On-Demand Webinar: Online Learning at Public Universities 2022

Dr. Terry Brown:
Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you so much for joining this webinar on Online Learning at Regional Public Universities. I’m Terry Brown and I’m vice president for Academic Innovation and Transformation at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. AASCU institutions advance social mobility for students of all backgrounds, positively impacting them and their families, and as well as their communities.

Dr. Terry Brown:
Our members offer more than 3 million students each year in affordable, high quality college education, particularly from lower income families, first generation college students and students of color. AASCU works closely with our members to help them achieve their student success goals. And we are glad to work with very strong partners in this field, including Wiley University Services, one of our most trusted partners. We’re grateful for the work that we’ve done with them over the past years, especially to study the impact of online learning at our member campuses.

Dr. Terry Brown:
A couple of housekeeping items before I introduce our panelists. We ask that you use the Q&A feature. In order to ask questions, you can use the chat for comments to the group. We encourage you to do that. You can also access previous reports and these slides within Zoom. I’ll have a reminder of that. And a link to the recording will be sent to all of our registrants. And we’ll include a link to some of this in the chat, some of these links.

Dr. Terry Brown:
I’d like to introduce today’s panel. David Capranos is the director of market research and strategy at Wiley University Services. Andrew Magda is the manager of market research at Wiley University Services. And Dr. Costas Spirou is provost at Georgia College & State University, one of our AASCU members. And now I’m going to turn it over to Andrew.

Andrew J. Magda:
Thank you, Dr. Brown. What I wanted to do initially was just to go over the history of this report. As Dr. Brown said, this relationship between Wiley University Services and AASCU dates back many years. We first partnered together back in 2013, where we surveyed the membership around just general benchmarks around online learning to understand what different programs and different strategies and different services were being offered around online programs back in 2013.

Andrew J. Magda:
And then we followed this up in 2019, renewing the partnership to dig a little deeper into one of the findings to come out of that initial report, which was around development. And so the second report looked to dig a little deeper into professional development opportunities, both full-time and adjunct. And in 2021, we renewed the partnership to talk about this 2022 study. What we wanted to do was build upon these relationships, looking back at those initial two surveys, and pick some of those questions off there, so we can see how things changed over time.

Andrew J. Magda:
But also didn’t want to neglect, obviously, current events with COVID pandemic going on, trying to understand how institutions were being impacted to it and how they looked forward. We put together a 31 question survey with partnership of AASCU, and fielded it to 104 total responses, which is around 33% of AASCU membership at that point, and 80 completed responses. We also reached out to provost and CAOs and similar higher education leaders for follow-up interviews, to dig a little deeper into some of the findings that we have. And we have some of those quotes peppered in throughout the report, as well as some of these slides.

Andrew J. Magda:
So what we wanted to do with the webinar is just go over some of the key themes that arose from this initial survey. The first one was around growth. As we said, we fielded this survey multiple times over the years, and what we wanted to do initially, back in 2012, 2013, was understand the number of online programs that were being offered at the time, and how those enrollments were trending. What we found, looking back in 2013, 18% reported no online programs. This dropped to 6% in 2022.

Andrew J. Magda:
And what we did in the survey as well is specify what we meant by an online program, which was not to include those emergency remote learning opportunities that were being deployed in the spring and fall of 2020. So we were looking for programs that were really being developed and targeted to an online audience with the 2022 responses. What we found was the average number of online program in 2022 was around 20 per institution. Back in 2013, 48% of the responses reported five or more fully online programs. So really great growth between 2013 and 2022.

Andrew J. Magda:
What we found with that average of 20 programs across the membership there was the idea of offering a large and diverse portfolio is now being the norm. So when institutions were initially back in 2012, 2013, and entering the market with two, three or four programs, which was seen as significant back in those days, business or education were really targeted fields. Now in 2022, it’s really just a growth and proliferation of larger portfolios.

Andrew J. Magda:
However, with that great growth and great change over the years, there are still barriers that are still being encountered by member institutions. What we found back in 2013 was around faculty time and effort to develop the courses, concerns around engagement. Those were still barriers back in 2013. And in 2022, we found that large percents were still experiencing this barrier. 78% of their faculty concern is around academic rigor. Obviously with the onset of the pandemic in 2020, there could be some negative aspirations there, but what we do found it was slightly lower than what was in 2013, but still 78%, a large percent there pointing to academic rigor as being a concern for them.

Andrew J. Magda:
So even though we’ve grown those number of online programs, really grown the portfolio across different types of different fields of study, we’re still finding a lot of these barriers. We’re still lingering and still present challenges for institutions today. Dr. Spirou, I just wanted to ask you around these barriers. What are some of your experiences that you perhaps had on your campus? And what do you really think is maybe still something that needs to be a challenge here in 2022 that you think we can overcome?

