I would like to create a Hybrid Study Skills course for use at our Klamath Falls OSU Open Campus site (and hopefully others in the future).
OSU Open Campus is a program which focuses on three specific goals: career and college readiness, degree completion, and professional and economic development. There are currently six OSU Open Campus sites throughout the state: Tillamook, Hood River and Wasco County, Madras, Prineville, Coos and Curry County, and Klamath County. Currently, Klamath Falls’ focus is on degree completion.
In 2013, OSU made a partnership with Klamath Community College to provide support for students completing an online OSU Bachelor’s in Agricultural Sciences degree after completing their Associate’s degree at KCC. This can save the student over $50,000.
As a part of this program, a student completes their first 120 credits at KCC. The student then transitions to complete their final 60 credits via OSU’s Extended Campus (Ecampus) online courses. Since the majority of classes offered at KCC are face-to-face, it can be a significant transition to the strictly online classes OSU offers to complete the Bachelor’s degree.
Creating a hybrid study skills class would ease the transition from strictly face-to-face to strictly online classes. The course would blend elements of both styles of learning to slowly accustom students to online learning while bringing to light the advantages of working with two institutions. For example, OSU offers online chatting with tutors for online students. KCC has a Learning Resource Center to assist its students. Basically, pooling the resources from both institutions would give the student a greater support system, and, in turn, improve their success. This course would allow the student to reflect on which subject areas they could use help in as well as recognize the different study methods necessary for online classes.
I intend to use the online portion of the class to introduce material and allow students to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of their current study regimens. Online time would also be spent discovering the resources available from OSU. Face-to-face time would be spent sharing the study skills that are or are not working for individuals, brainstorming possible strategies for improving academic success, as well as exploring resources available on-site at Klamath Community College.
Overall, the goal is to make the transition from face-to-face classes to online classes less daunting to the students and, therefore, improve student success.
