Here's what I found in my community college experience of 5-7 years ago:
The experienced instructors were providing expert-level instruction for the tech classes, such as "CompTIA A+ prep", Cisco CCNA prep, and Linux Red Hat basic-level certification prep. The instructors were highly credentialed and qualified, brought to the table plenty of industry experience, generously invested their time developing custom curriculum and helping students, and could competently answer all our questions during lectures.
By contrast, I took a Calculus course because it was required, and this course was largely delegated to Pearson. We purchased a textbook which included an online component (not cheap at all) and the online component was where we'd find lectures and tests. Our instructor was assigned to assist us with extraordinary questions we couldn't answer through the curriculum itself. In fact, since the course was 100% online, I never met nor saw my instructor. She was assigned to a faraway campus which I never visited. Imagine my surprise when it came time for finals and she informed us that we'd need to show up there in person. I protested, and my disability-assistance office came to the rescue. We arranged a privately proctored final, but it was an extraordinary exception that we shouldn't have needed, considering the online nature of the class.
The Pearson curriculum was OK, but I found myself supplementing knowledge through Khan Academy, and particularly instrumental was the on-campus tutoring center, where I got 1:1 personal attention with each and every problem that stumped me (and there were many.) I also discovered that I could basically brute-force every question on the Pearson quizzes and approach 100% just by guessing. Our assigned instructor was more or less superfluous.
Interestingly, after I met those prerequisites, they reduced/eliminated the Calculus requirements for my major/degree track, and nobody else was required to take such advnced classes.
The experienced instructors were providing expert-level instruction for the tech classes, such as "CompTIA A+ prep", Cisco CCNA prep, and Linux Red Hat basic-level certification prep. The instructors were highly credentialed and qualified, brought to the table plenty of industry experience, generously invested their time developing custom curriculum and helping students, and could competently answer all our questions during lectures.
By contrast, I took a Calculus course because it was required, and this course was largely delegated to Pearson. We purchased a textbook which included an online component (not cheap at all) and the online component was where we'd find lectures and tests. Our instructor was assigned to assist us with extraordinary questions we couldn't answer through the curriculum itself. In fact, since the course was 100% online, I never met nor saw my instructor. She was assigned to a faraway campus which I never visited. Imagine my surprise when it came time for finals and she informed us that we'd need to show up there in person. I protested, and my disability-assistance office came to the rescue. We arranged a privately proctored final, but it was an extraordinary exception that we shouldn't have needed, considering the online nature of the class.
The Pearson curriculum was OK, but I found myself supplementing knowledge through Khan Academy, and particularly instrumental was the on-campus tutoring center, where I got 1:1 personal attention with each and every problem that stumped me (and there were many.) I also discovered that I could basically brute-force every question on the Pearson quizzes and approach 100% just by guessing. Our assigned instructor was more or less superfluous.
Interestingly, after I met those prerequisites, they reduced/eliminated the Calculus requirements for my major/degree track, and nobody else was required to take such advnced classes.