The Higher Learning Commission is changing the format of IU dual credit courses in high schools, creating a more direct link between high school teachers and IU faculty.
The changes to these courses will be implemented by fall 2016, Director of Pre-College Programs Mike Beam said.
Executive Vice President for University Academic Affairs John Applegate said there are many variations to the model of a dual credit course depending on what campus the students are attending.
“The whole idea of dual credit courses is that they are college-level courses, offered by high school teachers,” Applegate said. “It’s very important that the equivalency between the dual credit course and college course be real, and not just imagined.”
Beam said he has plans for how dual credit classes will run. He said the University has transitioned into a new way of delivering speech courses on campus, which will correlate with how he wants dual credit courses to run.
The new course, called P155, will be structured differently than past speech classes at the University, Beam said. This course is structured through lectures delivered by a professor in real time. Students can watch them on their own time outside of the classroom while also attending a discussion section during the week.
Beam said this course had Larry Singell, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and his staff talking with Beam about how they could apply the same course ideas and delivery from P155 to other disciplines as well.
The changes in IU courses mean those same ideas will be offered for high school students taking dual credit, Beam said. This idea started when the Higher Learning Commission requirements were being re-vamped.
The HLC ruled if these dual credit courses will count as college credit, the high school teachers must have the same minimum qualifications as the University, Applegate said.
The University is developing and expanding online certificate programs for high school teachers so they are able to earn master’s degrees and graduate credentials, Beam said.
When the HLC had decided to revamp requirements for dual credit, this had disproportionally discredited the dual credit faculty, Beam said.
With the new dual credit options in place, he said teachers will have the chance to broaden their knowledge to better teach their students.
The dual credit courses will be more of a partnership between IU faculty and high school teachers. Beam said he hopes students will gain knowledge on many different levels.
“Students are getting information from two people who know a lot about it,” Beam said. “They really get the benefit of being able to ask real-time questions and have an on-campus presence.”
Beam said he hopes this will remove the gap between the IU faculty creating the content for dual credit and the teachers who apply it in the classroom.
“In this way we really remove that filter, so students are hearing from an on-campus faculty,” Beam said. “Students are really going to get an understanding of how on-campus faculty want to present material and what sort of elements of the same course material they emphasized and de-emphasize.”
With high school teachers having closer contact with students, Applegate said those relationships are important to prospective students’ learning.
”The high school teachers do have a lot of talent to be able to teach these subjects to high school students,” Applegate said. “We don’t want to lose that. That’s really valuable.”
Applegate said he also has hopes that this new partnership will be as beneficial to students as it will be to the teachers.
When Beam met with a group of administrators, teachers and guidance counselors in the Kokomo, Indiana, area, he said the reactions to the new dual credit courses were positive.
“They really recognized right away the value of having faculty giving their students lots of information in a way because it just sets up the class in such a unique way,” Beam said.
With high school students wanting to get ahead with their college classes by taking dual credit, Beam said he thinks the new implementation will relieve the stress of the unknown when preparing to go to a university.
“I believe it will hopefully ease some students’ concerns about going to college and make them feel a little better about what to expect,” Beam said.
