On-Demand Webinar: Voice of the Online Learner 2021

Shandi Thompson:
All right, everybody, welcome and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar, Voice of the Online Learner 2021 Amplifying Student Voices in Extraordinary Times. My name is Shandi Thompson and I’m with Wiley Education Services and I am so happy to be joined today by our amazing market strategy and research team who will be introduced shortly.

Shandi Thompson:
Before getting started, I do want to review a few housekeeping items. Andrew, if we can go the next slide. All attendees will be muted during the webinar, however, we do welcome questions and comments. Please type your questions and comments into the Q&A pane. A moderator will respond to questions there throughout the presentation. And we do have time reserved at the end of the presentation for panelists to answer your questions that have come through during the course of our conversation and that were submitted at registration. Also, a PDF of today’s slides is available for you to download in our handout section. Please be sure to download these before the end of the presentation. I will remind you again later. Lastly, access to a recording of today’s presentation will be sent to all registrants via email tomorrow. So, with that, I want to turn it over to David Capranos, our Director of Market Strategy and Research.

David Capranos:
Yeah, thanks for that Shandi. So, today, I’m joined by two of my colleagues, Andrew Magda and Loralee Dyers. We are all members of Wiley Education Services Market Strategy and Research team. I think combined, we probably represent something like 30 years of experience in the higher ed space. Most of the work that we do, day in day out is around coaching, consulting around program design and development. So, working with our institutional partners to help them develop their online learning strategy, which programs they’re going to bring to market, how they deliver them, what kind of program features they have, that sort of thing.

David Capranos:
So, one of the foundations for that is us actually listening to our potential customers, those students, and understanding what we can gain from them and understand a little bit about how they make their decisions, what they do. So, this particular report is new for us but it comes with a long history. So, like I said, I’m joined by Andrew Magda. For years, he championed and led the online college students survey, which you might be familiar with, formally supported by Wiley and by Learning House historically. And then flanked by Loralee Dyers who championed our student attitude and behavior survey, both kind of comparable surveys that really get into how students make decisions, what they’re looking for, what their motivations are, things along those lines for online.

David Capranos:
We’ve reimagined those two survey instruments into this new one that we launched this year, quite a bit bigger than it’s been before. Candidly, I think we’re in over 3,000 survey respondents. Those folks were mostly people that were at the bachelor’s and graduate level that were looking for online learning. So, we had sort of, our initial filter was folks that were either considering the degree or looking towards a degree online in the near term or already done a degree, really to get the most up to the day kind of current relevant data from these folks. Something that’s unique is that we did launch this survey in the middle of a global pandemic. So, it’s been interesting for us to kind of look at those data and see how they might differ from some of these other surveys. Over time, we’ll talk about that a little bit today in our conversation.

David Capranos:
So, the plan for today is to spend the next 30 minutes or so kind of going over some highlights that we have from the report. Some insights around some of those market shifts that are happening during the pandemic. Like I said, we were in that rare opportunity being able to look at some of our prior pre-pandemic data as well as the stuff that’s happening kind of in the middle. We’re going to look at the impact on campus enrollments, to putting a program online, get an understanding of student kind of attitudes around what they’re looking for, how we can engage the students. Some questions around affordability, the different learner goals and motivations that are out there, ways that we can maybe attract students into programs and obviously some elements around program design and appeal. That, like I said, again are the foundation of the work that we do.

David Capranos:
So, up next, Andrew Magda is going to take us through some of the data points, followed by Loralee, and then I’ll take us home with a bit, hopefully, a robust Q&A towards the end of the presentation here. Andrew, do you want to kick us off?

Andrew Magda:
Sure. Thank you, David. Thanks everyone for being here today as we kind of walk through these results. Don’t forget to type your questions into the chat and we’ll try to answer as many of them as we can as we go through this.

Andrew Magda:
As David said, the surveys kind of new and old at the same time. We’ve kind of gone through some of these questions over the last 10 years with the former online college student surveys. So, I’ll try to highlight where we have some of those questions. And in the report, we try to point out some of those year over year changes. So, we’ll definitely look at that for more information on any of these slides.

Andrew Magda:
So, one of the questions that we’re often asked from institutions is, are these online students, are they different? And we always find through this research that online students are definitely looking for online programs. Eighty percent of the learners in our survey chose to study online before anything else. Our survey is obviously a survey of online learners, of those that are actively studying online. So, we really feel that these individuals are definitely looking for that modality. And they’re choosing that modality first, even before they decide where or what they want to actually study. They’re also very quick in their decision making.

Andrew Magda:
As you see, there are 48% that are making their decision on where to submit their first application within four weeks of starting their initial search. They’re deciding they want to go back to school, they know they want to go online, and then they’re going through that search process, looking at anywhere two to three schools on average and applying to one or two of those and submitting that first application within four weeks of beginning their search. So really, very fast in their decision-making process. And they’re obviously looking at the institution to respond in kind with that quickness and agility.

Andrew Magda:
So, if you think about things, in terms of getting back to them with their application, if they have questions around their transfer credit policy, how many credits they can bring in. We know transfer credit is very, very key for the undergraduate market. I think 60% are looking to bring in some of these credits. So, being able to respond to them quickly and around those questions that they may have is going to be key for having that student choose your institution to enroll within.

Andrew Magda:
Where are they looking to go? We’re looking at these top factors. This is again, a question that we asked a number of different ways over the last 10 years. It’s kind of evolved, but the trend has really been the same in terms of what factors are most important to these online learners. Affordability is, by far, always the number one factor when we first asked this question back in 2012 and 2013. It was reputation of the institution that was one of the top factors followed by affordability. But really, we start to see that shift over these last few years as higher education costs have risen, as student debt crisis has kind of really come to the forefront of them. They’re really looking for how they can earn their program, still looking for quality, really looking for a quality program, but also how they can contain those costs.