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Yeah. Thank you, Andrew, very much. As you describe the trajectory of online program delivery, I think that fits very much in terms of our institution. Back in 2012, 2013, we had a small number of programs, and of course now we have a larger number of programs that we have focused on expanding over the years.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Our focus actually has been on graduate education. So we really put a lot of effort into that. We try to incentivize our colleges and our faculty and our programs to engage more in developing programs. It’s interesting, and I do agree with the observation about the rigor. I think that’s something that we experienced back then that continues to be in place. In thinking a little bit about this, I think there are a couple of reasons, at least that we faced.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
The first one, and I wonder if other colleagues across other institutions are facing. The first one is to consider how faculty are being trained in higher education. I mean, we all go through an experience of participating in face-to-face when we’re in graduate school, when we are working on our … Or we try to emulate what the model of a professor is. It’s certainly all that training, all that experience. Primarily, research one university tends to be around face-to-face. Obviously that’s what we try to perfect, that’s what we try to focus on.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
The people that we try to emulate obviously are faculty mentors. There’s a generational issue there too, in terms of becoming exposed to technology. So I think that plays a role in it. And we tend to associate online instruction with, at least if you go back five or 10 years, with something that only for-profit institutions of higher education are engaged in.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
I think when you combine those elements, the cultural issue of training faculty to enter the profession, which tends to be face-to-face. And the notion that engaging in online instruction is something that for-profit institutions participate in, then the issue of rigor starts to emerge. And I think that tends to remain. And as that persists, I think we lose an understanding of how much technology has evolved, and the tools that exist there to advance teaching and learning. Again, there’s some thoughts related to that. But again, this is something that we also experience at our institution.

David Capranos:
Andrew, we had an interesting question in here around, the question was assuming that the cost of developing online courses has been increasing. I think there’s some confusion about maybe some of the ways these data are presented. For that line cost for developing online courses, am I right to say that from 2013 we actually had fewer people saying this was a barrier?

Andrew J. Magda:
Correct. So that’s how you would it. So in 2013, 44% said they’re still experiencing it. The number in 2013 was greater than that, in terms of those that experience it or still experiencing it.

David Capranos:
And then in addition to that, we had another 25% people this year said, yeah, we had this as a problem in the past, but we’ve overcome it. I think there is something thematically happening here where maybe the development of those courses has gotten less expensive, less burdensome, but it’s interesting that the cost for delivering those courses online is up a little bit. So maybe it’s smaller numbers.

David Capranos:
So I think there’s a little bit of a nuance there maybe in terms of compensation directly to the instructors, things along those lines. I think maybe we’re using fewer adjuncts, maybe we’re using faculty, that sort of thing. So I think that the costing of a program can be really complicated and nuanced, but yeah, there’s a lot of interesting things to pull out of the data there.

Andrew J. Magda:
I think in the later slides, when we talk about faculty, there was a trend to a more full-time faculty teaching these courses. So as you said, that cost could be driven up just by that shift from adjunct to full-time.

David Capranos:
I think also too that it’s interesting, Dr. Spirou, you mentioned this, the move from the for-profits into this space, and then increasingly we’re getting more … We have this wave of smaller non-profit schools getting into the mix, but now it’s larger public schools are increasingly kind of the third wave for online learning are coming into the equation.

David Capranos:
And I think we’re also seeing richer and more dynamic coursework too. What it means to be an online student changed quite a bit. Years ago maybe you could just set up your webcam in the back of the class and have some email assignments, but now it’s these rich simulations and models and things like that, and there’s more media involved. And so that’s something too that could contribute to potential increases in delivery.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Yeah. I agree. Very briefly, I agree with that. I think the technology has evolved and has gotten so much more comprehensive and the options for both faculty and students has expanded so much, that it offered a lot more opportunities for developing coursework. And obviously the impact on teaching and learning has been so much more extensive.

David Capranos:
We have so much more to compare to too. You’ve got apps on your phones that teach you things, you’ve got masterclass and some of these really high production things out there too that are … You’ve got Coursera and other actors out there in the Mood space. And so I think what it means to be a high quality program is definitely evolving. Andrew, I’ll throw it back to you.

Andrew J. Magda:
Sure. So as we talk about barriers, what’s on the other side of that barrier? And that’s the outcomes. And what we found, again, going over those multiple years of the survey that we’ve done is that these strong outcomes have continued. We think about the goals and the mission of colleges and universities, and just how offering these online courses and programs really ties back into that mission.

Andrew J. Magda:
We’ve seen 70% noting that they’re attracting students from outside of their area. 85% increase student access. So really hitting upon some of those tenets of the mission there. 49% increased the diversity of their student body. 83% we think about the pandemic that we entered in 2020. So strengthening the continuity in case of a disaster. So being able to pivot from face-to-face learning to this emergency remote delivery much more quickly, less effort, less investment there.

Andrew J. Magda:
Also, pedagogical improvements, 56%. So if you think about faculty that are teaching both online courses and face to face courses, kind of the cross-pollination of some of those best practices back and forth. So if there was a simulation, as David was just talking about in one of these rich online courses, why not take that simulation and bring it back to your face to face students as well?

Andrew J. Magda:
The next slide was around the revenue through fees. 50% saw increased revenue. But we also found, and one of the questions was in 2013, just over one quarter charge the technology fee that went up to 60% in 2022. So there’s increased revenue, one, from the tuition from online learning, but also the addition of these technology fees.

