(June 6, 2013) – Lone Star College-Online was recognized as a gold award winner as part of the recent IMS Global Learning Consortium annual worldwide competition.
The award winners were announced at this year’s Learning Impact 2013, an annual awards program and conference that focuses on improving the impact of technology in addressing educational challenges: improving access, affordability, and quality. The event was held earlier this month in San Diego.
Lone Star College System was recognized for its LSC-Online entry titled “Student Support Services Drives Student Success,” which outlined the college’s unique solution to supporting students in fully online courses as well as those who take hybrid courses – part online and part classroom instruction.
“At Lone Star College, we have taken a proactive approach by first identifying our online students’ needs, and then using this information to design and implement a robust, and rich suite of integrated resources and services focused on helping them succeed and excel in online courses.” said Dr. Marwin Britto, executive director of LSC-Online.
The comprehensive LSC-Online support resources and services recognized by the consortium include Smarter Measure, Online Advising Chat, Management Advising, Starfish Early Alert and Smarthinking Online Tutoring – all accessible through the students’ MyLoneStar portal. Each of these elements provides a specific service to students from assessments prior to enrollment and easily accessible advising, to early alerts assisting at-risk students and on-demand tutoring.
”Student success is our number one priority,” said Britto. “We’ve found that this multi-faceted approach to supporting and empowering our online students throughout the entire learning process has contributed to higher completion, success and retention rates.”
The prestigious Learning Impact awards are unique in that they recognize the use of technology in context. Nominations include not only the technology, but also the results achieved by an educational institution to improve learning. Each entry is evaluated according to eight criteria of impact, including improving access to learning, improving affordability of learning, and improving the quality of learning.
LSC-Online has received several other awards recognizing its exemplary and successful approach to online student support. These include the 2012 Sloan-C Effective Practice International Award, the 2013 Instructional Technology Council National Award for Excellence in eLearning and a 2013 finalist for the National University Technology Network Distance Education Innovation Award.
IMS Global Learning Consortium is a nonprofit organization that advances technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. IMS members are leading suppliers, institutions and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives.
LSC-Online supports online faculty and students, and manages the delivery of online courses and online components of hybrid courses. The content and transferability of online and hybrid courses are the same as traditional on-campus courses.
Lone Star College System has been opening doors to a better community for 40 years. Founded in 1973, LSCS remains steadfast in its commitment to student success and credential completion. Today, with 78,000 students in credit classes, and a total enrollment of more than 90,000, Lone Star College System is the largest institution of higher education in the Houston area and the fastest-growing community college system in the nation. Dr. Richard Carpenter is the chancellor of LSCS, which consists of six colleges including LSC-CyFair, LSC-Kingwood, LSC-Montgomery, LSC-North Harris, LSC-Tomball and LSC-University Park , Lone Star Corporate College, and LSC-Online. To learn more visit LoneStar.edu.
###