Andrew Magda:
And we understand that not every institution can be the least expensive in their particular market with their particular programs. So, really thinking about ways to address affordability outside of just, that cost, that tuition and fees. Such we’re talking about what transfer credit policies, looking for ways to help them speed up their time to degree because the fear of time for your credits with the program can also affect that bottom line for them. But we also see here, again, affordability, that’s not necessarily a dial that you can potentially adjust with your program. Obviously, looking at other things in terms of the quality of the courses, the quality of the faculty are also important to a large number of students looking at the program. So, being ways to message around that quality, knowing that could also attract certain learners that are looking for some of those different factors outside of just the straight cost of the program.

Andrew Magda:
As David mentioned, this is the first time we were able to conduct this particular survey during these pandemic times. When we did the survey last year, we actually surveyed it, put it in the field right before the pandemic started. So, we’re really interested this year into this actually designing the survey to make sure that we are trying to understand this new learner that we’re calling the post pandemic online learner. We had a question in there, “Were you considering this online program pre-pandemic?” And we found that 33% of the sample so they were not. So, one in three of our students here were looking for basically a campus-based program at the start of the pandemic, but were pushed into this online learning environment.

Andrew Magda:
And we know when the pandemic first started, there were a number of articles in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle around students looking for a return on their tuition and fees because they didn’t necessarily feel that online was of the same quality as the face to face learning. And so, we wanted to ask if there were any changes in the views of online learning. We actually found 51% had a more positive view of online learning than he did prior to the pandemic. So, we feel that the pandemic definitely brought more individuals into the online learning space, those that weren’t considering it before. But also, that didn’t necessarily have a strong negative impact on their individual’s views around online learning.

Andrew Magda:
I believe 45% of those online learners that were enrolled in an online program prior to the pandemic actually reported that their experience became, they actually have a better experience now during the pandemic with online learning. And this could be that institutions obviously moving to that 100% remote learning, and are actually paying a little bit more attention to some of these students offering them additional services that they previously had to come on campus for. So now, for those that were in these online courses, pre-pandemic, they’re actually getting a little bit more attention, more services than they probably were before the pandemic started.

Andrew Magda:
So, these post-pandemic online learners, who are they compared to what we would call our traditional online learner. We think about those that were learning online prior to the pandemic, they had 33%, that new post pandemic learner, they tend to be younger, pursuing an undergraduate degree employed part time, career starters. So, if you think about those, and it really starts to sound like a traditional 18 to 22 year-old-type of campus student. They’re a little bit older than that, but typically, these are individuals that would have probably gone on campus for their degree. And as such, this is one of their first online learning experiences. So, they have a little bit more concerns around online learning that we’re finding compared to the “traditional online learner.” They do feel that on-campus learning has a better quality and just more credible than online learning.

Andrew Magda:
So, if we pick those, those 33%, and we want to hold on to them as students in 2022, 2023, 2024, as we move out of the pandemic, it’s really up to us to really make sure that we understand their unique needs and address those concerns, and provide them with an experience that is engaging and high quality in order to kind of retain those students. We want them to continue to enroll online. If not, they may turn back to campus learning or they may just again, be hammered with higher education and kind of fall out into that some college no degree category.

Andrew Magda:
But these individuals, they place even higher value on transfer credits, they are more open to synchronous learning. I think you’ll find in a couple of slides around balance synchronous and asynchronous. They’re going to be a little bit more open to that because again, this is their first online learning experience. They want to see the faculty they want to see their classmates, they want to have those interactions compared to our “traditional online learners? who are looking for that flexibility and convenience.

Andrew Magda:
We’re often asked as well around if we launch an online program, are we going to lose our campus students. And our answer is, again, no. We don’t believe that to be the case. Again, 80% are choosing the modality first, they are choosing online. And 65% of students tell us that if they went to institution and that program that they wanted was not available online, that they wouldn’t go to that institution. Sixty-one percent would try to find that program online at a different institution and 4% wouldn’t enroll in a program at all. They would just in their search there. Three and four would look to enroll in an online program. So again, if you don’t offer for the program online, they’re not going to necessarily enroll in your campus program. They’re going to keep looking for an online program elsewhere or choose just a similar different online program at your institution.

Andrew Magda:
So again, really a diverse portfolio of programs are needed in order to attract these online students because they are going to look for online. They’re not necessarily going to look for the program and choose to enroll campus if it isn’t available online at your institution. Where are your students coming from? This is again, a question that we asked multiple years going back and what we found, and it’s still true today that the majority of students, even though they’re online, they are coming from your local region. They’re coming with 50 or 100 miles or 150 miles from your campus. Really what we’re finding is just because the program is offered online, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to enroll students from across the country. You may have a few enroll across the country, or if you have a unique program that isn’t available in many institutions, that will have a wider reach typically 50, 200 miles, 150 miles is where the majority of your students are going to come from.

Andrew Magda:
What we’re actually finding is, again, if we look over time, but what we’re seeing is a little bit different is that this radius is actually tightening in more and more 49% are coming within 50 miles. The reason for that is obviously been the growth of online competition. More and more institutions offering more and more online programs. Again, these students don’t have to search far, literally far from them in order to find an institution that has online programs and likely has a program that they’re interested in. If we go back to that previous slide around, would they go to your institution if you didn’t have online, 65% aren’t because they know they can find that program elsewhere.

