Gateway Mastery Project

What are Gateway courses?

Gateway courses are courses that most students enroll in regardless of the degree plan. We’ve designated them as such because their place in a typical student’s course sequence either allows a student to proceed with their degree path or prevents a student from continuing their path to a degree.

The Gateway Mastery Project has included the following courses:

At Inver Hills Community College

• ENGLISH 1108 (College English)
• MATH 1103 (Intro to Stats)
• MATH 1118 (College Algebra)

At Dakota County Technical College

• BIOLOGY 1110 (Environmental Science)
• SPEECH 1020 (Interpersonal Communications)
• HEAL 1502 (Medical Terminology)

Why these courses?

Most students, especially our students of color and adult students, significantly underperform in Gateway courses. This success rate further drops when these courses are offered online, vs. hybrid or fully in-person. Due to the nature of Gateway courses, this success rate impacts retention in all programs.

What does the Gateway Mastery Program involve?

In this pilot project, online courses in the Gateway Mastery Program will be redesigned in three ways:

1. To make better use of our learning management system (D2L) tools, such as Intelligent Agents, Release Conditions, Checklists, and others.
2. To be taught in a mastery-based model, which includes additional supports for students who underperform in any given week or module of a course.
3. To incorporate assignments that have clear purpose, tasks, and criteria – as outlined in the Transparency in Learning and Teaching framework.

What is the faculty commitment?

Faculty involved in the Gateway Mastery pilot work with the Center for Teaching Learning to redesign one or more online sections of their gateway courses. Faculty who conduct the course redesign will then teach the redesigned course sections the following semester. Participation in this pilot is completely voluntary, and participating faculty are compensated for their efforts.