Concordia expands online courses

Concordia expands online courses

By Community Impact Newspaper Staff Friday, 10 July 2009

AUSTIN — Concordia University Texas announced earlier this week it will expand its offerings of online courses as part of a partnership with the Online Consortium of Independent Colleges and Universities.

Prior to joining the Consortium, Concordia offered a limited number of online courses each year. Now students will have access to potentially hundreds of courses from similar faith-based and private liberal arts institutions that are members of the Consortium. The online partnership of classes is made up of more than 75 member institutions that share “seats” in the courses offered through eight online course provider institutions. Concordia students will enroll in the online courses with students of other private colleges and universities rather than creating smaller groups consisting only of Concordia students.

“The membership will allow us to jump start offering a wide array of courses on the web to better serve our students and meet their needs,” Dr. Alan Runge, Provost of Concordia University Texas, said in a statement. “We hope to eventually expand our own online course offerings and become a provider back to the Consortium.”

The majority of the online courses will be offered in eight-week formats. The courses are highly structured and set up in a similar fashion as those courses offered on the college campus.

Each semester Concordia will select a number of online courses to be included in its regular course schedules at each location. Concordia students will register for these courses as they would any other Concordia courses. A listing of the available online courses for the fall semester will be released later this summer.  Future semester offerings will be included with regular schedule listings. Initial courses being considered by the faculty include multiple offerings in business and accounting, education, history and criminal justice with the list expected to grow steadily each term to support a broad array of courses from the general education core to various majors.