Andrew Magda:
So, that’s why we’re kind of see this change over time of that radius actually contracting a little bit more because of that increasing competition. Again, if you have a unique program, graduate students are also willing to look a little bit further than undergraduate students, again, going back to that quality. They’re looking for a quality program. But typically, it’s really still within that 100 miles of your institution. Can you design a program that is one size fits all? And typically, that’s not true, but we do know there are certain best practices or benchmarks that most online students will be in favor of.

Andrew Magda:
So, things like multiple start dates, almost nine and 10 individuals want multiple start dates. If you think about that, going back to how quickly they’re making that decision, 48% within four weeks. They need those multiple start dates because they’re looking to make that decision, put in that application, and then enroll and starting your program as quickly as possible. Not waiting for five or six months for that next start date to roll around. So, multiple start dates are really key for online programs. Usually, we recommend anywhere from three to six starts per year for our programs.

Andrew Magda:
Again, they’re looking fully online. We’re talking about that post pandemic online learner, this is an area where maybe they would be willing to have that short campus requirement also around that course format, asynchronous or synchronous, 68% are looking for an asynchronous online experience. But those post pandemic learners replied, be a little bit more open to having that synchronous option again, just so they can have that face time with faculty and fellow students to engage with them.

Andrew Magda:
Completion time, obviously, having back to back courses, being able to study almost year-round is key. Because that also goes to address that time to the degree they’re looking to earn, to start their program quickly and finish it as quickly as possible. So, not having long breaks in between courses or between terms is key for 70% of online learners. And then being able to choose their path to their degree as well is favored instead of a lockstep cohort model for these individuals. But of course, these are large stats across those 3,000 online learners that we surveyed.

Andrew Magda:
If we think about a specific undergraduate program or a specific degree, these can obviously change a little bit. If we think about a nursing degree, that’s obviously going to have labs and face to face components. You’ll probably see these bars change a little bit for a program like that, versus an MBA program which can be completed 100% online, 100% asynchronous. So, those individuals who might be less favorable for synchronous or face to face components. Loralee Lee, did you want to talk to us about affordability?

Loralee Dyers:
Sure. Thanks, Andrew. So, when we shared earlier about the most important factors that a student considers when choosing a program, remember Andrew said affordability and tuition was always a top factor. And this year, we found that 55% of students selected it. In fact, we also found that nearly 40% of students reported that it was a top factor not choosing to enroll somewhere. So, this is no surprise to us. We hear it from students all the time.

Loralee Dyers:
Part of what we do for our partners is conduct loss surveys to understand why a student didn’t choose their program. And we consistently see that finances are a top factor in this decision. It’s not only the cost of the program, being what they expect it to be, but it’s also just the overall ability to afford it. And a portion of them even end up not enrolling anywhere due to affordability. So, even with affordability and tuition being so important, you’ll see that only a third of the students choose a program with the lowest tuition. So, they’re not just talking about what’s the cheapest. Not every program should be the cheapest or can be the cheapest. It’s more about providing the best value for your student.

Loralee Dyers:
So, one way to impact affordability and value for a student is through scholarships. In fact, we found that 94% of students stated a modest scholarship could actually impact their decision on where to enroll. And having done the survey for over a decade, we used to find that a $500 annual scholarship would be enough to kind of have that student choose your program over another. But what you see here is now that it’s up to 62% of students are saying it would be at least a thousand or more per year, which when you still think about that in the long run is a lower cost investment in your student, right? It’s really not that much per year, that really could have them choose your program over another and help them really be able to afford it more.

Loralee Dyers:
Some of the other factors that can impact a student’s decision, things like tuition discounts, was one of the ones that was found highest with 71% of students saying that would make a difference in their decision making. And then, ones that we found were lower ones were things like locked in tuition rates. That only 48% of students mark that one as having an impact on their decision, which is likely that they don’t perceive that as really saving them money, where in the long run, it may, but in the short term, it really doesn’t.

Loralee Dyers:
Next slide, Andrew. So, another way to impact affordability for students is really helping them understand and leverage their employee education benefits. Sixty three percent of students had access to employer reimbursement, yet only 24% of them said that they used it. And this mirrors some findings that we found earlier this year, in our Reimagining the Workforce survey, which was a survey of HR and learning and development professionals. And we found that it wasn’t uncommon for a company to say that less than 5% of their employees were actually utilizing our education benefits.

Loralee Dyers:
So, one way to impact affordability is by working with employers to help communicate these benefits. Partnering with employers, helping students understand these benefits to really just help them access more affordable education and remove some of that financial burden. That really does hold back a lot of students for starting a program.

Andrew Magda:
Loralee, I’m just going to interject there really quick all that point about tuition benefits. Wiley’s actually invested quite a bit in a new product called Wiley Beyond that helps companies manage those benefits. And so essentially, they outsource to a platform that we’ve created, that creates a seamless experience for the students where they can almost have like a TurboTax-esque walkthrough of the documentation, that sort of thing, and there’s some human assistance on it as well. And I think what we’re going to see is being able to really move the needle on some of those tuition benefit, kind of utilization rates when it comes down to just streamlining the process, better communication, some of those things.

Loralee Dyers:
So, Andrew talked earlier about how the perception of online learning is largely positive, and actually, over the past years, probably increased a bit. And what we found that once students do enroll in an online program and kind of get over that uncertainty about what to expect and what it’s going to be like, they tend to want to do it again. Nearly 80% of the learners we surveyed said they would choose online learning again. And what’s even more important is that one in three would actually like to return to the same school.

Loralee Dyers:
So, maintaining that alumni engagement is so important, especially in a market that’s increasingly competitive each day with more programs coming online, in the alumni they want to stay engaged. Thirty-five percent said that they would refer a student to the school, 32% would follow the school on social media, and 30% will take the class. So, maybe, it’s not a full degree program, maybe it’s a short course, a certificate, continuing out of some sort, some way to keep the alumni engaged and really be that school to help them continue on that path of lifelong learning.