Andrew J. Magda:
And speaking to a vice chancellor after the survey, trying to dig a little bit deeper into, why charge these technology fees? He was talking about the need to justify those. Students are becoming much more savvy to what he called hidden costs. So around these technology fees, understanding that maybe they’re needed for the initial setup and investment in online learning, but then continuing those fees on and on, year after year, students are really starting to question around the need for these fees versus a single cost tuition price.

David Capranos:
I’d also say, Andrew, just to interject, anecdotally, we don’t see these fees broadly in the market. We were really surprised by this data point internally when we saw it, because I think what’s becoming more and more common is to have more transparency, more simplified pricing structures. A lot of schools even are reporting your total investment in your degree, not even getting into the cost for credit hours, things like that and saying like, this is a $30,000 degree instead of, well, it could be between 30 and 40, depending on how many credits you took and what lab fees you had to take. I think that’s going away.

Andrew J. Magda:
Right. With lab fees, I think that those were excluded from this as well. So these are just the, it’s $200 per credit, plus $50 per credit technology fee with that term, versus say a lab fee that may be relevant for a nursing degree or whatnot. As we talked about the increase in the online courses and programs, obviously the expectations placed upon faculty over the last decade has increased in terms of their needs around online learning.

Andrew J. Magda:
Developing an online course used to be incentivized, some of these faculty members, but you see here that, kind of that middle shade blue, 25% are no longer incentivizing faculty to develop an online course. It’s an expectation in their role, especially with new hire faculty that they, one, are going to teach online, and they’re going to help develop those online courses. It’s no longer a novel idea to take on an online course.

Andrew J. Magda:
Professional development, obviously faculty are really seeking out these professional development opportunities to instruct online to improve their teaching with these courses. Obviously we’re going to see this increase even more and more as we go forward obviously, as we pull out of the pandemic. 74% believe that at least half of the in-person courses will have online components in the coming year. So again, that cross-pollination and the future being slightly more hybrid than demarcated online or in-person.

Andrew J. Magda:
As we touched on a couple minutes ago, the use of full-time faculty. In 2019, 40% use full-time faculty for online instruction. And that grew to 51% using full-time faculty in 2022. I think part of this could be coming out of the pandemic, that more and more faculty through those emergency and remote learning situations were able to try out online, try it on, really see some of the benefits out of it, and then increasing their need for it there. But also just, as I said, more and more faculty as they’re hired on, it’s just more of an expectation for them, versus going outside to an adjunct to teach a specific online course.

Andrew J. Magda:
We asked around mandated training. Obviously some institutions do have collective bargaining agreements, which can prohibit just mandating specific trainings. But when we asked those that were able to mandate training, if they did so, what were some of those outcomes? And there were a lot of positive outcomes coming out of it in terms of increased comfort with online instruction, 78%, and also an increased willingness. We went back to that barrier slide. You would see that one of the options there was the willingness of faculty to teach online. So a way to improve upon that is around the training.

Andrew J. Magda:
Also, asking around that emergency remote learning situation, faculty shifting their coursework to Zoom, thinking that this is online learning. Obviously we know that online learning is a much more rich experience than just a Zoom lecture. A provost in New England was bringing up the idea that as more and more faculty now want to join the ranks of online teaching, thinking that it is Zoom learning, there might be some bad habits that have to be untaught there. And mandated training in terms of what online learning is and what is expected of them and how it should look could help solve some of these issues as well.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
If I could share, a couple of observations related to mandate training. I mean, obviously, working with faculty to advance outcomes and meet the outcomes for courses and programs needs quite a bit of tension. I want to tie some of the comments to my previous observation about a sense of hesitancy to engage with online instruction. I want to say back in 2012, ’13, ’14, so probably almost eight or nine years ago, we were trying to move some of our graduate programs online.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
And as I mentioned earlier, faculty tended to be very hesitant about that transition. I guess we had two options there. One was to mandate faculty to go through training, to be prepared to engage with the students, or to approach it a bit differently, and that is to ask the faculty, what is it that they need in order for them to be successful? Or how do we go about to do that?

Dr. Costas Spirou:
And it’s interesting, back in 2013, 2014, the faculty responded with the need for some of our programs to utilize WebEx, which is, at the time, I mean a face-to-face, of course, all that became more popular during the pandemic as we shifted, but back eight or nine years ago they said, “Well, that would really strengthen our approach to delivering the coursework and feeling good about the rigor associated with those programs.” We obviously had responded to that and provided the faculty with access to WebEx, and that brought them along.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
The other thing we did is that we provided faculty with support through a structure in our Center for Teaching and Learning, which is another approach to it. Trying to be mindful of the fact that instructional design staff, or instructional support stuff were essential to be present for faculty, because a lot of times you will create those structures, but you want to make sure that they come out of the office, the Center for Teaching and Learning, I guess in our case, and go to the departments, and be available to the faculty for assistance, because the faculty do have control over the curriculum and do have a way of thinking about how to deliver their courses. You have to be there to provide them with that support.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
The third thing that evolved for us has been embracing quality matters. And make quality matters available to our faculty. And a way to differentiate the programs is … And it’s interesting. We’ve had faculty from our nursing graduate program to our masters in public administration or education, that full programs. We have faculty fully completing our quality matters. And one of the way to look at it is to see quality matters as strengthening the student experience, strengthening the teaching experience.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
But also to what extent you can informally think about marketing that to perspective students. To basically say that this program is, again, delivered with faculty that have completed quality matters. They bring expertise and strength and design that comes into the classroom. And that could be a differentiator from a marketing perspective when you try to … Again, there’s no formal certification, if you will. However, I think that one can integrate that into their material.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
The other thing is that we try to take quality matters a little bit further by getting one of our staff members, an instructional designer, to become quality matters certified face-to-face facilitator. So then instead of expanding the money to constantly going externally, we invested so that work is done internally and it’s available to all of our faculty within our Center for Teaching and Learning.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
I share all that within the context of avoiding the mandate, if you will, which generates a lot of challenge, a lot of issues, and trying to figure out ways where you can embrace the work of the faculty and try to support the work of the faculty. And not all faculty will utilize those opportunities. However, it’s part of building the infrastructure that’s necessary to take you to the next level.

