Coaching and Student Support

We work closely with Instructional Connections (www.instructionalconnections.org) (IC), an independent services company, and regularly refer our partner universities to them for academic support services. IC provides high-quality adjunct professors or academic coaches, all holding masters or doctorate degrees, to support the faculty and students of our partner universities. IC recruits, pre-qualifies and presents applicants for approval to university partners. It contracts and pays selected coaches on behalf of the university.

Academic coaches help instructors by grading assignments, leading or participating in online discussions, and supporting instruction in other ways as faculty directs. The course professor, or instructor of record, remains responsible for course content, leading the course and assigning grades.

Academic coaches are a key component of our strategy and enable program scalability and very high completion rates in our partners’ programs. The vast majority of graduating students say that the mentoring support and encouragement they received from coaches was paramount to their success.

We were the first higher education service company to implement the “academic coaching model” at scale in North America. All of our partner universities use this model, which has been carefully evaluated and supported by regional accreditors.