Loralee Dyers:
So, what motivates students to start a program? And do they achieve the goals that they set out to? Our answer here is a resounding yes. When asked what their top motivations are, and they were able to select more than one. Three of top four were career motivated, but the top motivating factor was actually to achieve personal growth. However, when we asked them to rank the motivations by what is kind of the most important in motivating them to start a program, these career goals really do come to the top. With first professional job being the most important factor rated as number one.

Loralee Dyers:
And as I said, the good news is they are achieving their goals. Ninety-three percent of students were able to attribute at least one goal that they attribute to their program on that they set out to hit. On the right, you can see a number of different goals that were reached by the program. Most of them are career related. You see salary increase, 42% of students achieved that, 38% of students started a career. And there’s even some on here that are a little less tangible, such as increased competence and responsibility in the workplace.

Loralee Dyers:
So, a couple of slides ago, we touched on how many of these learners plan to choose online learning again, and they really consider themselves lifelong learners. And here we see that half of the students that we surveyed here actually came to this current program or the program they were looking for already having prior online experience with something that was either fully online a course or a program. But the interesting thing is even though they’ve already had online experience, they do still have concerns that you can help alleviate when they’re looking for a program and choosing a program.

Loralee Dyers:
Many of these do center around finances that we definitely already touched on. but they’re largely related to time commitment and that idea of school work life balance which really can get somewhat overwhelming when you’re thinking about starting a program. So, one of the top concerns was actually that the workload would be heavy with 30% of students finding that to be a concern. So, helping them understand what to expect in the program, how many hours they might have to put into the program are really important in setting expectations at the beginning, so they don’t feel overwhelmed three months in or six months into the program.

Loralee Dyers:
Many of the others have to do with interaction within the courses, both with the instructor and their peers. So, it’s really important to focus on having that strong quality instructor presence, helping foster interaction between classmates in different ways. And you can also touch on the finance investment services, such as tuition planning, to really help alleviate some of these concerns at the start. So now, I’ll pass it over to David to talk about some of our learner segments and wrap this up.

David Capranos:
Yeah, thanks for that. So, as often the case when you’re looking through survey data, I think it’s really easy to get into a bunch of just frequency tables and bar graphs and pie charts and things like that, and maybe lose a little bit of the human element. So, something that we tried to experiment with this year was a little bit better storytelling. Some focus on specific people, specific types of learners. And so, there’s some key areas where we aggregated together a handful of statistics to really build a narrative around, for example, first generation and online learners. This group, I think, I know, for a lot of schools that I’m working with increasing sort of a more diverse, equitable student base is something that’s really important. I think, having an eye towards first generation online learners is one of the things that’s going to help do that.

David Capranos:
We found that about a third of the group was, in fact, first generation college student online learners. These were folks that had been less likely to consider online pre-pandemic. They sort of fall into a little bit of that post-pandemic learner that we were talking about earlier. Largely, they’re career focused students, right? So, they’re already employed full time. They maybe looking to get a promotion or even switch fields. You can think about the types of degrees that would align with that and types of educational opportunities. Then also the sort of human factors of your degree that are going to sync up with that.

David Capranos:
So, some of the themes we’ve described around synchronicity or things along those lines that are going to be either easier or harder for these groups to connect with. We also looked a lot at that larger theme that Loralee mentioned in the prior slide around the students having an online loyalty. And we’re starting to see emerge what might be kind of a super learner or someone that maybe comes to your school for their graduate degree and comes back for a handful of certificates. Or maybe they start with a certificate and transfer into a degree or through some sort of earned admissions pathway or something along those lines that are increasingly getting more and more common in the market.

David Capranos:
These folks are coming from wider geographic areas. They’re looking for something that can work again in their schedule. They’re employed full time. They’re really concerned about family and work commitments and things along those lines. And so, flexibility is really key for those folks. And thinking about really an empathetic student-oriented design is what’s going to be important to really cater to that type of learner.

David Capranos:
Lastly, we did quite a bit of digging into these learner motivations, the impact of scholarships. Affordability is something that I think is front and center for a lot of us, whether it be coming from the political side of the aisle or from the media or from the students themselves. We know that cost of education is something that’s kind of increasingly getting higher and higher scrutiny. And so, thinking of ways to make your programs more affordable, make it kind of more attainable for students is something that’s really going to be critical for continued success for a lot of these degrees.

David Capranos:
So, Andrew, if you want to advance us to the next slide here. I think we are ready for more of our question and answer period here. I’m going to kind of sift through a handful of questions that we got either previously submitted. I think we’ve got a handful that are in there now that I want to address that I’m seeing come through the chat. And so, keep sending these through, I think we’ve got a good 20, 30 minutes here that we’ll be able to launch into a little bit of a conversation around some of these themes.

David Capranos:
So, this one is particularly interesting to me, and I think picks up on some of the last few things we just said is there’s this question around, was this survey instrument, was this kind of audience specifically looking at certificates and short programs, right? And if so, what are the key differences between those students versus more of a traditional degree of seeking students? So, this a little bit of a jump ball, I’m curious. Andrew, Loralee, if you want to get us started and then we can all kind of dig in on this one. So again, the question is, were we speaking to people that were looking for online certificates and are those people different? I guess it’s the core question there.

