Over the past several years, many approaches to online learning have been introduced with the promise of expanding access to higher education, improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and reducing the cost of a college education. Much of the popular discussion about online instruction has focused on teaching large introductory classes at universities and for-profit institutions. The use of online instruction at CIC member colleges and universities, however, offers potential solutions to an entirely different problem—how to keep upper-level courses that are essential for liberal arts majors strong and viable.

 

The Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction has three goals: 1) to explore how online humanities instruction can improve student learning outcomes; 2) to determine how smaller, independent liberal arts institutions can make more effective use of their instructional resources and whether they can reduce costs through online humanities instruction and institutional collaboration; and 3) to provide an opportunity for CIC member institutions to build their capacity for online humanities instruction and share their successes with other liberal arts colleges. The Consortium is funded through two generous grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Ithaka S+R, a leading research and consulting service for academic innovation in the digital environment, provides advice to participating institutions and serves as the project evaluator.