David Capranos:
Yeah, I think that was really well said. That change management component is really important to get the buy-in. I totally agree with you on, on increasingly I think the product that a student is buying essentially is the education, but it’s also how it’s facilitated to them. We’re in this area where online learning has matured to a point where just simply being online is not enough. It has to be this rich engaging experience that’s actually going to give them the things they need. Yeah. I think that’s well said.

David Capranos:
I’m going to go and pivot a little bit. I think we’ve been focused a lot on the learning and instruction and the programs. Getting into the services that wrap around, and I think this is a good dovetail into the conversation we were just having about how much the nuts and bolts of a program are important, outside of even just the content. We did find generally as a trend that people are getting more services, especially in the online market, they’re getting more services.

David Capranos:
We did ask this question around post-pandemic and pre-pandemic was there a change in how these services were delivered? And it was really interesting for us to see that prior to the pandemic, most of these services were going to be in-person: mental health services, career services, academic advising, that sort of thing, primarily in-person. Now and over the next five years, we’re going to see a lot of these services move to online. It’s been interesting to see this happen in the greater marketplace, mental health services. We’re getting all these new app-based programs out there, BetterHelp and others.

David Capranos:
I’m sure you guys listen to podcasts. You’re probably hearing the same ads I do for a lot of this type of thing out there, but the schools are picking up on this as well. That it’s like, hey, we’re going to have to think about these services being more online, both for just the ease, being able to service more folks, but also I think increasingly this younger audience is going to need these types of services to be delivered in this way. This is what’s going to be the norm for them. And we’re catching up to those norms.

David Capranos:
We also looked at, back in 2013, there was a number of services that we saw weren’t regularly offered, things like 24/7 tech support, the virtual bookstores, the bookstores, LMS support, things along those lines weren’t as commonly offered. And now we’re seeing much more of those being offered across the board. Just something like 89% of the survey respondent said, of course we do 24/7 tech support. That’s just an expectation at this point. And we’re starting to see things like that creep into the conversation. A lot of these services, like I mentioned, are wrapped around the learning experience for folks.

David Capranos:
We did get into the impact of COVID on resources, which I think is a pretty interesting topic. Infrastructure investment in online learning was increasing in general. So we did find, prior to the pandemic, when we surveyed, we asked, how much of it you were doing investing in online? Fully almost all schools said, “We already had some sort of online learning investment that was happening. We were already getting into this mode, but it was after the pandemic that we’re really interested in seeing what’s going to continue to happen.”

David Capranos:
And so, even though 98% of these respondents were saying, we were already investing in online, we’re seeing something like more than half of them, almost two thirds are saying we’re increasing, we’re significantly increasing this investment moving forward. We’ve been talking about this internally a lot, is this real black swan moment for online learning where maybe even your most reluctant faculty were pushed into this emergency remote teaching situation just by nature of what we were all going through at the time.

David Capranos:
And so I think that’s opened up a lot of people’s eyes. I really liked the message earlier on, hey, maybe there’s some bad habits that got picked up along the way with the Zoom and emergency remote teaching, sort of traditional online learning, and we’re going to have to think about, how do we do this better in the future? And so I think that’s part of why we’re maybe seeing a lot more investment. The trend was probably moving that way to begin with, and we’re accelerating it over time.

David Capranos:
One of the things that was a really important part of this conversation was Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds. So federal funds from the government going into institutions. We wanted to get a sense of where that money was going and how it supported institutions. And of course there was a handful out there just used to make payroll. Seeing really huge drops in enrollment. We saw that in a lot of the numbers across the board where there were drop offs in enrollment and cash flows to schools, but we did see some more creative uses.

David Capranos:
And so things like discharging student debt, I think was an interesting one where we were passing and handing that money directly to the students. But also a lot of it was more technology-oriented, maybe a little bit more forward looking into investments in technology, things along those lines. And then ultimately, most folks did it to implement the health and safety measures that we would expect to see across the board was a little bit more common. Dr. Spirou, I wanted to get your sense of these funds and how they impacted your institution. What were the kinds of things that you did with this extra funding?

