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Despite all the headlines, higher education doesn’t see a lot of true disruption. Structural features and cultural traditions make big changes – even obvious and necessary changes – difficult, whether you’re working from the inside or outside. (To whoever borrowed my 6 Cultures of the Academy book: you know who you are and you know what I mean.) This inertia is, in part, why Wiley University Services exists — because we believe the time is right to elevate the learning experience.
We have made great things happen at our partner schools. Faculty who couldn’t imagine themselves teaching online are now very enthusiastic about it. Thousands of students have transformed their lives from home. Their degrees carry real capital thanks to the work we and our partners did to ensure standards were high, courses worked, and everyone got the inspiration and support they needed. In fact, our successes helped advance an ongoing transformation in teaching practice across higher education.
The Stars Are Aligned for Effective Change.
We are in an exciting moment. Over the last few years, campus enrollment growth stagnated while preference for online grew. The MOOC-hype cycle, as well as proliferating efficacy studies, helped legitimize the best kinds of online learning experiences, even as faculty remained skeptical. Schools pivoted as hard as they could to rapidly build up their academic technology teams and their centers for teaching and learning.
Faculty are now by and large familiar with a kind of online teaching. Many are quite accomplished at it, and while quality concerns persist, the outrage and mystery is significantly decreasing. Campuses are pushing hard to evolve traditional learning experiences too, shifting emphasis toward active learning and adding online components to all courses. And let’s not forget experiments in new credentials, competency-based formats, cross-disciplinary programs, and industry-institution partnerships. Quality standards have risen, the appetite for innovation has grown, and the pace has accelerated. Higher education has changed, and we need to continue evolving to support it.
How will Wiley Continue to Elevate the Learning Experience for Our Partners? In the following three ways:
- By identifying opportunities to better support new audiences in online, on campus, or blended formats.
- By adapting our services to experienced (in some cases even online-native) faculty
- By effectively collaborating with more developed, stronger on-campus academic services operations
Together with our partners, we’ll have these conversations and chart our course to better serve students from all backgrounds. The tools and technology for meaningful change are there, as well as the appetite – let’s not squander this opportunity. Let’s continue elevating the learning experience.
For examples of ways to elevate the learning experience, visit our Resources page.
