Surry Community College has been chosen as the permanent site for a center supporting online learning for the state's 58 community colleges.
SCC will receive more than $500,000 each year for the Quality and Assessment Center of the system's Virtual Learning Community. SCC has had a quality assessment center for distance education in the community college system for the past four years.
The center will help develop and coordinate online courses, including an immediate focus on creating online content for a developmental math program.
Surry Community College has been involved in the creation and success of the state's Virtual Learning Community from the beginning, said Candace Holder, an associate dean, director of the Quality and Assessment Center and director of distance learning at SCC.
The Virtual Learning Community was formed in 1999 and every community college offers some sort of online coursework, whether Web-based classes, telecourses, hybrid classes or other offerings.
Surry Community College offers eight degree programs in which a student can earn a degree online without ever coming to campus, including an associate in arts degree, medical office administration degree and a paralegal technology degree.
The online program also offers certificates in other programs, including accounting and business administration.
The college is working to create an online viticulture and enology degree, in which students would study online and visit vineyards but not necessarily have to come to campus.
The college has a student body of about 3,500, as well as corporate and continuing education enrollment of 18,000.
In 2007, about 2,200 students took at least one online class. That number had more than doubled to 5,452 in 2010.
The Quality and Assessment Center will be the state community college system's leader in researching and documenting standards and guidelines for distance learning, and perform other tasks related to developing best practices for distance learning.
It'll work with the Virtual Learning Community's two other permanent centers: the Professional Development Center at Wake Technical Community College and the Technology Center at Fayetteville Technical Community College.
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