Online Course Sharing

Please find information below related to Acadeum and Rize. For an overview, see this presentation.

ACADEUM

POLICY: Per the 2025-2026 undergraduate catalog, the following exists: 

• "The University of Lynchburg is a member of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Online Course Sharing Consortium which gives students access to courses via the Acadeum platform. The CIC Consortium allows us to extend our curriculum and provide course options for students primarily during the summer and winter terms when a specific course is not offered. These courses are vetted by school deans and department chairs, and must be approved by the Registrar’s Office. The grades that students earn will appear on their University of Lynchburg transcript. The primary function of the consortium is to allow students to have more access to courses to fulfill a prerequisite, replace a grade, move toward academic recovery, or fulfill a graduation requirement. Consortium courses that have been approved will count as a University of Lynchburg equivalent. The grades that students earn in these classes will be a part of a student’s University of Lynchburg transcript and will be reflected in the GPA. During the summer and winter terms, students will be allowed to take up to nine credits through the consortium. Students seeking to take courses during the fall and spring semesters must have the approval of the associate vice president for academic affairs and will be limited to four credits per semester. No more than two consortium courses may be applied to a single major, minor, or general education requirement without the approval of the associate vice president for academic affairs. Courses taken via the CIC Consortium will be charged the standard University of Lynchburg per-credit rate. The University of Lynchburg is also a teaching institution for the CIC Consortium and will allow member institutions’ students to enroll in University of Lynchburg classes provided there are open seats."

PROCEDURE: Courses are approved for the following reasons: a) the student needs the class to graduate and UL is not offering it again before they graduate, b) the student needs the class to graduate and UL is not willing to create an internal course substitution, or c) the student is in a UL program that is currently in a teach-out. If one of these reasons apply, this is the form students complete. Once all approvals are gathered, the Registrar's Office makes the equivalent course in Colleague and registers the student for it. They give it a section letter of "Z" for easy tracking. The Registrar's Office also registers the student in the Acadeum database so the student has access to the needed materials from the teaching institution.

TRANSPARENCY: The below are lists of how this policy has been implemented. Please note, these are not live google sheets. The last time these sheets were downloaded from Acadeum and uploaded on this webpage was April 10, 2026. To request a new upload, please email registrar@lynchburg.edu. 

• These are mapped Acadeum courses, meaning a UL student indeed took the course at another institution and brought it back to UL, so it's on their UL transcript. "HI" means the student's home institution (University of Lynchburg) and "TI" means the teaching institution where the student took the course. See sheet here. 

• These are approved courses from the Acadeum course catalog, meaning there was an interest in the course at some point from a UL student and UL approved it, but it wasn't necessarily used. See sheet here. The sheet also has links to syllabi from the TI.

• These are courses from the entire Acadeum course catalog. Some are taught by CIC institutions and others are not. These courses have not necessarily been used by a UL student. However, should they need to be used, the benefit of a UL student choosing to take a class from a CIC institution is that UL does not have to sign a MOU with the institution because the TI is in the CIC. See sheet here. The sheet also has links to syllabi from the TI.

RIZE

POLICY: Per the 2026-2027 undergraduate catalog, the following exists: 

• "The University of Lynchburg has partnered with  Rize Education to afford our students access to its course sharing platform. Our partnership enriches the curriculum with the latest industry trends and combines the accessibility of online learning with the effectiveness of traditional campus engagement, providing students with a comprehensive and adaptable educational pathway that maximizes the best of both worlds. The University of Lynchburg will utilize the platform in two main ways to serve our students. First, we will be able to supplement course offerings in a variety of programs to facilitate graduation progress. Supplemental courses will be vetted by school deans. Secondly, the Rize Education course-sharing platform allows the University to extend its curriculum by offering innovative, high-demand hybrid degree programs and courses beyond those physically taught on campus. New hybrid degree programs will go through the standard faculty approval process, with faculty approving both the hybrid degree programs and the respective new classes. The grades earned in all Rize Education courses will appear on the student’s University of Lynchburg transcript and will be reflected in the cumulative GPA. Rize Education courses are built in collaboration with industry experts and focus on high-impact, career-relevant assignments to prepare students for growth fields with above-average starting salaries. These courses are instructor-led in an online, asynchronous format, though scheduled office hours are available weekly to provide students with the ability to engage directly with instructors. For students enrolled in these specific programs of study, these courses are included as part of their standard tuition at no additional cost, though students remain responsible for required textbooks or materials."

