“…We have seen an increase in overall student success, with 10% less students dropping and a 6% increase in students finishing a course with a C or better…”

Linda Williams, Professor of Business, Tidewater Community College


Lumen’s Faculty Roundtable sessions bring together faculty who have already adopted Lumen-supported OER courses with those who are exploring this path. In a Roundtable on October 19th, 2017, we invited long-time Lumen collaborator, OER champion, and business professor Linda Williams of Tidewater Community College to share her experiences and advice about using Lumen’s Waymaker platform for business courses. You may:

  • View a video recording of the Faculty Roundtable
  • Download presentation slides
  • Read key takeaways from our discussion
  • Request more information about this OER course

View Roundtable Recording

Download Slides

Use this Slideshare link to download Roundtable slides.

Highlights and Key Takeaways

See the Q&A below for key takeaways from Linda’s roundtable conversation:

Q. What are some problems you wanted to address when deciding to adopt OER resources?

While considering the needs that students have for affordable textbooks and course materials, there is also an emphasis on addressing issues of “Day 1 Access,” or in other words, enabling students to have full access to all materials they need to succeed in a course by the first day of classes. In addition to this, an ever-growing concern is how to acknowledge this idea of a “stale” textbook, and replace it with content that truly engages students.

Q. What do you really like about the Waymaker business courses and why should faculty consider them?

One of the benefits of Lumen-supported Waymaker courses is that full-time and adjunct faculty can easily go into pre-populated courses with discussion boards, quizzes, assignments, etc. ready to go, while having the ability to customize and select aspects of the course that best suit their needs.  This creates consistency across all sections, yet allows faculty the freedom to make the course their own. The faculty messaging tools also allows instructors to send students automated, customized messages to congratulate them on a job well done (such as a good score on a quiz) or to nudge them to study a bit more.

Q.Do you have any advice for faculty who are looking at adopting this course or other Lumen materials?

Students have everything built into the courseware: formative/summative assessments, textbook, videos, exercises, etc. Take time to look at the amount of interactive content that is provided in the course and really examine the functionality of the faculty messaging tools when developing your student engagement plan. In addition, the interactive content contains high-quality, professional videos. Really consider looking at where those videos can support student learning.