(a) (1) The California Online Community College is hereby established.

(2) The California Online Community College shall be under the administration of the board of governors.

(3) The California Online Community College shall fulfill the purposes of this part, which includes the creation of an organized system of accessible, flexible, and high-quality online content, courses, and programs focused on providing industry-valued credentials compatible with the vocational and educational needs of Californians who are not currently accessing higher education. These courses and programs shall lead to a pathway offered at a traditional community college.

(4) The college shall be considered a district and community college within the California Community Colleges system and the state’s public system of higher education.

(5) For purposes of Section 14 of Article IX and Sections 8 and 8.5 of Article XVI of the California Constitution, “community college districts” shall include the California Online Community College established pursuant to paragraph (1).

(b) The college shall be guided by principles and procedures developed by the chancellor’s office and established by the board of governors. These guiding principles shall include all of the following:

(1) Offering working adults additional access to affordable, quality higher education opportunities with labor market value, especially industry-valued credentials based on competencies leading to employment, earnings gain, or upward mobility in the workplace, and not just courses leading to degrees and certificates.

(2) Providing working adults with the necessary conditions for success with flexible course scheduling, start and stop-off times, technology-enabled support communities to deepen engagement and foster social belonging, and short-term credentials as demonstrations of academic progress.

(3) Supporting student success by developing and implementing innovative teaching and student support methodologies and technologies, including leveraging student data to improve teaching and learning and to support individual student progression, providing quality onboarding of students to support their career exploration, goal-setting, educational planning, and support needs, and leveraging relevant technology resources where possible.

(4) Enhancing systemwide student success efforts by using the college’s innovative teaching and student support methodologies and technologies to inform professional development opportunities available to the rest of the community college system.

(5) Ensuring faculty roles are based on the skills needs of the college, such as online instructors, course developers, assessment developers, student mentors, reviewers, and 24-hour virtual classroom support, and ensuring flexible hiring processes that emphasize use of part-time and full-time faculty with field expertise to support emerging programs and shifts in labor market demand.

(6) Addressing barriers faced by working adult students to access higher education, including, but not necessarily limited to, financial aid support, dealing with working learners’ prior educational debts that may impede release of transcripts and credits, pathway navigational help, contextualized academic preparation, navigation of family needs and other supports, and coaching and mentoring.

(7) Aligning the college’s efforts with the broader goals outlined in the California Community Colleges system’s Vision for Success, or other strategic visions outlined by the board of governors, and holding the college accountable for its students’ outcomes and ensuring improved data collection on employment outcomes.

(8) Offering working adults additional access to affordable, high-quality higher education opportunities with labor market value that lead to additional educational opportunities provided by either the California Online Community College or by another California community college.

(c) The college may collaborate and work closely with other agencies, industry partners, and experts to ensure the success of the college, including, but not necessarily limited to, all of the following:

(1) Students the college serves, to ensure the college meets their needs.

(2) Community-based organizations, to provide student outreach to working learners across California.

(3) Statewide public agencies, such as the State Department of Social Services, the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency, and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, to incorporate strategies to provide immigrants and other groups with barriers to employment with educational opportunities.

(4) Representatives from the labor community, to provide higher wage jobs for journey-level workers or augment apprenticeship training.

(5) Industry and employer partners, including statewide public agency employers, state associations, large employers, and regional consortia of employers, to inform content that is driven by the demands of the labor market and relevant to regional workforce needs.

(6) The California Community Colleges, to leverage their existing career technical education regional consortia, the Strong Workforce Program regional consortia, and adult education regional consortia.

(7) Two-year and four-year institutions or a consortia, to promote recognition of student skills and knowledge toward degree pathways as well as a way to increase student access and transfers to additional higher educational opportunities.

(d) The college shall conduct all of the following activities:

(1) The college shall offer at least three program pathways within the first three years of program implementation, developed exclusively to serve the population of students not yet accessing postsecondary education or without their first industry-valued credential. The college shall create new programs that are not duplicative of programs offered at other local community colleges.