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Yeah. Thank you, David. I think that all of those categories probably would describe what happened at our institution. I think at many other institutions, all of them, I guess, in terms of new instructional technology or new technology, it was exactly what you just mentioned. It would try to respond to some of the challenges that we faced.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
For example, I remember that we purchased a lot of laptops for the library to be able to give out to students who needed that to be able to participate in their courses. Also preparing for faculty that had to move online because of health and safety issues. So we purchased a lot of document cameras, for example. We purchased many instructional cameras, wireless hubs, so that you be able to, with your iPad, to be able to move around and have access to the technology.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
We also utilize resources to develop more websites for students as a result of it. We have two websites. One was, Georgia College Keeps Teaching, and Georgia College Keeps Learning. One was focusing on faculty, and one was focusing on students, so that the students would have a portal of information that they would … However, it was interesting because we were not as prepared for that, I think like many others. We had a lot of information out there.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
And I think what that helped us do with the portals, it helped us clustering all the information and going through all that to be able to support our students and support our faculty. I think this slide adequately and appropriately describes what happens at our institution very much in this regards, from health and safety measures to obviously investing in new instructional technology and just engaging faculty in ways that they never thought they would have to engage in the past.

David Capranos:
Yeah. I know we hear Wiley did quite a lot of work for a number of schools around the country to rapidly move their programs online. It was these really Herculean efforts where we were [inaudible 00:30:43] really convert programs in a matter of months into fully online. And it’s interesting now that you have that artifact, now that you have those websites, like you mentioned, or maybe you’ve got that online converted program, I think a lot of schools are saying, “Okay, well now what do we do with this, that we’ve had that investment?”

David Capranos:
It’ll be interesting to see the ripple effect of these funds. I think with the more direct things like payroll support or getting masks into people’s hands and stuff like that, obviously that’s disposable in some ways, or media, but some of these longer term impacts will be really interesting to see how they shape the future of the online learning.

David Capranos:
Pivoting a little bit here towards another impact of COVID on the conversation here, like I said, it’s this sort of, hopefully, once in a hundred year pandemic that we experienced. There’s this shift towards innovating that’s really been happening and sparking, I think a lot of innovation with folks. This is great. Andrew captured this in a conversation with a provost in the South Atlantic region.

David Capranos:
And he said, “If there’s something that we can do that’s going to get us some nontraditional group, that’s where we’re prioritizing. That’s what we want to do. We’re really good at the meat and potatoes. A lot of our small schools are really good at supporting what they’re used to, but it’s thinking about, how do we broaden that access? How do we go to non-traditional students? How do we go to non-traditional populations?” I think that’s something that’s going to be really important, especially with the demographic cliff that’s coming up, that a lot of us are going to be preparing for.

David Capranos:
It was interesting to track how many folks are looking at increasing things, like employer partnerships. Or they’re looking at hybrid graduate programs and looking to change modalities, things along those lines. We also had a high number of people saying in the next few years, we’re really going to do this stackable credential thing.

David Capranos:
I think that’s something that I’ve been talking to schools about for the better part of a decade now at this point, but we’re really starting to see it actually happening now in the last, like maybe three, four years pre-pandemic. And now that we’ve weathered this storm, I think a lot of schools are getting a lot more serious about, what’s the red tape that we have to cut? What do we have to do to be able to get us to have some of these new and exciting models?

David Capranos:
With that, I think also this question of broadening access and looking to nontraditional student groups and things like that, we’re getting more digging into things like credit for prior learning, prior learning assessments, things along those lines to really think about, what is it that we need to have to fully prepare a student, and to not have the hurdles or burdens in front of them that maybe we’ve had in the past? How do we make this quicker, cheaper, more often, more regular from education?

David Capranos:
We’ve got a number of key takeaways here. I want to spend a little bit of time briefly recapping some of the things that we just spoke about, and then we’ve got some thoughts, and then we’re going to open it up for question. Just a quick check on time here, I think we’re doing great. We’re a little bit over the halfway point.

David Capranos:
Andrew walked us through the online program numbers and how they’ve continued to grow. I think one of the interesting things we saw there was the diversification in that area. And that it’s like, before it was nursing and business degrees were the things that we saw most commonly, but it’s been really exciting to see just a proliferation of different types of degrees.

David Capranos:
Online programs continue to see positive outcomes for schools. I think we’ve seen that in a lot of the numbers that these are … I think for a lot of schools, first and foremost, they start thinking about it as a revenue generator. But I think also we get a lot of other positive net benefits off of having these be in their strategy. And then faculty investments, of course, leading to stronger outcomes.

David Capranos:
I think we had that great talk track from Dr. Spirou about effective change management. You can’t bully your way into, or create learning experience. You have to provide that support and really provide those structures and have those models present if you want to do this at scale. Andrew, do you want to take us through some of the other ones here?

Andrew J. Magda:
Sure. And as David was talking about around just the services that we’re trying to wrap around it, when we think about online degrees, we always say, “Oh, they’re a hundred percent online. You don’t have to come to campus.” But prior to the pandemic, a lot of these services were being offered primarily in-person. The pandemic forced us to rethink that and offering them a new and different ways, including online delivery or hybrid delivery.

Andrew J. Magda:
So that’s really going to be the trend coming out of this that we found in the next three to five years, really a shift towards not returning services to how we previously offered them, but kind of, again, continue that innovation, continuing to offer them in multiple formats to meet students’ needs where they need them.

