Hillsdale has enrolled 66 high school students in online courses for college credit this semester in a test program that eventually could become widely available to high school students everywhere.
The venture seeks to fulfill the college’s mission to provide a Hillsdale education to anyone who’s “willing and able” in a time when a lot of students are willing, but might not be able to be admitted, according to Director of Online Learning Kyle Murnen.
“There aren’t a lot of schools like Hillsdale. If you want to study the things we study here, it can be hard to find them,” Murnen said. “We are taking some students that would otherwise be unable to receive the education.”
The three-credit classes for the test group cost $300 per student, and include two sections on American government and two sections on American history, according to Associate Director of Admissions Matt Sauer.
The American government sections are live on Zoom and led by graduate students Joey Barretta and Stephen Goniprow. The history courses include a recorded component featuring Professors of History Wilfred McClay and Brad Birzer available on Canvas. The group also offers group Zoom meetings with Assistant Professors of History Miles Smith IV and Jason Gehrke.
“The hope was to cut down on the need to do live instruction three days a week,” Sauer said. “But this is a test, so we’re figuring out if that’s actually going to save them some time or if it’s the same amount of work.”
Students can use the courses as elective credits at Hillsdale or to satisfy graduation requirements at other schools, similar to with Advanced Placement classes. The courses, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, do not satisfy core requirements at Hillsdale, nor are they meant to replace Hillsdale’s dual-enrollment program, which currently allows high school students within a 25-mile radius of campus to take courses in person, according to Murnen.
Sauer said juniors and seniors from any school environment across the country and internationally can apply. The application includes an essay and requires a GPA of 3.4 or higher.
Sauer said the COVID-19 pandemic began the idea of online for-credit classes for high school students.
“Not that we prefer online teaching, but if we could offer some of the core classes to people who are still in high school, they can transfer where they go while exposing them to our faculty and to our way of teaching,” Sauer said. “The dream is to do online learning but to make it as Hillsdalian as possible.”
Sauer sent an email last October to Hillsdale students who were homeschooled, asking them to spread the word about the online courses to other homeschooled students.
“Our goal was to get 60 students, and we have 66,” Sauer said. “We have two sections of each class, so we had to increase the capacity for the government course from 15 to 18 students each.”
McClay and Birzer recorded 28 lectures for the recorded section of the history class covering Christopher Columbus through the American Civil War and Reconstruction last August and September, according to Birzer. In addition, they have recorded 26 of 28 lectures for the second course in the series, covering America’s Gilded Age through the present.
“Even though the Hillsdale College American Heritage course is a one-semester course, we made it a two-semester course online,” Birzer said.
“It’s more typical at colleges to offer two semesters of American history – so we followed that pattern rather than Hillsdale’s.”
Birzer said that he, McClay, and Murnen designed the course and chose topics, keeping the American Heritage reader as a background and touchstone for the project.
“This is something new for the college, and we thought constantly about establishing the best precedents for other courses that might be attempted in the future,” McClay said.
McClay said he and Birzer wanted to project the charm and intimacy of Hillsdale College, despite the fact that the online medium can be hostile to both of those things.
“One of the ways we did that was to feature dialogues between the two of us periodically,” McClay said. “It is a great way to show high school students that history is full of debates and differing perspectives, and is much more lively and interesting than the cut-and-dried version that too often is presented to them.”
Birzer praised the video marketing team.
“The camera crew was simply fantastic,” Birzer said. “They made Bill and me feel really comfortable in front of the camera.”
Sauer said the program’s online elements are going better than anticipated overall.
“The professors seem to think the students are doing well,” Sauer said. “We’re really hopeful that we’ll be able to continue the test in the fall with another section of American history, and see where it goes from there.”
Applications for the fall 2023 test group will begin this spring, Sauer said. The college will use an internal application again, though it is also reaching out to some Christian schools that expressed interest.
“We’re hoping that people who took American history will take part two, though we don’t have enough of a class offering to make everyone repeat customers,” Sauer said.
He reiterated that Hillsdale does not want to rush into expanding this program too quickly.
“You run the risk of it becoming so large that it’s severely diminished in its impact and its dimension,” he said. “We want to go slow and steady to make sure we are proud to put Hillsdale’s name on it.”
Murnen said the program has been successful so far.
“We’ve proved we can do it,” he said. “In the fall, we want to refine the processes, and see what we learn and if it is a beneficial thing for the students.”