Andrew Magda:
They were included in the sample. I believe that was one of the screeners that I think we laid out if they were interested in certificate. In terms of how those students look and how they compare, I’m not sure, Loralee, if we dug into that in the 2021 survey here. But in past years, for the online college student survey, we would have the certificate question as well. And I think we found they were somewhat similar in terms of that radius question that we’re talking about. Again, looking for institutions that are close to home for these certificates because that brand identity, knowing that if they brought the credential to their employer, there would be a no name to them. So, they were similar on that respect.

Andrew Magda:
In terms of the affordability question, I think that was also, again, a top concern for them, trying to manage costs for it. So, I would say they’re, off top my head, fewer differences that I was seeing between them and some of those key components. But Loralee, if there’s anything you want to add?

Loralee Dyers:
No, I think one thing with certificate in short course students is they’re a little more time sensitive as far as time to complete. I mean, we see that with these students anyway. But they definitely are looking for that shorter, quicker path to something a little more so than the full degree.

David Capranos:
I think well said. I know one thing and some of the other major you mentioned, some of the other surveys we do. One survey that we ran, in the last couple of years was one directed at kind of the other side of the equation. So, it’s more HR professionals, chief learning officers, chief talent officers around workforce development, skills gap, addressing that sort of thing. And it was interesting for us to see on the employer side just how many of them are interested in leveraging skills, kind of shorter skill-oriented courses to fill that skills gap. We did see a little bit of kind of an interesting layout in those numbers, where they still do prefer the degree for someone coming into a new job, so the degree is still king for a lot of them.

David Capranos:
But once folks are through the door to kind of help them continue to evolve in their role. Maybe that smaller investment of a certificate is something that they’re more attracted to. So, opening up to MOOCS and certificates, certification things along those lines. So, hopefully that answered your question. There are around certificates, I think, because we are starting to see this be such a critical thing for a lot of universities to kind of assess out. There is probably a future thing on our to do list to maybe ask a specific certificate-oriented type of survey in the future. I know that often a lot of the terms that we use, kind of an academia.

David Capranos:
Routinely will talk about stackability or MOOCs, and all these things that just sort of roll off the tongue, in our own circles are maybe foreign to some of the students that are out there. And they might not exactly understand the difference between one or the other. They might not have the sophistication to really get into like, well, is this credit bearing or not? And so, I think that is on our roadmap to think about asking and tracking some of those things over time.

Andrew Magda:
David, you bring up a good point there. Because I think we have done smaller surveys or smaller research around them. And the big question is, you’re just hitting on is, what is the certificate? What is the short course? How short is a short course, right? Along is a certificate. Is it three classes? Is it four classes? Is there a difference if you offer a three-class certificate versus a four in terms of attracting these individuals to that to that program, to that certificate? So, I think it’s also an area where there’s a lot of gray area that we throw around the terms, but we can mean different things to them.

David Capranos:
The price point is a big one, too, right? Some of these things are $60 and others are 3,500 or up to 10,000 with some of this kind of three to four class packages and things along those lines. And so, I think there’s a real need for clarification in the market. And I don’t think there is a standardized kind of set of terms out there that students are going to recognize. I think there’s a lot of, ironically, there’s a lot of educating that needs to happen on even what products are in the marketplace is something that we found as well.

David Capranos:
We got some other questions here that I’m going to pivot to. One of the ones was it says, “I would be interested in hearing how an institution can enter a crowded online marketplace?” And candidly, this is our whole work week. For largely. Andrew and I, this is a lot of what we answer kind of on a daily basis here. I think there’s a few different schools of thought. Often, we’re met with really kind of enterprising, folks with a lot of initiative that are really excited about moving on into online and I think a lot of them think that you really got to differentiate. You got to do something really unique and niche, and something that no one else is doing is the only way to be successful. And I’ll tell you that, in most cases, we actually don’t necessarily agree with that. I think going after market opportunities that are a little bit more broad can help you stand out.

David Capranos:
And we really typically recommend for our folks to have a balanced portfolio, to have a mix of those larger market opportunities. Things like MBA degrees, maybe larger healthcare degrees, things along those lines. And then think about the ways that they can differentiate with smaller programs within a portfolio, just the way that you would manage your stock portfolio. You want to have some real kind of steady blue-chip type stuff in there. But then also, your new kind of emerging tech stocks or foreign markets and things along those lines to have a good mix.

David Capranos:
With all those things, I think authenticity is really important. And so, I mean, not in a lot of different ways. So, something that’s authentic to you is your brand and your school. If you’re a small liberal arts college, you don’t necessarily go deep into cybersecurity, if that’s not kind of who you are. Also pricing and things along those lines. We’ve got to make sure that we’re pricing appropriately for our brands, that we’re calling things that are kind of authentic to what they are. That authenticity is something that students really can pick up on, especially in the online marketplace when you can compare things so quickly. They can easily get turned off and jump to another website. Any other themes that you two want to bring up?

Andrew Magda:
Just on the authenticity, as well as I think looking at what you do well as an institution, what are you known for already. There’s always a place to start. So, you’re talking about David around that business program. But if you’re school isn’t necessarily known for business, its known for healthcare, then maybe look into nursing. But then, consider different ways to incorporate the leadership or management components to help attract in maybe some of those students that may be typically wouldn’t look at your institution. But again, like you said, being authentic and true to what you’re known for.

David Capranos:
Yeah. And again, doing that within a strategy where we’re still meeting sustainability by having some large market opportunities kind of balanced with that efficiency. So, next question here. This is an interesting one given our survey data specifically. So, there’s a question around, are there populations who are particularly resistant to online learning modalities? So, I think a lot of what we’ve dug into today in this conversation is loaded a little bit. It’s people that are already sort of self-selected to tell us that they’re either in our programs or looking to start our programs or looking for an online degree.