Andrew J. Magda:
The investment infrastructure, as we were talking about, 98% said they were already making investments in online learning prior to the pandemic, but really two thirds responding that they’re actually going to be upping that investment going forward. And part of that investment can go into, as we were talking about, those support services and the trainings for faculty as well.

Andrew J. Magda:
And then the innovative paths towards degrees, looking for new and different avenues for students, and then also looking for new and different ways of providing them the college education that they need, but perhaps even looking for ways to break down that degree. I think we saw on that list there, accepting ACE credits or portfolio reviews. Just different avenues to look for to break down that degree, but also new avenues for students, looking at employer partnerships, and looking at some underserved areas as perhaps new avenues for students.

David Capranos:
So looking forward, I think there’s, we’re hearing this phrase probably a lot, adjusting to the new normal. And thinking about what our next steps are going to be. And I think that a lot of what’s interesting is that, like I’ve said earlier in the presentation, you sort of are in this mature online market at this point. But with this change recently, I think we’re going to see some upending of some of these models.

David Capranos:
I think we’re going to start seeing more blended modalities. We’re likely to see different delivery ratios to help schools out with scale and margin, things along those lines. I think we’ve heard of, pick your new phrase, but flipped classrooms, or digitally enhanced education or whatever it ends up being. I think a lot of schools are saying, “Hey, maybe we can use these tools in different ways, and they don’t have to be quite as siloed.” Just because, like I said, we’ve had this acceleration through COVID.

David Capranos:
One of the things, again, that we keep hitting here is this preparing faculty for growing expectations. And so there’s this increased online blended modality that’s going to have to come with some changes in who’s teaching, how the teaching is happening, that sort of thing. And I think having that support structure, being really clear about what expectations are, is really important. We do a lot of customer satisfaction type research as well in our department.

David Capranos:
One of the primary concerns for students are, I don’t get enough interaction with my faculty. So how do you create systems that make sure that in those online learning environments that there is the interaction happening that I think everybody wants to happen? Andrew, do you want to take us through some of the other ones here?

Andrew J. Magda:
Sure. As David said, that’s where we see the changes. Completing this research, that’s where we saw things heading. But then the question is, well, how do we get there? And I think it comes down to looking at what online learning means to your particular campus. And that comes down to, who are you looking to serve? Who is that target student population that you’re trying to reach? And then how is the best way to reach them with the resources that you have available to you?

Andrew J. Magda:
So it’s really looking at those two or three different legs of the stool there, and understanding how it’s going to work. I apologize for my dog barking there. Moving forward with that, what we’re seeing with that implementation is how to actually get this done. And as we were talking about, reaching out to different avenues of the campus and making sure that those investments are there. David, did you want to hit on this a little bit more?

David Capranos:
Yeah. I think we’ve incidentally set it all along. It’s about buy-in across the campus. It’s about making sure, I think there’s a question in the channel right now about how leadership can support moving forward. Spirou, I’m going to ask you to give us some comments on that if you don’t mind. How do you feel that leadership can support faculty better who want to transition to online or hybrid modalities?

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Yeah. I’m happy to share some thoughts about that. The one thing I wanted to do is also comment on the previous slide, which I think it was, I don’t know if we can go back there, but I think that’s very, very important and very, very powerful because identifying what online learning means on your campus is very critical. And what’s important here is to think about the mission of the university obviously, or the institution. What is the mission and what is the purpose? And obviously the context within which the institution operates.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
I could share with you that we’ve been very, very mindful of that here at my institution. We’re the state’s public liberal arts institution. We are a residential institution. We’re an undergraduate institution of higher education. We’ve invested extensively in supporting students in a non-campus environment. And so as a result of it, when it comes to delivering online courses or programs to undergraduate students during the year, we just moved away from. We’re not doing that.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
However, there’s an opportunity for us to engage at the graduate level in an online format. And that’s where we’ve invested in that. And that’s the programs that we’ve developed around that. They’re very professional-oriented, very much focusing on working with adult learners, for example, to try to advance themselves within the context of their careers. So we focused on that.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
And at the undergraduate level, we find out that our students move away in the summertime. They go back home, they have jobs, they do all type of different things. So there we’ve build up over the years, our online delivery during the summertime. So as you can see here, we are thinking strategically as to, what is the mission of the institution? What are the opportunities for us to engage in online learning? At the same time, how do we qualitatively strengthen the student experience by investing in faculty?

