The Strategy of Course Sharing
It's fantastic to see the discussion around inter-campus course sharing gaining traction, as highlighted by the recent Inside Higher Ed article on PASSHE's initiatives. While it often emerges from challenging circumstances like budget cuts or enrollment declines, at Indiana University, we've long embraced course sharing not as a last resort, but as a strategic pillar for future growth and student success. Course sharing was an instrumental part of the founding of IU Online.
Sharing as Strategy: IU's Proactive Approach to Course Sharing
When conversations turn to course sharing, the immediate reactions can unfortunately be negative: "cuts," "closures," or "violations of faculty ownership." Yet, IU's experience over more than a decade tells a different story. Long before the most recent demographic shifts, IU Online deliberately fostered course sharing across its campuses to:
Expand Access: Dramatically increase the availability of diverse online course sections for all students across all campuses.
Build Collaborative Programs: Create seamless, multi-campus academic programs, both undergraduate and graduate, leveraging collective strengths.
Our foresight wasn't just about efficiency or market responsiveness; it was about rapidly adapting to the rising demand for online education within our existing academic framework. This strategic vision has yielded remarkable benefits.
The Benefits of Academic Collaboration Across Campuses
With over a decade of experience, IU has seen course sharing foster unexpected and profound positives:
Broader Course Selection: Students across all campuses gain access to a wider array of specialized courses and sections than any single campus could offer alone.
Enhanced Academic Dialogue: Sharing courses creates an open forum for faculty to discuss and align course and program outcomes. It’s like campuses providing an "external review" for each other's offerings, driving continuous improvement.
Inclusive Academic Community: Initial mistrust among faculty separated by geography and distinct campus missions has started to transform into collegiality and genuine collaboration. Faculty are now self-organizing to work together, sharing expertise and best practices across the family of campuses.
Richer Learning Experience: Students benefit from a broader pool of expert voices. Instead of just one or two faculty in a subject area on a regional campus, students can access a much larger network of specialized expertise from across the entire IU system.
The Technology Backbone: A Unified SIS
It's crucial to acknowledge a silent hero in this success story: the unified technology platform. Our ability to seamlessly share courses and programs owes a huge debt to the foresight of our UITS colleagues who kept all IU campuses in the same Student Information System (SIS) instance. This unified technological foundation is not just about efficiency; it's fundamental to enabling the fluid course sharing that benefits students and faculty alike.
Building this culture and infrastructure wasn't easy, but for IU, it was anchored in a belief that online education would become a core element over time. The benefits are striking, extending far beyond mere economic efficiency. It’s a blueprint for how institutions can strategically leverage collaboration for a more vibrant, inclusive, and effective future in higher education.
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