CEC's Virtual Campus: Capturing the Complexity of University Experience Online
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Sample page from Virtual Campus (Click image for full screenshot)
Students who pursue degrees online enjoy the flexibility of when and where they study, but may still miss some social aspects that a physical campus offers, such as running into friends or participating in clubs. Career Education Corporation (CEC), owner of American InterContinental University and Colorado Technical University among many other career-oriented schools, designed a virtual learning environment (VLE) that aims to close the gap between the online and the web-based university experience. First released in 2001, it's called Virtual Campus, and allows web-based learning to become more social and to centralize student services, as well as offering instructors maximum flexibility in how they can deliver course content.
More Interactive Features
While most VLEs involve a standard lineup of features: discussion board, chat functions and reading lists posted to an online "classroom", CEC decided that they wanted to bring together the class with the broader campus experience.
Dr. Phyllis Gooden has been teaching literature for American Intercontinental University for several years using the Virtual Campus interface. "I think they have the best platform," she says. "Features like live chat with audio or video lets you feel like the students are more in touch with you, as opposed to always interacting with text."
She says that interactivity varies between courses. "It depends on the instructor how many of the bells and whistles are used, but it has a lot more features than platforms I've used in the past," she says. "I feel like I have creative flexibility in how to approach the material, how to make the course more dynamic."
Using the Virtual Campus interface, students not only attend classes, but have access to an online library, and can meet virtually with instructors and other students. There are clubs, administrative "offices" and even virtual graduation ceremonies
"Most online students elsewhere just go into a Web site, but they don't have the campus at their fingertips. Ours is so much more comprehensive. When you go into the Virtual Campus, you have access to an actual university," said Wallace Pond, CEO of Colorado Technical University (CTU) which is part of CEC, in an interview published in Computer World.
Mary Lou Chernik, an M.A. student in CTU's online criminal justice program, enjoys the convenience and immediacy of the platform, as well as direct access to support. "Once you are in, there is a home page that has announcements, lists your current courses, and gives you all the contacts for admissions, career services, student accounts, the library and all of that," says Chernik. "Below that it lists a status, you can see if there is somebody from career services online or from technical support online. You can just click and can chat with them."
Clubs Connect Students Outside of Classes
Despite its name, Virtual Campus does not use virtual reality or 3D graphics. The sense of a campus is created by the numerous ways faculty, staff and students can interact. Chernik is a big fan of the clubs. She works as a field deputy for her town's medical examiner in New Mexico and credits her participation in the Criminal Justice club with inspiring her to pursue her master's degree.
"I was asked to do a presentation to the Criminal Justice Club on the difference between a medical examiner and coroner system and what it is that I do as a field deputy," says Chernik. "I was scared to death and then found that I kind of enjoyed it. I started talking to some of the instructors and found out that if I went on to get my Masters degree then I can teach online."
Students enjoy the increased sense of community, which helps establish friendships outside of the classroom. Chernik says she keeps in touch with about 30 people through the Virtual Commons feature, which allows you to see who of your friends are online when you login and begin chats with them. "It is reminiscent more of Facebook or MySpace in terms of complexity," says Dr. Gooden.
Just Scratching the Surface
CEC maintains 90 physical campuses internationally, with 40% of their students enrolled through the web-based virtual campuses of American InterContinental University, Colorado Technical University, International Academy of Design & Technology and Le Cordon Bleu North America."Our understanding of how to leverage technology to make it more exciting for students is growing," Pond told Computer World. The same article reported that CEC is looking into virtual reality and gaming technologies to deliver lessons and developing a way for students to decide the format, text or audio, in which they would like their course materials. Their next update of the Virtual Campus platform will be rolling out within the next year.
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