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Because whether the student is a graduate student or is an undergraduate student that’s now taking the class online in the summer, versus face-to-face, we need to make sure that those students have a very positive experience, because that’s how we are presenting the university to them. It has to be up to par in terms of learning and outcomes. And the interesting thing we’ve seen over the years, a significant increase of our summer, our faculty are participating more in the summertime to teach courses online, which means we have to support them to be able to do that.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
We’ve also tied, I could share with you, we’ve tied faculty development to summer funds. So we’ve seen a tremendous amount of activity there on that front. I go back to this observation about defining what online learning means on your campus is really, really important. The mission of the institution, the resources, the context, a rural-urban competition, all these things you have taken into consideration as you structure a strategy around it.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
I think the problem becomes when you’re just all over the place, and then you start to miss opportunities, if you will, or to miss the focus on continuing to strengthening the brand and serving the students. As far as support, I think within that context, that’s important for leadership at an institution to invest in various areas. I mentioned some of that before. We’ve worked to create a more robust center for teaching and learning at our institution by collapsing two or three different areas that were separate offices. So we created a larger entity to be able to achieve more scale in outreach.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
We also made it very clear that our Center for Teaching and Learning has to connect with IT very closely. It’s in academic affairs, but it has to be very closely connected to IT as well as the library. That’s another area that’s very important for the institution. We do not want to operate in a silo, but recognizing the importance of investment in success, and trying to the best that one can do within those circumstances without stretching themselves and being very mission oriented, I think are some of the ways, and I know things cannot happen overnight. They never happen overnight. It takes time and resources and energy.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
But I think that if you have a good blueprint along the way, you can just take your time to start to build that over time and give yourself the time that’s necessary. I think that you lose the battle once the faculty start to feel that you just have a scheme going on, or you have some other motive that you have going on here. And it’s better to move slowly or slower to get to where you’re trying to go rather than rush into it, because I think the end result will not be … And, of course, the students are not going to be satisfied, the faculty are not going to be satisfied, and it’s going to hurt the operation.

David Capranos:
Yeah. What I hear you saying too is that like, from the top down, we should have a vision or a mission statement. We should be really clear with what we’re doing. And I think so rarely do I see that, where there’s a clear kind of communication on, well, this is who we are as an institution, and this is why we need to do this. Oftentimes it’s wrapped into, well, there’s a financial reason. Or it’s an enrollment challenge that we’re facing, so we’re trying to overcome it. But tying it back to mission is really important.

David Capranos:
I want to pick up on a thread that you said earlier there too, around really having empathy for the student. So I think a lot of these conversations end up being, how do we convince the faculty to do it right? Or how do we get the investment to do it? But like that idea that you said about you guys adapting to this resident population that goes home for the summers and like, how do you serve them?

David Capranos:
Another school in an urban environment maybe has a lot of folks that are working shift work. How do we do the right thing for them? When you think about discipline specific challenges with something like a criminal justice degree, and a lot of those folks are police officers that are working really erratic and weird shifts, or nurses or other healthcare professionals.

David Capranos:
Like I think thinking about the best way to serve those populations can also help to connect to mission. That it’s about access, is about broadening. I think a lot of us are concerned with D, E and I initiatives and stuff. And really these are the ways that you do it. it’s not just changing up your advertising a little bit. It’s got to be a little bit more comprehensive than that.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Yeah. I agree with that, David. You have to be more intentional along the way. We have a great group of deans here at our institution that are just mindful of all that. And they just are student-focused, and that’s the other part, you have to be student-focused and you have to recognize, what are the areas that you engage in? And what are the areas that you hold back a little bit? It does not mean that you failed, if you will, it just means that you are focusing on student success and supporting student learning.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Mission is important. I think keeping that in mind and obviously working with colleagues. And that takes a lot of effort and communication and not rushing into things, I think, because you’re going to realize fruits that you just don’t expect if you just be more methodical.

David Capranos:
So we’ve kind of, I think seamlessly transitioned into some of our question and discussion period here. There was a really great question that I saw, particularly around getting buy-in around the asynchronous learning component. A lot of the things that we’ve been saying in the macro level is like, “Hey, you need to do technology. You need to think about these new models.”

David Capranos:
I think where we get a lot of resistance is, sure, I’ll do that, but it needs to be live sessions. I need to replicate exactly what I’ve done in the classroom for the last decade. I need to do 45 minute lectures, 16 minute lectures that are recorded with no breaks. I need to do discussions that last 90 minutes, twice a week, those sorts of things.

David Capranos:
And what we found is that obviously a lot of that doesn’t work for the online environment. It’s not being empathetic to the end user on the other side of that screen. It’s not thinking about the student first. My first reaction to that is make them take a course online. Make them take something asynchronous, and let them see how engaging those things can do.

David Capranos:
Model that behavior by example. Give them access to really great examples of that asynchronous learning, because I think a lot of people understand it in the abstract, but haven’t actually gone through it. And so there’s these boogie men out there about how it actually works. But there can be a lot of engagement, a lot of interaction. I’m curious, gentlemen, do you guys have any response to that about asynchronous learning and how to convince folks that that’s a good model?

