Content area
Full text
INTRODUCTION
The International Academy of Design and Technology (LADT) is a for-profit, 4-year art and design career college. It has traditional "brick and mortar" campuses in 10 cities in the United States. LADT is owned and operated by its parent company, the Career Education Corporation (CEC). In 2005, CEC began to discuss the initiative to expand LADT into the field of distance education with the addition of a new branch campus - the International Academy of Design and Technology- Online (LADT-Online). Leaders at both CEC and LADT envisioned a virtual college that could serve as a selfcontained branch campus, as well as offer distance education opportunities to the current traditional LADT students in a hybrid format. LADT-Online offers prospective students a way to earn a careerfocused, creatively driven degree.
IADT Online offers the opportunity to earn a degree tailored to your dreams, imaginative ideas and creatively motivated professional goals. When innovative technology hooks up with the power of a broadband Internet connection, amazing things become possible for motivated students who have the talent to think visually and communicate graphically. (IADT, 2009b)
The cornerstone of the LADT-Online virtual college is the proprietary learning management system (LMS), the Virtual Campus (VC). The VC was developed by a team of information technology specialists, instructional designers, and software developers at CEC. After conducting research of currently available LMSs, the team determined that an entirely new LMS, rather than an existing proprietary system, was the best solution for IADTOnline for two reasons: the ability to have control over the look and feel of the interface so that it could match the existing IADT brand identity; and to integrate with the college database system, CampusVue, already in use by all of the IADT branch campuses.
The Virtual Campus was launched along with newly developed online general education and graphic design courses in July of 2007. This has since been expanded and students can now pursue degree programs in the following areas: graphic design, web design, web development, fashion merchandising, advertising and design, game production, and digital media production (IADT, 2009a). In the last two years the VC has grown and evolved with these new programs into a very successful IMS; upgrades and new features are continually being added to improve...