Learning Opportunities
Customized Training for Business and Industry
The KCC Customized Training department supplies customers with job-related educational training, skills, and technical services, significantly improving their ability to compete and grow in a local, national, and global market. We deliver these services when and where our customers need them, maximizing our customers’ benefit-to-cost ratio.

We help our customers assess the skill needs of their employees, then design training uniquely tailored to fit their needs. We also deliver training to meet customer needs, at anytime. We are committed to deliver training on-site at our customers’ facilities or at another location of their choosing.

Our courses produce results and have been delivered to dozens of businesses and other entities in Barry, Branch, and Calhoun Counties. For further information regarding customized training courses, contact the Director of Customized Training at the RMTC, 269-965-4137, ext. 2847.

Distance Learning
Online Courses
Many traditional courses are now available in an online format, where assignments, activities, and communication are all done on-line. Though some tests are completed online, most courses require you to take at least one or two tests at a proctored site. On-line courses are also available from other Michigan community colleges through the Michigan Community College Virtual Learning Collaborative (MCCVLC). Even though you are taking the course from another college, you still receive support services from and maintain your academic record at KCC.

Interactive TV Courses
Kellogg Community College uses videoconferencing technology to link classrooms at multiple sites into a shared, video-connected classroom. With these facilities participants at one site can be seen and heard by participants at all other sites. The system also distributes images of computer screens, images of documents or objects, and video from videocassettes. These facilities make it possible to expand our offerings at various sites by combining the students from several locations into one, interactive classroom.

Telecourses
Telecourses combine videotaped lessons with related textbook readings and assignments, along with regular communication with an instructor via phone, mail, e-mail, or fax. Videos may be checked out at select area libraries or viewed on local cablevision stations. Tests may be taken at the Testing and Assessment Center at the Battle Creek campus or at the administrative offices of the regional centers.

Independent Study
If a course is not offered at a time when you need it for graduation, or if a specialty course is listed in the catalog, but has not been offered, you may request to earn the credits through independent study options. You will work with an instructor to gain the required competencies and learning outcomes; however, the work will be done independent of lecture or typical instruction. You must be prepared to learn on your own with the instructor as a coach only. The independent study agreement must be approved by the faculty and department chair.

Individualized Instruction
The benefits of individualized instruction are flexibility and convenience. Students use this mode of learning primarily for skill building courses in office or skilled trade fields. Students engage in the course work independently of each other under the guidance of an instructor. The students use print, audio-video, or computer-based information sources as their primary cognitive learning materials. The focus is on performing activities, normally in a lab environment, that reinforce the skills explained or presented in the learning materials. Instructors in the lab work individually with, and provide feedback to, students to overcome any hurdles to learning. The labs are open many hours to make it easy to fit individualized instruction into the toughest schedules.

Learning Communities
A learning community is an innovative approach to learning that links and integrates two or more courses. Disciplines are taught together, for example, Freshman Composition and Art History. In this pairing students write about art. The same group of students, faculty, and an advisor work collaboratively in a friendly, supportive atmosphere, which may include special workshops and field trips.

Student-teacher interaction creates a closely-knit, supportive community of learners. Students begin to see the connections between the courses and develop knowledge on a broad range of subjects. As active, progressive learners in linked courses or learning communities, students gain confidence and communication skills, becoming better lifelong students.