A consortium of adult-serving colleges and universities, including Southwestern College Professional Studies, has launched a new initiative aimed at adult learners seeking better information in choosing an institution offering degrees through distance education. 

The initiative, called Transparency by Design, launched a Web site that gives adult learners new information to accelerate and better inform their decision making process.  The Web site, www.collegechoicesforadults.org, offers adult learners information on program-level learning outcomes, how outcomes are measured, and how students performed on these measures.  In the next stage, still in development, adult learners will have access to student satisfaction, progress rate, and other data on each member institution participating in the initiative. 

“Since the mid ’90s, Southwestern College Professional Studies has been a leader in serving the educational needs of adult learners,” says Karen Pedersen, vice president for Southwestern College Professional Studies, “so being part of this initiative allows us to showcase our strengths and bring forward data that has only been available internally to prospective adult learners worldwide.”

“Adults make up nearly 85 percent of all higher education enrollments today,” said Michael Offerman, president emeritus of Capella University and chair of Transparency by Design’s executive committee. “Our goal with the initiative is to enable adults to make informed choices about higher education options by providing them with program-level learning outcomes, measurements, and results that are difficult to find elsewhere,” said Offerman.

The Transparency by Design initiative that resulted in the College Choices for Adults web site was born out of The President’s Forum, a consortium of both traditional and non-traditional institutions sharing information about successful operation in an online environment.  WCET (formerly the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications), a division of  the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), was chosen to provide quality assurance on the standards of data reporting jointly developed by the charter institutions of the Transparency by Design initiative.

The initial Web site launch included data for each institution and will grow over time.  In addition, upcoming features to be added in the future include:
 Third-party test of general education skills administered by Educational Testing Services (ETS);
 Third-party assessment of satisfaction of online learners administered through Noel-Levitz;
 Results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE);
 Enhanced search functionality within the site;
 Comparative data analysis tools to help adult learners focus in on selection factors important to their educational goals;
 Additional data from each member institutions; and
 Data from new member institutions joining the initiative after the initial launch.

“We want student-centered tools and data.  This isn’t about colleges promoting their wares, but creating an environment where we can help adult students make more informed choices on attending college, what opportunities there are to learn at a distance, and what institutions match up on their needs.  We’re excited to roll out more services to help students make informed choices,” says Russ Poulin, project director of Transparency by Design and associate director of WCET.

Transparency by Design is funded by a grant from Lumina Foundation for Education and by contributions from each of the member institutions.  Charter members of the initiative are:  American InterContinental University Online, American Public University System, Capella University, Charter Oak State College, Colorado Technical University, Excelsior College, Franklin University, Kaplan University, Regis University, Rio Salado College, Southwestern College Professional Studies, Union Institute, and University and Western Governors University.  Also, new members to the consortium include Ashford University and University of the Rockies.  Data from recent members, along with members that choose to join the initiative at a later date, will be added to the College Choices for Adults web site regularly.

“This is the first initiative of its kind to focus on adult learners, so it was in keeping with our mission that we take a lead role in the state of Kansas as a charter member of College Choices for Adults,” Pedersen says.