The target demographic and intended learners for these online college courses are students who are currently registered and taking classes at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) . HBCUs have a long, important history of providing higher education access and opportunities for African American students specifically. Reaching and effectively engaging these HBCU student communities through well-designed virtual courses is a priority for this online education initiative.

The online courses will vary in their current stage of development, but all will have some existing content available digitally. An evaluation of each course will need to be conducted when received in order to determine what additional preparation is required before being ready for the online platform. This preparation may involve instructional design, multimedia development, content revisions, and other steps as needed to optimize the course for online delivery. The goal is to take the current course materials and enhance them to create engaging and effective virtual learning experiences tailored to the target student audience. 

The online courses are for college credit and will have durations ranging from 8 to 15 weeks. 

While the specific subjects have not yet been finalized, these initial online courses will focus on general education curriculum for the pilot program. The goal is to test and refine the online delivery of foundational college courses before expanding into other disciplines in the future. For now, developing engaging virtual versions of standard general education requirements will allow evaluation of the core online learning experience for the target HBCU student demographic. 

Canvas will be used as the platform for the courses.

We will be using a third-party vendor to host the videos for the platform.  We will make the announcement of the vendor once the agreement is signed.

We have obtained a Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) integration that will assist in making the online courses accessible. The selected vendor will need to ensure that any modifications recommended by the LTI integration. This will involve collaborating closely between our team, the vendor, and the faculty to guarantee a smooth technical integration and delivery of the online learning materials.

We need talent that is skilled in both instructional design and instructional technology.  Our first priority is to have courses built in the Canvas environment.  Once it is built, we will need to make sure that it is pedagogically sound and meets the quality guidelines we are establishing.  We will provide the selected vendor with those guidelines.

There will be 18 courses in the launch of the new platform and they will need to be ready in Spring 2024.

We would expect maintenance  and support for one semester after the course is on the platform.

While the specific subjects have not yet been finalized, these initial online courses will focus on general education curriculum for the pilot program. The goal is to test and refine the online delivery of foundational college courses before expanding into other disciplines in the future. For now, developing engaging virtual versions of standard general education requirements will allow evaluation of the core online learning experience for the target HBCU student demographic.

The courses on the platform will be coming from our pilot institutions and will need to placed om the HBCUv platform.

No.  All courses will be housed in Canvas for HBCUv.  Faculty will teach on the platform and students will take courses on the platform. 

We have identified 9 pilot institutions however we are still in the process of identifying the faculty that will be teaching on the platform.  There will be a total of 18 courses on the platform.

No. There is no one currently doing this work.