David Capranos:
And so, I think that through some of the data that we see, there’s obviously always going to be a spot for the type of student, especially a younger student, straight out of high school, that’s going to say, “Hey, I need this campus face to face experience. I need to be there, sort of immersed in the learning environment.” I think comparably with that immersion element, that’s where most of our, if not all of our international students are going to come from. I think, for the sort of practical immigration reasons, they’re going to need to have a lot of face time on campus to sort of meet the standards there. But I think also that’s part of what they’re looking for is to be immersed in new culture experience, something different. Andrew, is there any perspective from you on where we see folks that really say no to the online learning modality, who they might be?

Andrew Magda:
I think it’s going to be interesting going forward out of the pandemic, because obviously, everyone went online over the last year or two. So really, to see where that has changed going forward. But I mean, historically, I think, maybe engineering was a field, where talking to some individuals in it, where there was just resistance to it. Obviously, engineering management, construction management. You’re blinding in some of that leadership and business coursework. It was a little bit more open to it versus say, electrical and mechanical engineering.

Andrew Magda:
Definitely, programs are out there doing well in that space, but it wasn’t as broadly accepted as a criminal justice or nursing or education, right. So, obviously, if we went 20 plus years ago, the first programs online, business education. But then, so those were areas that was readily accepted, but then areas lagging behind that. I think, one of the larger ones, like I said, was engineering and then there were those smaller, more niche areas. There were programs in architecture that weren’t available 15 years ago or even five years ago. But I bet now, we kind of start to see more and more of these programs.

Andrew Magda:
So, I think online is becoming a little bit more and more accepted in terms of those populations that are just resistant to it. Probably the best one that you named was internet where the international students were I think, we really haven’t seen foreign countries really embrace online learning the way the US has. So, those individuals who are just more hesitant I think to try it, especially going to a different country for it. So, I think that might be the best example for those that might be resistant.

David Capranos:
I think there’s also a cost element there, too. I think we have had some success with sort of out of country students in some of our European schools that we partner with, just because they’re all kind of on a level playing field in terms of price point. But in the US, our education is so much more expensive. So, there’s that factor as well. I know Loralee you did a survey, in the middle of the pandemic around more about these face to face students that moved into online, so sort of the people that didn’t self-select to go online, but it was sort of a midway through their degree, they had to pivot.

David Capranos:
And anecdotally, I remember getting some feedback that an engineering department was actually mailing out pistons for the engineers to work on. And so, they had this sort of kind of assembly line, they put together, putting these pistons in boxes and sending via UPS or having students kind of pull up and putting the mask on and handing them a piston for them to work on at home to sort of adapt. And I think that speaks to what Andrew was talking about with some of the technology type degrees.

David Capranos:
I’ll pivot though, to another sort of subsector that we historically have had some resistance from this group. But it’s been interesting to see the movement. And that’s on the, I guess professions where there’s a really what’s called health and human services. And so, I think we all know that nursing has been very successful online. But in the last few years, we’ve seen a real pivot towards social work doing really well online.

David Capranos:
Andrew, I think we’ve got some exercise and kinesiology and things along those lines. Occupational therapy, physical therapy, some of these things that I think, historically, we would think of as only being you’re physically manipulating the body or you’re emotionally connecting with someone that can only be done face to face. And I think, the pandemic, in particular has accelerated some of those trends. And I think we’re likely to see increased interest from some of those pockets that might have been resistant in the past, but are sort of the walls are coming down a little bit.

Andrew Magda:
One just popped into my head, though, David was legal programs. And I think it was because of the accreditation process. So, I think, again, it’s what has happened over the last few years. We didn’t see, zero lawyers graduated in 2020, 2021, right? So, these individuals were obviously taking coursework at some sort of remote or distance format. So again, it’s going to be interesting like I said. In five years, is there going to be some changes in some of these accrediting or licensing bodies. Are they just going to be more open to these different modalities?

David Capranos:
That’s an interesting one, because I think this year was the first year they ever allowed the bar exam to be online. So that was kind of a new thing for them. And I think a lot of what they were concerns around maybe integrity and things along those lines, but they were able to figure out with some proctoring tools and things along those lines. They’re able to get some of the first bar exams to be done online. So, that’s kind of an interesting thing that happened.

David Capranos:
So, pivoting or moving on to another question here. This one’s an interesting one. I might resonate with you and particularly Loralee because we’re actually a student right now and Andrew too, both you guys, and it’s about workload. So, how do students feel about the amount of work involved in online courses? what engagement activities work best online? I think you both are in the unique seat to be able to answer this probably as researchers, but also as students as well.

Andrew Magda:
I think the data that we had on one of the previous live shows that that was one of the concerns for new online learners was around that workload. I think as Loralee was saying around that, it’s around communicating what is expected to become a student happy institution, especially being an online student and how to manage that. I think working with counselors around helping the student understand that work life balance. I think faculty as well being able to communicate their expectations for their individual courses and what they’re expecting in terms of number of times to log in or number of discussion board posts to respond to or whatever that may be.

Andrew Magda:
But being as open with that, obviously, during that admissions process, making sure that the student is aware of that. But then also communicating that at the start of the courses might help kind of ease some of those concerns, because it’s less of a black box of not knowing or feeling you’re not doing enough or there’s too much. But that was what we found as being one of the concerns was the workload. I don’t think it was the majority of students, it was one of the top concerns there.

Andrew Magda:
Again, from my own perspective or point of view, knowing as much as I can at the start of the course, then I can kind of plan my time each week or plan my time over the month in terms of what time do I have to set aside for my studies. What do I have set aside for my reading? Oh, I have that that paper coming up in three weeks, I better start on it sooner than later. So rather, and just assuming that you post the syllabus and the student is going to read it, I think maybe it may take a little bit more hand holding, especially depending on the level of student and the program.

