Sinclair\u2019s Distance Learning was awarded their first Bellwether award due to their completion and success of the \u201cPioneering Online Sciences Labs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several times in the past, Sinclair was nominated for the award and made the final 10, but has never won, according to Nancy Thibeault, dean of Distance Learning.<\/p>\n
The Distance Learning program is a program that makes online programs available to students, who due to scheduling or commuting issues cannot have face-to-face learning in the classroom. The program allows students the ease of accessing Sinclair\u2019s coursework and finding another way to learn outside of the classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main reason that we went down this road and developed the online labs was because our students\u2019 wanted, fully wanted to complete degrees online,\u201d Thibeault said. \u201cIn order to complete a degree online, the degrees required science that needs a lab.\u201d<\/p>\n
To try to meet the requests of the students, Thibeault said the distance learning team went out and tried to find faculty that were willing to develop an online course and investigated whether they could actually deliver online labs.
\n\u201cThey determined that they could and it went forward,\u201d Thibeault said. And they developed an online astronomy course that was very successful. Lots of students took the course and a lot of students passed the course.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the initial success of the online labs program, two more courses were added to the online labs \u2013 physiology and biology. They worked, Thibeault said, because part of the Bellwether award criteria was to \u201cmeet a need of the college.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of students that are non-traditional in some way and a lot of our students who work full-time and part-time, have families and other commitments outside of school and it is hard for students to always take all of their classes on campus,\u201d Thibeault said. \u201cSo it helps students fit all of their school work into their lives because you can work around your own personal schedule and then for some students they just prefer to take their own courses online.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the transition to semesters begins for the college, the online labs course is being transitioned to semesters as well. But even though the online labs are at a standstill, Thibeault said that there were so many people that contributed to the success of the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not an individual award, we certainly lead the effort, and do a lot to develop a program and develop a quality program. Certainly without all the people in Distance Learning, it could not have happened. People that worked with the faculty, trained the faculty and assisted the students\u2014 everybody contributed and the whole college supported it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinclair\u2019s Distance Learning was awarded their first Bellwether award due to their completion and success of the \u201cPioneering Online Sciences Labs.\u201d Several times in the past, Sinclair was nominated for the award and made the final 10, but has never won, according to Nancy Thibeault, dean of Distance Learning. The Distance Learning program is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1DI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6306"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6323,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6306\/revisions\/6323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}