Colleagues,
I wanted to send an update before we close the first week of Spring 2024. Although we successfully placed over 45,000 students in Colorado Online sections, we know that over 200 students were not placed before their classes began. Our goal remains to prevent this experience for any student. We have been working with these individual students to accommodate their needs. We also recognize the last-minute activity to support students impacted college staff, faculty, and instructors. We appreciate everyone’s efforts and are working to ensure this does not continue to happen.
This week the team will lead a debrief to outline issues and identify solutions that we can use as soon as the start of 10-week sections, such as the following:
- To avoid over-enrollment, the team’s first action will be to open more and cancel less pooled teaching sections, even if it means smaller class sizes.
- If there are no more teaching sections, then the team will close registration. The IT team has developed a technology solution to close registration (Z sections) more quickly across the system. It is in the final testing stage and expected to be functional before the 10-week POT.
As a proactive measure, we are convening a strategic enrollment task force to examine how to improve our practices. Further, based on issues that were raised at the Project Team meeting and the info session this week, three proposals are being drafted for my approval:
- Starting immediately (Spring 2024), the Colorado Online Consortium will reimburse the college for any instructor teaching a course over the enrollment cap (more than 34 students) at census. We are committed to maintaining the cap of 34 as a maximum, and we recognize that because of the section capacity issues, 32 out of 648 sections were over enrolled by 1-3 students. The efforts and solutions noted above will help us ensure that moving forward, the cap will be the cap.
- Starting immediately (Spring 2024), the Colorado Online Consortium will reimburse colleges for inconvenience fees when we cancel pooled teaching sections that already have instructors assigned in Banner.
- Starting with Summer and Fall 2024, the Colorado Online Consortium will allow colleges to request additional home college sections based on newer information or data.
I intend to review these proposals as soon as possible and will update you all regarding their status. If approved, these proposals will be implemented on a pilot basis to start, to allow for evaluation and improvement.
Landon