About Us

Colorado Community Colleges (CCCOnline) is not a college in and of itself.  Rather, it is an extension of and a service to each of the home colleges it serves.  CCCOnline offers students another learning option for complementing their on-campus experience.  By offering courses through CCCOnline, the home colleges are able to offer their students courses and programs that they may not be able to offer individually.

CCCOnline began as a consortium of the Colorado community colleges offering students a virtual educational option and greater access to college and its opportunities.  CCCOnline matriculates students from each of the colleges into its courses, thus increasing the likelihood that courses will not cancel due to low enrollment as well as establishing class enrollment at an optimum level for learning.

Students who live in rural areas or who need to balance busy work and personal lives benefit from CCCOnline’s broad selection of general education and gateway courses that will apply to their degree or certification programs at their home colleges.   Students’ courses are transcripted by their home college allowing the students seamless application of grades, financial aid and advising.

CCCOnline develops the online courses delivered to students. They have adopted an innovative team approach using faculty subject experts, instructional designers, and technology experts, and have produced outstanding examples of online courses that serve as models for the industry.   Along with course content development, CCCO staff work to investigate emerging instructional technologies and how they can be applied to effective online learning.  Courses developed by CCCOnline have received numerous national merit awards.

CCCO has been recognized for its quality and innovation. The areas most often mentioned were:

• Development of online course templates and redesign of courses for online delivery
• Faculty development — training, sharing of best practices for online instruction
• Incubator of technology — advanced research into technology and pedagogy using technology
• Synergy – Staff at CCCOnline are excited about technology and education and work together to develop new models of learning
• Business Model – CCCOnline has been nationally recognized by SHEEO, WCET, and the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT, Dr. Carol Twigg) as having a successful business model for consortial online course delivery.

CCCOnline has experienced dramatic growth and change since its creation in 1998. Student enrollment reached 47,459 annually in the 2016 academic year. Over 200 courses were offered in a variety of disciplines. Students from 14 community colleges participated in these courses earning over 158,000 credit hours.

For more information about CCCOnline, please see our Strategic Plan.