A big part of the mission of a community college is to meet students where they are. Full-time jobs, parenting and finite finances can limit access to furthering education, leaving a potential student with one big question.
“How am I going to juggle all of these things?”
Jennifer Swartout is associate vice president for general education at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville. She and her colleagues at NWACC have been working on a hybrid program to reduce the barriers to working toward a degree.
"We are dedicated to making sure that we're the folks that know how to do this. We are very accustomed to what we used to call non-traditional students — students who are working, have families, have other responsibilities. But really, the bulk of college students in the United States are what we used to call non-traditional. The majority of students that are in college, No. 1, started at a community college. And No. 2, actually the norm is that they're working and that they have outside responsibilities."
The hybrid program allows for a type of course sequestration, creating coursework with either eight or 12-week options. Swartout says offering flexible ways to enroll in a course can help a student who might have missed the traditional start of a semester.
"Many of our students work a lot. Sometimes upwards of 30 hours a week. Many of our students work full time, and so they need schedules and programs that appeal to where they want to go in life and how they're going to get there. And in order to get there, they generally need some flexibility so they can work around jobs, family, other responsibilities."
But — and Swartout says this is incredibly important — many students still need and want connections with faculty and peers. The new hybrid program at NWACC is built with this in mind.
"One of the important things we've really focused on in the last couple of years is developing more — you could call it flexible or hybrid — options, where students can take classes, especially core classes, to get their degree and have maybe one day a week where they're on campus for a relatively short period of time, and then they're able to complete the rest of the course online. And so that allows them to interact with faculty, to make connections with other students. Maybe those courses are meeting at night, because a lot of our evening classes are now what we would call hybrid or flexible. So you do have that one night a week that you're coming in for class, but you know, you're there for an hour and 15 minutes. You're not there for three hours, because we've taken half of that course and put it online so that you can have that flexibility throughout the rest of your week."
This autumn, NWACC will offer a full complement of eight-week hybrid classes, meaning a student can come to campus that one time a week and have a selection of courses, with an emphasis on first- and second-semester core courses that are general requirements for a degree.
"All students getting an associate degree will have to fulfill those requirements, and then they go on to perhaps specialize a little bit according to what their transfer or their employment plans are. And so we've set this up so, again, you can come in one or two days a week — it's really up to you — get all of those core classes finished. And you're only taking two to three classes, tops, at a time. First eight-week and then second eight-week. So at the end of 16 weeks — the length of a traditional semester — you're going to end up in the same place."
Swartout says there is plenty of contemporary research showing many students, especially adult learners, benefit by taking just a couple of classes at a time.
"Let's say you decided to take your math and your English the first eight weeks."
An option at the NWACC Washington County location west of Arvest Ballpark in Springdale is designed to allow for concentrated study in one or two courses at a time.
"Really focus on those two things, get all the help you need, successfully complete that course. And then the second eight weeks, you might take maybe your sociology and your science class and another elective. And so you do end up completing that full schedule in the space of a normal semester, but you get to divide it up so you're not juggling four or five classes at a time."
Swartout says enrollment in these hybrid programs beginning in the fall can be made the same way as more traditional college enrollment plans, but she encourages people considering the hybrid program to learn more about them face to face.
"Come talk to our advisors, because they can sit down and have a conversation with you about, well, what are your goals? What are your needs? What are your concerns, right? They can get you connected immediately to financial aid, to answer questions, to program directors. Let's say you walk in and you're like, 'I'm interested in business, but I'm not really sure what that means.' We can get you connected to the advisors and the program directors that can give you a more in-depth look at what you'll experience going through those degree plans."
Jennifer Swartout is associate vice president for general education at Northwest Arkansas Community College. More about NWACC and its programs can be found at nwacc.edu.
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