By Carol Woodland, Staff Reporter
This summer CNM is offering more courses in online or condensed eight week format than ever before, said Brad Moore, Director of Marketing and Communications.
CNM began offering the eight week courses during the 2013 Summer term as a pilot program to test student interest and allow faculty members the opportunity to teach their curriculum in a condensed format, which was both well received and effective, he said.
“One of CNM’s core missions is to ensure that a CNM education is accessible to as many people in our community as possible. In addition to keeping tuition affordable, another important way CNM tries to make its courses easily accessible is by giving people multiple options on how, when and where they want to take CNM classes,” Moore said.
To achieve this goal, CNM has been increasing the number of online classes offered over the past few years to accommodate students who have busy schedules or have difficulty getting to one of the campuses, and enrollment in online courses reached an all-time high during the Spring 2014 term with 8,957 students taking at least one online course, Moore said.
“Enrollment in online classes has continued to steadily rise year by year, and CNM has continued to increase its offerings of online classes to meet student demand,” Moore said.
The new eight week format classes provide another option for students to complete courses over the summer, and provides them with the added bonus of a longer break between spring and summer terms since the courses start later, Moore said.
Another benefit to the later start date for eight week courses is they will allow for graduating high school seniors to attend classes, which was not possible before because CNM’s summer semester started before the high school year ended, he said.
The eight week courses are scheduled in smaller chunks of time, but spread out over four days per week to allow for time to cover the same amount of material as the traditional classes, Moore said.
“Taking a condensed course like this also requires more time per week devoted to coursework outside of the classroom,” he said.
Students who do take advantage of the summer semester course offerings will benefit from being on a faster path to graduation, Moore said.
“Many of our students work full-time and many of our students have children, so we try to offer courses in various formats, so they are accessible to anybody who wants to improve their lives through the power of education,” Moore said.
