, M. Todd; Eckman, Heather; Gillerlain, Kelly; Jenkins, Shanda; Miller-Edwards, Wendy; Reinauer, Olivia; Walker, Nicole
Inquiry, v22 n1 Article 6 Jul 2019
Community colleges offer an array of programs designed to help students meet different goals. Noncredit education provides training for students seeking targeted, often shorter, courses for personal and professional enrichment (Cohen, Brawer, & Kisker, 2014). Many community colleges are now increasingly emphasizing noncredit workforce education as they support regional workforce development efforts and strive to meet the needs of their local industry partners (Van Noy, Jacobs, Korey, Bailey, & Hughes, 2008). Despite the millions of students enrolled in these courses and their potential to generate revenue for the institutions delivering programs, Voorhees and Milam (2005) refer to noncredit community college education as the "hidden college" and existing research on noncredit offerings is limited. Blending community college credit and noncredit programs with thoughtful and intentional strategies will benefit the students and the institutions. Van Noy, Jacobs, Korey, Bailey, and Hughes (2008) made five recommendations for strengthening noncredit education based on their research. They included the need to expand state funding with clear goals, to increase coordination of credit and noncredit offerings, to promote articulation of noncredit courses into credit programs, to establish non-degree forms of validation for noncredit programs, and to capture more information regarding employment outcomes resulting from noncredit training. These recommendations provide the framework for an analysis of current VCCS programming.
Virginia Community College System. e-mail: info@vccs.edu; Web site: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education; Two Year Colleges
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A