Dr. Costas Spirou:
It’s a difficult issue obviously, and that’s a challenging situation there. I’ll just share with you some. And I’m not sure, I guess one has to work with the faculty to find out, what is the thing that gets in the way, if you will? So you have to work with the faculty to find out, what’s their perspective there? But I’ll share something. And that goes back to, the first time I taught, and I’ll share this, it was 30 years ago. 30. I was thinking in my mind, when was that? It was 30 years ago.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
And I started to teaching in a two-way audio video, T1 line. I don’t know if anybody is familiar with that, but basically it was a cluster of telephone lines that would connect one site with another site with monitors that probably if they fell on you, they would probably kill you, for sure. But I do remember, before we started that, we started to talk about asynchronous engagement on the part of faculty with obviously computers and things of that nature.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
I guess as a faculty member at the time, one of the most exciting parts for me, or at least where I saw the beauty of the technology, the internet coming in was the opportunity for my students to engage or to open up worlds that probably were not there before. So for example creating your syllabus in such a way, an online course syllabus where a student could, for example, I’ll throw this out there, community development. They could actually explore how in another country or governments, local governments or communities are involved in that. And being able to look through websites and things of that nature.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
So that was a very synchronous, obviously, exp … But it opened up a world that I could never bring in the classroom in any way, shape or form face-to-face. Now, things have changed, because a lot of these things are right there. We could see it along the way, but I think there are opportunities there to structure a class in such a way that some of these powerful opportunities emerge where you … Now, in fact, it’s even more powerful because you can actually be there. You can just experience so much of the world around you.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
I think a conversation with the faculty or the departments, the chair, or the dean, what is it that’s missing? What’s not there? And how do we go about to get there? Could compliment or could at least assist trying to … And you got to give yourself some time, obviously, along the way to get there. But I think that working where others are and what they’re missing and trying to work with them would probably be a first step.

David Capranos:
Yeah, I think-

Dr. Terry Brown:
David-

David Capranos:
Yeah, go ahead, Terry.

Dr. Terry Brown:
I’ve been listening and just really enjoying the richness of the conversation. I have a question. As you looked at the trend of these pandemic forced changes that we see, so increased in the number of online programs and a changing attitude of the faculty, I’ve made notes of these, the kinds of things that the survey revealed, a decline in the tech fees.

Dr. Terry Brown:
These are indicators that online learning is moving out of the margins and into the center, being integrated into the fabric of the institution. Whether or not it’s a residential institution, or regardless of the mission across any, I’m wondering if we see indicators of increased equity in serving our students, or concerns about excluding more students. Is this a movement that can help us create more access and help more students succeed to a degree? Do we see indicators of concern?

David Capranos:
Yeah. Terry, I think that’s an excellent question to be asking. Some complimentary data points that we have, Andrew and team worked on, this great voice of the online learner project over the summer that we launched as well, that some of you might be familiar with, where we surveyed something like 3000 students that were currently looking for online education. And a third of them told us they weren’t even thinking about it before the pandemic.

David Capranos:
Something is happening where there’s a certain type of student out there that maybe didn’t originally think that this was for them, and the attitudes are changing around it. For us, it’s really exciting that there is this widening and broadening of the field, and that there’s more people that we might be able to capture. Obviously there’s an obvious diversity that comes with that, because a lot of these folks are older or in different groups, things along those lines.

David Capranos:
But I think that some of the other things that we’ve been talking about where … Dr. Spirou, you mentioned you had to invest in technology to get laptops to folks, or internet access to people, or things along those … I know that was one of the ways that these relief funds were used, were in rural areas to get broadband to people, or satellite, or things along those lines.

David Capranos:
I think, Terry, you’re asking the right questions is that we can get really excited about how much this has widened the field and everything else, but we have to make sure that there’s certain groups that aren’t left behind. I just think about what a great equalizer this has the opportunity to be, because anyone can do it. We’ve got a live transcript happening right now. So there’s things that we can do, like in technology needs to get different audiences, different abilities into the classroom.

David Capranos:
It becomes a lot less expensive for folks too if they don’t have to move to a campus, and they can still keep their jobs and things along those lines. So I think there’s a lot of ways that this can be a real force for good, but I think it’s really important to make sure that certain groups don’t get left behind. That’s a great question.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
David, I saw that question from Maureen about how to add online programs. I would say it probably a combination of both. I think that you have to be mindful obviously of the programs, the department, the faculty, the faculty interest. And then I think it’s more difficult when it comes from the top-down approach, but a combination of the two probably would be a good way to start.

David Capranos:
I would add a factor there. The question was, does the decision come from top-down or bottom-up? And sometimes it’s even outside-in. I’ve talked to schools where local businesses or even the student population has said like, “Why don’t you have this yet?” It’s time for them to move into it. So I think that that speaks too to, Terry, what you were hinting at is that it’s becoming an expectation for a lot of schools, and it’s being centered in the conversation.

David Capranos:
A funny analog to this is that we do a lot of marketing at our company, and years ago you would think about like, “Hey, does this website work on mobile?” And nowadays it’s, does this mobile website works on a desktop? These cell phones have become so ubiquitous that it’s like the technology just shifts how we think about things. So, Terry, I want to thank you for our time here. I know that we’re probably right at the end. Did you have some final announcement for us?

Dr. Terry Brown:
I want to thank you all so much for this conversation. Andrew, David, Costas, thank you for being part of this panel. And also to those who’ve attended, thank you for participating. Just want to remind you to watch your inbox for a link to the webinar recording. You can also take a minute to download the reports. You will be able to find not only the 2022 report, but previous reports as well.

Dr. Terry Brown:
And also visit the Wiley University Services for a whole lot of rich resources of research, webinars, podcasts. I also want to encourage you to watch our website for upcoming AASCU events, many things going on at AASCU. And so we’ve got the link in there for that. But otherwise, I want to thank everyone again for participating and being part of this. Thank you very much.

David Capranos:
Thank you.

Andrew J. Magda:
Thank you.

Dr. Costas Spirou:
Bye-bye. Take care.

Dr. Terry Brown:
Bye-bye.