The WISE consortium provides a collaborative environment for students to take online courses from other WISE member schools, for consortial schools to offer a more diverse array of high-quality courses to their students, and for faculty to share best practices in online education with faculty at other WISE member schools. 

WISE students have opportunities to access distance education courses through WISE member schools that are distinguished in quality and leadership in online education. WISE member schools offer a wide array of special topics courses, providing students with options to broaden their educational experience in areas such as digital libraries, advanced cataloging and classification, information inquiry, applied economics, archives management, and fantasy and speculative fiction.

WISE member schools provide their students with a broad range of special topics courses offered by other consortial members committed to quality online education.  WISE schools choose which WISE courses are offered to their students, and which of their own courses are made available to the consortium.