NWCC Offers Flexible eLearning Classes for On-the-Go Students

By Sydney Briscoe and Paige Briscoe
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For busy students who love campus life but also have other obligations, a new alternative to online courses is now available. 

Northwest Mississippi Community College offers a wide range of classes to students of all ages and majors. At all NWCC campuses located in Mississippi—from Senatobia to DeSoto to Oxford—there is an assortment of eLearning courses provided.

Phyllis Johnson, Dean of eLearning said eLearning was implemented at Northwest Community College in 1999. The purpose of online courses is to increase access to Northwest courses by adults and other students who cannot attend campus-based classes because of work, family responsibilities or distance from campus, according to their website.

The eLearning program started off with only 100 students but has since grown to 2,500 students. This doesn’t include the 700 dual enrollment high school aged students. The program offers 350 online courses for all types of majors, ranging from speech to business.

Photo by Sydney Briscoe.

Johnson said she began working with the program in 2005 as a human growth and development professor. Even though she is now the dean of eLearning, she still teaches online courses to keep a close eye on the program. Johnson said she loves teaching and interacting with students both inside and outside of the classroom.

“The program’s focus was first on the number of enrolled students, but now the program’s goal is on the equality of the courses,” Johnson said. “All of Northwest’s online eLearning classes all meet the criteria of ‘Quality Matters’ making them the very best online classes possible.”

“Quality Matters (QM),” is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to define and maintain quality assurance in online learning.

NWCC is always receiving excellent feed back and satisfaction from students about these digital courses, Johnson said.

“This past summer I took accounting and macroeconomics online through eLearning here in Oxford,” said Austin Welge, a NWCC eLearning student and uunior at The University of Mississippi. “[Northwest] gave me the great opportunity of balancing my social life, job and school work all in one,” Welge said.

Welge said he would highly recommend pursuing eLearning to any student after having a wonderful experience with the program.

For more information on NWCC’s eLearning, visit North West Mississippi Community College.