Distance Education Parterships

An additional promising approach is not well known but has already shown real results. In this model, external organizations provide portions of the online courses and communities of practice, including a network of peer instructors worldwide working in similar programs. The Cisco Networking Academy Program is a good example of this model. It has already scaled to serve more than 1 million students, in 165 countries, through more than 10,000 partner institutions. In this model, the educational institution offers the courses within its curriculum, allowing students to pursue industry-relevant certifications and even to use the courses as part of their degree programs. The schools must have or purchase lab equipment, but otherwise the schools benefit from Cisco’s decades-plus investment in curriculum, technology platforms, and growing experience with games and assessments. Established in 1997, Networking Academy is Cisco’s “largest and longest-running Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program,” meaning that there is no charge for public and nonprofit institutions. Despite the program’s size, the nature of Networking Academy is often misunderstood: it is not a corporate training program but is, rather, a nonprofit .