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California Community Colleges will pilot short-course academic pathways to increase flexibility for nontraditional students.
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The California Community College system will roll out a new project to implement and scale shortened academic courses for student success.
The initiative, funded by a grant from the Ascendium Education Group and in partnership with the Success Center at the Foundation for California Community Colleges, will evaluate the feasibility of offering eight-week courses (compared to the traditional 16- or 17-week terms), with the hope of increasing flexibility and accessibility for students, particularly those who may be working or caring for children.
System leaders hope expanding shortened courses will improve completion rates and address equity gaps within community colleges.
Survey Says
A May 2024 Student Voice survey from Course Strat and Generation Lab showed one in five respondents believe courses offered on an eight-week, accelerated basis would most increase their academic success (among 14 options).
Students taking more than a typical course load (24 percent), online learners (23 percent) or those who work full-time (22 percent) were slightly more likely to say this would improve their academic success.
The research: Shortened terms, defined as those shorter than a semester- or quarter-length course, are often employed to increase flexibility for the learner to enroll or complete courses, reduce time to degree through more offerings, and improve student retention as a result.
Technical programs are more likely to use shortened terms to provide intensive instruction, whereas liberal arts programs use short courses to help accelerate or advance students in their degree programs.
One of the barriers to implementing shortened courses is a lack of cohesive and strategic overhaul of academic programs; research from Ad Astra found most short course offerings are one-offs or not built into a sequence that allows learners to complete their entire credential in an eight-week format.
Shrinking traditional course content to fit into eight-week terms can also be a challenge, according to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Faculty members often lack guidance on how to restructure courses or are teaching full- and shortened-term classes simultaneously, which can put additional pressure on them.
The project: The California initiative has four goals:
- Evaluate current offerings of shortened courses to understand implementation and assess student success in these courses compared to full-length courses.
- Establish a community of practice including around 20 colleges (of the system’s 116) to implement shortened courses in full programs and foster cross-college collaboration. Each participating institution will receive $20,000 in funding, at minimum.
- Conduct a series of case studies at select colleges in the community of practice to identify promising practices and barriers to implementation. Case studies will also involve student interviews to collect feedback from the learner directly.
- Share lessons learned with the chancellor’s office to inform system-level actions including recommendations to scale best practices.
The initiative will run until October 2027.
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