• The faculty-approved programs in which we have extended our curriculum so far are as follows:

  • AI Literacy Minor (program director Aubrey Plourde)

  • Cybersecurity Minor (program director David Richards)

  • Healthcare Administration Minor (program director Debbie Bradney)

PROCEDURE: Deans request the courses be added to the schedule in Colleague and the Registrar's Office then does this with a section letter of "RZ." They also add the following message on myHive: "This course is offered online through a consortium of accredited colleges and universities Instruction is provided by faculty employed by partner institutions within the consortium, with technology and administrative support provided by Rize Education. Oversight of courses offered through the consortium are reviewed and approved by the University of Lynchburg. Students register through the University of Lynchburg and receive academic credit from the University of Lynchburg." Once they are added and registration opens, students add the courses in myHive; they can use the "course type" filter to find the courses. Once the registration period has settled, the Registrar's Office takes the rosters from myHive/Colleague and registers the students in the Rize database so the student has access to the Canvas learning management system where their class will take place. The student then gets emails from Rize on how to access Canvas. Throughout the semester, Rize has their own add/drop dates so the UL Registrar's Office monitors the Rize database as compared to myHive/Colleague to ensure all databases reconcile. 

TRANSPARENCY FOR SUPPLEMENTAL COURSE OFFERINGS: As of April 27, 2026 (the last time this webpage was edited), the following have been approved. The first class is the UL course code (which shows in myHive and on the student's UL transcript) and the second class is the Rize course code (which shows in Canvas). The course titles are not necessarily the exact same and thus both have been listed below. 

• CHEM 111 General Chemistry I = CHEMY I General Chemistry I and CHEMY I L Lab: General Chemistry 

• CS 131  Fundamentals of Programming = COMPS II Programming for Everyone I

• CS 370 Database Management Systems = ITM III PostgreSQL

• CS 385  Internet Programming = COMPS VII Web Development

• MATH 104  Calculus II = MATHS II Calculus II

• MATH 211  Calculus III = MATHS V Calculus III

• PHYS 161  Physics I = PHYSC I General Physics I (Mechanics) and PHYSC IL Lab: General Physics I

• SOCI 277  Social Research Methods and Statistics = SOCIO IX Research Methods for Social Sciences

• SPAN 101 Elementary Spanish I = SPNSH I Elementary Spanish I

TRANSPARENCY FOR EXTENDED CURRICULUM: As of April 10, 2026, the following courses have been approved by UL Faculty to be offered by Rize. The first class is the UL course code (which shows in myHive and on the student's UL transcript) and the second class is the Rize course code (which shows in Canvas). The course titles are the same.

• AIL 100 = AIL I AI for Everyone

• AIL 201 = AIL II AI for Decision Making

• AIL 202 = AIL III AI for Creativity and Design

• AIL 203 = AIL IV AI Ethics

• AIL 204 = WDM I User Experience I: Understanding User Experience

• HA 100 = HADMN I Inside U.S. Healthcare Policy

• HA 210 = HADMN III Healthcare Justice, Law, and Ethics

• HA 220 = HADMN IV Strategic Healthcare Operations

• HA 300 = HADMN V Healthcare Finance

• HA 310 = HADMN VI Data-Driven Healthcare: Analytics, IT, and AI

• CYBER 100 = CYBER I Introduction to Cybersecurity

• CYBER 110 = CYBER III Network and System Security

• CYBER 120 = CYBER IV Cybercrime and Governance

• CYBER 200 = CYBER V Security Operations

• CYBER 210 = CYBER VI Ethical Hacking

• CYBER 220 = CYBER VII Future of Cybersecurity