Andrew Magda:
If we’re thinking about those that were kind of thrust into online learning, that 33% we were talking about before from our sample. Those individuals that are unfamiliar with what an LMS is or how it functions. Maybe, just being more frank with them on what that workload might be versus a graduate student or a doctoral student, those who may be a little bit more used to the process. So, just understanding where that student is in their educational journey, and then communicating out as much as you can around that, because it was, again, one of the top concerns we found. Loralee, did you have anything to add?

Loralee Dyers:
Yeah, I think I have two points. I think that when it comes to being in the course, definitely setting expectations. But then, to Andrew’s point, helping them manage that workflow and understanding in week five, you should be working on this task. If there’s a big final project on week six, you should be working on this. And then there’s also the idea of, say it’s 16 to 20 hours a week. Make sure those are 16 to 20 hours a week of value that you’re giving them, not just busy work or not just read this and do nothing with it. Something that’s really going to give them value and help them learn something, which goes without saying.

Loralee Dyers:
But one of the things that I wanted to add is we had done a survey, I believe it was in May, June of 2020. So, right after kind of the emergency, remote learning really got big and kind of all the students were on it. And we’ve partnered with eight universities to survey those students that had been forced into that emergency remote learning to kind of understand how they were doing with it, what they liked about it, what was really working well, and what wasn’t. And one of the things we found, which is sort of opposite, what we see with our students that choose online learning is this idea of a discussion board and how conducive they felt it was to learning which we know it’s used quite often.

Loralee Dyers:
In online courses, it’s one of the main ways of interacting with your peers in the course. But these students that weren’t kind of prepared for online learning and hadn’t chose it, really didn’t see the value in these discussion boards. They had a really hard time understanding and how to work within them. So, as Andrew was saying, explaining how to work with an LMS, explaining how the discussion board works, and what you should be doing, especially when a third of these students maybe hadn’t planned online in the first place, it would be really important for something like that. It does take a little bit of getting used to. So, they really need to be designed well, to really foster that good level of engagement between the colleagues in the course.

David Capranos:
I think we’ve got a natural segue here, Loralee, and that one of the questions was around that synchronicity preference, and that a good portion of the students wanted an asynchronous delivery. We know that we have a handful of programs that are synchronous, that are really successful too, right. So, it’s kind of a balancing act here. I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

Loralee Dyers:
Yeah. So, as we talked earlier, we asked these students, which they would prefer synchronous or asynchronous, and I think it was 67%, or something, almost two thirds had said asynchronous, which relates to findings that we’ve had in other surveys and sort of matches up that a lot of these students are choosing online. In one of the surveys we have done, I think it was 97% of students that said, they valued online because of the flexibility that they have. And when you add those synchronous components, some of that goes away.

Loralee Dyers:
So, when you do add them, making sure that they are for a good reason and not just to have something that synchronous or not just to have the FaceTime. It’s not saying these students are necessarily open to them or even open to a visit on campus. But majority of them do need to balance that commitment to the program with all of the other responsibilities they have in their lives. Most of them are in career or doing other things and it’s really hard to commit to a live class two times a week or three times a week or something like that.

Loralee Dyers:
I know that, in my personal experience, I’ve had both where it’s been completely asynchronous, and I’ve had where there have been a synchronous course or a session each week. But the good thing is they keep the flexibility. If you make it, you make it great, or they record it if you can’t make it. So, you don’t really feel that kind of pressure that you’re missing something if you can’t make it. If you were to ask students that were primarily campus-based students what they would like, you probably would get a different breakdown on that asynchronous and synchronous component. As we talked about with the post pandemic learner, they’re a little more open to that synchronous because that’s what they’re kind of used to and where they’re coming from. So, it’d be really interesting to see how that sort of evolves over time. If more synchronous or kind of these flex hybrid type programs are more desired and do kind of increase a little more.

David Capranos:
Andrew, I might be putting you on the spot here a little bit. But there’s a question about mobile experience and our students are sort of the form factor of people using their tablets or cell phones more. Is that something that people are looking to do? I know that we made a few years ago a pretty significant investment in rethinking how we do web design, where we actually think about the mobile site first, and then the desktop site later, just the way that online marketing is worked. Is it kind of similar for students? Are they looking more and more to use, to do their reading and stuff like that on cell phones?

Andrew Magda:
Right. I think that’s definitely a trend that we saw over the last few years when we’ve been asking the question around mobile and the desire for it. So, we found that prospective students, they’re using your mobile device to actually do some of their searching for their programs and making sure that your admission site is optimized. For mobile, it’s going to be key, but then once they become students, they’re looking to continue to hold on to those devices. And we asked them around what do they use the device for and it’s really for some of those readings, clearing some of those assignments.

Andrew Magda:
So, things that they’re able to kind of do. If think about your daily use of your over your phone, you’re reading on it, you’re going through, maybe you get a survey or so. So, you’re able to kind of click through things, so some of those assignments that you can see. But then, they may default back to a desktop or a laptop, as we were talking about some of those synchronous sessions, maybe uploading documents seems a little bit more difficult to do at this point with a mobile device.

Andrew Magda:
But again, I think five years down the road, it probably won’t be that hard. So really trying to keep your eye towards the future, which I think is going to be increasingly mobile. And if we think about these post pandemic online learners that we’re talking about, those younger learners, those undergrad, they’re definitely going to want to probably use their cell phone or their tablet to kind of learn as well. And so, I think it’s definitely, like you said, something that we should have been thinking about probably already around optimization and then going forward just to increase investment.

