By: Jean Chorazyczewski, InCommon Academy Director
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
IAM Online: April 2025 Speaker Spotlight
Course sharing across institutions is emerging as a powerful strategy for expanding academic offerings, as it boosts retention rates and creates new revenue streams.
As noted in a recent Inside Higher Ed report, institutions that implement effective course-sharing models have seen significant benefits, with some colleges tripling summer enrollment and quadrupling revenue while giving students access to courses they need to stay on track for graduation.
While these outcomes are promising, one challenge is mostly invisible until students encounter it: what happens when 20 public universities join forces to create collaborative programs, but each requires its own separate login credentials, email addresses, and passwords?
The upcoming IAM Online webinar on Wednesday, Apr. 16, at 1 p.m. ET entitled “IDEA Report Out – A Strategy for Cross-Institutional Course Sharing,” will provide a progress update on the partnership between the Innovative Digital Education Alliance (IDEA) and InCommon to tackle this challenge.
After months of collaborative research, stakeholder engagement, and solution development, this report-out session will showcase how the team creates a federated identity management strategy that can transform the student experience across institutional boundaries.
Speakers
IDEA
executive director, IDEA
vice president for IT and CIO, North Dakota State University
associate vice president of Trust & Identity, Internet2
MODERATOR
Q&A
Ahead of this progress report session, Amanda Burris and Morgan Jones shared insights about this initiative.
IDEA students benefit from flexible online programs, gaining access to
diverse courses and expert faculty across institutions, which expands their learning
options.
Faculty collaboration across universities also enriches course content and
academic perspectives, enhancing teaching methods and research opportunities.
For
administrators, this partnership streamlines program offerings and allows for shared resources,
creating a more efficient, cost-effective approach to education.
Additionally, the
consortium promotes a community-focused learning experience for students and faculty alike.
The ideal experience for students would be seamless, flexible, and
integrated. Students would have a central online platform where they can easily access all of
their courses without needing to manage multiple email addresses, login credentials, and
passwords. This eliminates the need to navigate multiple websites or systems, streamlining the
process and allowing them to spend their energy learning.
Here are some of our
guiding principles for designing a federated experience:
1. Interoperability
and Flexibility: The system must allow smooth course access between
universities. It should also be flexible enough to adapt to diverse systems and administrative
processes from each university.
2. Student-Centric Design: Students
should have easy access to courses and resources, regardless of their home institution and
location. The experience should be designed to be simple to use, with accessibility features and
support for all students’ learning needs.
3. Collaborative IT
Engagement: To ensure quality across courses, there must be ongoing
collaboration among IT professionals across institutions to share best practices and identify
barriers.
Here are some lessons from IDEA’s implementation of program sharing and
collaborative learning:
1. Establish Clear Governance and Standards:
A strong governance framework with consistent academic standards across institutions ensures a
high-quality student experience.
2. Foster Collaboration and Trust:
Successful course sharing relies on collaboration and trust between institutions, facilitated by
communication and regular engagement.
3. Create Student-Centric
Solutions: A streamlined, student-friendly system with clear communication and
support across institutions enhances the student experience.
4. Adaptability
and Continuous Improvement: Course-sharing models must be flexible and
adaptable to changes like new technologies or student needs, with regular quality
assessments.
5. Scalable Solutions for Long-Term Growth: To
accommodate growth, course-sharing models should be designed to scale, ensuring infrastructure
and processes can expand without compromising quality or experience.
Why This Matters – Join Us for this IAM Online
For institutions considering or already implementing cross-institutional educational partnerships, this webinar offers insights into the progress being made to address one of the most challenging aspects of course sharing. The webinar showcases how identity and access management can transform from a technical hurdle into an enabler of educational innovation.
For InCommon, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, this partnership demonstrates a renewed commitment to defining “a new future for those we serve, with those we serve.” The lessons learned and approaches developed through this initiative have implications far beyond a single consortium.
Join us on Wednesday, Apr. 16, at 1 p.m. ET to hear this important progress report on how federated identity management can play a pivotal role in the future of collaborative higher education and what steps your institution might take to remove invisible barriers to student success.
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