We're excited to announce new Collaborative Programs in Parchment Course Sharing! Now, groups of institutions can efficiently create shared academic programs that expand opportunity beyond what a single institution can provide alone.
What's new
Collaborative Programs lets groups of institutions, whether from a state system, regional consortium, or smaller set of partner schools, more efficiently create and manage shared academic programs. For learners, this simplifies program discovery, course selection, and cross-enrollment to help them stay on track to earn their credential.
Coordination now lives in one place, through a new centralized administration section and two new administrator roles: a Collaborative Manager, who sets up the collaborative, designates contributors from each participating institution, and adds programs, and Collaborative Contributors, who map their institutions’ courses to the program requirements. Together, they replace what used to be time-consuming, institution-by-institution manual administration.
There's a new experience for learners, too. They can now browse the collaborative programs their institution belongs to, see which shared courses count toward each program's requirements, and easily cross-enroll directly from their Course Sharing interface.
Why it matters
Shared academic programs sound great on paper, but they're hard to run at scale. Without a central system, program administrators end up tracking requirements in spreadsheets, chasing partner schools for course lists, and hoping nothing falls out of sync from term to term, while learners have limited visibility into the courses they need to take to fulfill requirements.
For state systems and regional consortia in particular, Collaborative Programs strengthens what's already possible with Course Sharing. Institutions that couldn't offer a full program on their own can now combine strengths with partner schools, and give learners a clear, guided path to a credential that spans more than one campus.
Key benefits
- Make shared academic programs easier to scale
Reduce the complexity of launching and managing shared programs, helping institutions expand offerings and create new enrollment opportunities through collaboration. - Simplify collaborative program management
Centralize program administration through streamlined workflows that reduce manual effort and improve visibility across participating institutions. - Establish clear ownership across institutions
Strengthen governance and accountability with purpose-built Collaborative Manager and Collaborative Contributor roles and permissions. - Guide learners from program discovery to completion
Give learners clear visibility into available programs, requirements, and applicable courses, with direct cross-enrollment into the courses they need.
How it works
Collaborative Programs lives in a new Partnerships and Collaboratives section of the admin panel. It's off by default, and only administrators assigned the Collaborative Manager or Collaborative Contributor role will see it. Everyone else's experience stays the same.
To turn it on, a customer's primary contact can simply request enablement through their Parchment Customer Success Manager or Product team member, who then assigns an existing administrator the Collaborative Manager role. From there:
- The Collaborative Manager builds out the collaborative, designates administrators from each participating institution as Collaborative Contributors, and sets up programs.
2. Each Collaborative Contributor adds their courses to the matching requirements.
3. Once published, learners can browse, check eligibility, and cross-enroll, with no separate application and no waiting for paperwork to catch up.
Take a deeper dive. Watch this step-by-step walkthrough of how to create a collaborative program:
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