Classes to be offered via cell phone
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Even as online classes gain in popularity, Louisiana’s community colleges are going further, offering courses on cell phones starting next year.
Students with newer models like iPhone and BlackBerry phones can choose in January from 21 pilot program classes in business and general education, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, or LCTCS, announced Tuesday.
The classes will be available through one Web site — www.lctcsonline.edu — at Baton Rouge Community College or any of the state’s nine community colleges.
“It’s exciting when it’s a vision you’re not sure is genius or half-baked,” LCTCS President Joe May said.
But after partnering with AT&T and Pearson education firm and its eCollege platform, May said he realized the new LCTCSOnline project is the future, if not entirely the present.
The goal is to provide educational access to more geographically-bound students who have children and jobs, May said, particularly in the 25-to-64 age range.
“We realized it was a big vision, and we realized it was something that hadn’t been done before,” May said.
Cell phone-accessible classes are a new trend in Japan, but not in the United States. May, as well as Pearson and AT&T officials, said they are unaware of anything similar in the U.S.
LCTCS campuses enroll nearly 60,000 students, but the goal is to have 160,000 by 2013.
“We’re not going to get there by traditional means,” May said. “We’re not going to get there by opening buildings.”
The Louisiana Board of Regents invested the first $500,000 in the project and Pearson will be paid from a portion of the $63 per credit hour tuition costs, May said.
State Commissioner of Higher Education Sally Clausen called LCTCSOnline an “amazing” achievement.
But she tempered the initial expectations. Problems and challenges are inevitable, she said.
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