Beginning Nov. 7, students wishing to register for online courses will have to complete How to Succeed in an Online Course (HTS), an online prerequisite course.
The prerequisite will be required for Sinclair Community College students who are registering for online courses for the first time in Winter Quarter 2012, according to Distance Learning Program Coordinator Elizabeth Burns.
Students who have already completed an online course will not have to take the prerequisite, according to Burns.
HTS is a free course which students can register for in the ANGEL course shell through the my.sinclair portal, Burns said. She said that the course is not for a credit, it usually takes one to three hours to complete and it is self-paced.
Once completed, students will receive a confirmation email and a certificate of completion. They may then register for online courses within five minutes, unless there are other holds on a student’s account that prevent them from registering for classes, she said.
HTS was developed by the Webcourse Development Team and Distance Learning Support, but Burns said that the idea for the course came from Sinclair students.
Before making it a required prerequisite, it was encouraged as a means for students to acclimate to the ANGEL platform and how online courses are conducted, Burns said.
“How to Succeed is a great preparation tool to learn the format of online course,” Burns said.
Feedback from multiple instructors about students being unsure of the format of an online course prompted the Distance Learning department to make it a required prerequisite, Burns said.
“[HTS is] just a way for us to help the students to get into ANGEL sooner,” Burns said.
Burns is hoping that HTS will make students aware of what will be required of them in an online course, which may help them decide if taking an online course is a good option for them.
For more information visit www.sinclair.edu/online.
The website provides students with a video and written step-by-step instructions for registering for HTS as well as a checklist of what must be completed before a student can register for an online course.
Students can also contact the Distance Learning department at (937) 512-2990.