(2) To ensure student success, the college shall also do all of the following:

(A) Establish competency-based educational opportunities that recognize students’ prior learning and help students advance toward a credential. Competencies shall be established with the advice of appropriate faculty and employers, and shall be focused on knowledge and skills a student must demonstrate to pass a course and to earn a credential. Examples of prior learning include prior military service, registered apprenticeship training, industry-recognized certifications, or experience from other careers. Assessments shall be developed to enable students to demonstrate mastery and shall be mapped to the competencies.

(B) Supplement registered apprenticeship programs and the California Apprenticeship Initiative training as appropriate, and create apprenticeship instructor upskilling training, courses, and programs that are valued by the labor and employer communities.

(C) Identify opportunities to develop short-term, stackable credentials and industry certifications with labor market value. The college shall also leverage existing articulation agreements and develop new articulation agreements with other California Community Colleges, the California State University, the University of California, and other accredited public and independent institutions to facilitate stackability into credit-bearing courses and pathways.

(D) Develop, adapt, or apply technology to meet the ongoing needs of students.

(E) Develop a Research and Development Unit that utilizes current and future learning sciences technology, assesses data metrics within the college’s technological infrastructure to gauge student progress in a course or pathway, informs instructional and support strategies, and improves the functionality of the underlying technology used by the college.

(F) Redesign transcripts in a digital, verifiable format that links coursework, credentials, and competencies to track a student’s entire body of learning in one document. Any redesigned transcript technology shall be a part of the integrated technology portfolio of the chancellor’s office and made available to any campus of the California Community Colleges.

(G) Identify shortcomings in the student experience for unserved and underserved students and develop technological and programmatic solutions to address the gap.

(H) Distribute gains in data and learning science and effective technology-enabled tools and resources throughout the California Community Colleges.

(3) The college shall utilize and leverage, where appropriate, the programs and activities of the chancellor’s office, including the Online Education Initiative and the Zero-Textbook-Cost Degree Grant Program and Open Educational Resources, the Strong Workforce Program, and the Guided Pathways Program framework. This shall include both of the following activities and practices:

(A) Organize newly developed content, courses, programs, and students supports, consistent with the Guided Pathways Program framework, that lead to a pathway at a traditional community college.

(B) Utilize the Online Education Initiative’s existing social and technological infrastructure for students, instructors, and administrators, including all of the following:

(i) Contribute to the Initiative’s common course management platform for online content and classes.

(ii) Utilize and develop comprehensive, specialized student supports that are technology-enabled for scale and focused on the student experience, including, but not limited to, pathway navigation, online tutoring, online mentoring, and online help desk support. These supports, as well as the instructional delivery, shall be made available during nontraditional working hours to promote student success for the focus population.

(iii) Leverage free or low-cost, high-quality online educational materials for students through Open Educational Resources and the Zero-Textbook-Cost Degree Grant. The college shall ensure any open educational resources that are developed are available for use by any California community college through the system’s common learning management platform.

(iv) Enhance systemwide student success efforts by using the college’s innovative teaching and student support methodologies and technologies to inform professional development opportunities available to the rest of the system through the Online Education Initiative and the Institutional Effectiveness Partnership Initiative.

(e) The college shall not enter into College and Career Access Pathways partnerships pursuant to Section 76004.

(f) (1) It is the intent of the Legislature that the California Online Community College create unique content and deliver it in a manner that is not duplicative of programs offered at other local community colleges.

(2) For each new program created, the chancellor’s office shall notify the Legislature and Department of Finance on how the program is not duplicative of programs offered at other community colleges.

(g) Upon the establishment of an Academic Senate for the California Online Community College, the faculty shall review the Online Education Initiative Protocols for online content and adopt as appropriate.

(Amended by Stats. 2019, Ch. 497, Sec. 85. (AB 991) Effective January 1, 2020.)