Andrew Magda:
Today we had that slide up, can you design the perfect program? There is still going to be a segment, I don’t know, it was 20% or maybe 25% that don’t want to learn that way. So, there’s still going to be some of those that want to hold on to their laptop, because we defined it as a phone or tablet, not laptop. So, there are going to be those that want to continue to use their laptop or their desktop to access their online coursework. But I don’t know if that’s just going to kind of hold there. It remains to be seen or is that going to slowly trickle down over time?

Andrew Magda:
Because as we’ve seen in those other components, we asked around course design. There is always going to be that kind of that holdout group that maybe wants something a little bit different than the majority. But I definitely think it’s one that we’ve seen pick up over the last few years. And I think it will probably continue to tick off, especially if you hold on to this post pandemic online learner segment.

David Capranos:
Yeah. So, an interesting kind of heavy question here around this idea that the pandemic is really disrupting the higher ed space, and that eventually, we’re going to have a few small, online Titans that are going to control the majority of the market and that everyone else won’t be able to compete, you’re just going to be pushed out of the space. And I’ll tell you, I’ve got a number of signals that tell me that’s not likely to happen.

David Capranos:
So, and I’ll kind of run down them in a quick way, but we’d be happy to follow up this conversation. I will say so, even from today’s presentation, Loralee mentioned this earlier, but students aren’t necessarily looking for the cheapest degree. They’re not looking for, they want the degree that they’re going to connect with, right? They’re looking for authenticity. They’re looking for something that’s going to deliver on their career goals. I think there’s going to be always be a segment of students out there that are not interested in going to the large school. We see similar sort of breakdowns historically, where some students really like the large state school experience.

David Capranos:
Some want the small liberal arts college. There’s always going to be kind of a need for that. I think the question becomes, well, practically, by [inaudible 00:54:28] stat the other day that ASUs operating budget is over $3 billion. Kind of staggering amount of money that are being spent to kind of grow some of these schools. And I think, absolutely, we are going to see those schools continue to grow and they’re going to continue to probably acquire smaller failing schools that don’t adapt to changing market conditions. Is that something that potentially could happen? Absolutely.

David Capranos:
But I think the schools that adapt to new markets and kind of meet these challenges are likely to weather that storm. They just have to kind of set their expectations accordingly. We had this historic thing where maybe a decade ago, a lot of smaller private schools really grew quite a bit because they moved to the online modality before large state schools. Now, the large state schools are catching up and I think eating up a little bit of that kind of historic market share. It’s that something that we’re all very concerned about, but it’s likely to continue on.

David Capranos:
The last that I will call on is that location one that we talked about. The students increasingly are picking schools in their backyard. So, looking at that and saying the students want to connect with a place, they want to connect with something that’s familiar to them, that a brand that is trusted. I think there’s a lot of signals that we’re seeing that says there’s still a lot of space for smaller schools. They’re just going to need to adapt to these markets. So, with that, there was a companion question here or at least in my mind, around hybrid. And so, with a lot of this data and we’re seeing folks that are saying, hey, maybe I want less synchronicity or I want more flexibility or some of these other trends.

David Capranos:
And so, the question was, do we see our partners or kind of schools we’re working with consider hybrid degrees are incorporating, maybe more synchronicity or having sort of like fluidity there. And I think we’re already seeing it. So, we’ve got a number of programs in our current portfolio that operate in these ways. There’s sort of a choose your own adventure path where sometimes you tend to lecture live, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you come and teach on campus. Maybe you go to discussion with them on campus, sometimes it’s virtual online.

David Capranos:
Increasingly, the conversations I’m having with schools are thinking about, do we spend the first two years online and then come to campus? Or maybe do we come to campus and spend the last year online in an undergrad degree, and I think we’re going to get a lot more experimentation in that way. If we look at some of the largest schools in the country, your ASU, UCF in Florida, some of those schools, they’ve already experimented with some of these models where you get an opportunity to have that campus experience. But then, as you’re starting to transition up into the workforce, you need more flexibility.

David Capranos:
Those options are available to you. I think we’re going to see a lot more experimenting and sort of playing with the form is something we’re likely to continue seeing. And I think the pandemic is just accelerating all those themes, right? So, I think there’s a lot more willingness, some of the points Andrew and Loralee were making earlier that there’s a lot more kind of excitement around creativity and experimentation with some of these shifting mores around online learning.

David Capranos:
I will say too, just kind of anecdotally, my whole team here is distributed. Andrew is out in Jacksonville. Loralee is up in Chicago. I’m in Central Florida. So, I think this is increasingly becoming the norm out there. And so, we’re going to see university sort of marrying that norm out there with distributed work, especially with pandemic.

David Capranos:
So, I think we’re right about at time. I really enjoyed some of these questions. You guys can find us through the website. We’ve got some downloads. Shandi, do you want to kind of take us out with some of the closing remarks here?

Shandi Thompson:
Yeah, absolutely. So, thank you everyone. I just want to echo what David is saying. I think this was a great conversation. And thank you, David, Andrew, and Loralee for all your great comments today. Just to take us out, I did in the chat post the link to download the report directly, but if you’re interested in seeing all of the resources we have to offer as we mentioned a lot of different research reports today, please visit us at edservices.wiley.com/resources to see everything that we have available.

Shandi Thompson:
Do not forget to download your slides that we posted in the handout section if those are useful to you. I’ll leave the webinar open for a couple of minutes after we wrap here just to give you a chance to do so. And as a reminder, the recording of today’s presentation will be sent out tomorrow via the emails from GoToWebinar, which you got similar ones to access today’s webinar, so you’ll get another one to access the recording. All right everyone, thank you so much. Have a wonderful afternoon.