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‘The Exponential Age’ and Online Learning in 2030

‘The Exponential Age’ and Online Learning in 2030

The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology Is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society by Azeem Azhar

Published in September of 2021.

Living through in-between pandemic times has made it difficult to think about the future of higher ed. Mostly, we are all trying to make it through our days. Planning for the university of 2030 feels like a luxury that we simply can’t afford at the moment.

Why should we be thinking about the higher ed of the future? One lesson that COVID-19 should teach us is that tomorrow’s institutional resilience is a function of today’s institutional investments.

What should we be doing now to build the anti-fragile university of the future?

One place to start thinking about the future of higher ed is to read (and talk about) books about the future. The Exponential Age is an excellent place to start.

The core argument of The Exponential Age is that 21st-century technologies are changing exponentially, while the institutions that structure our society evolve incrementally.

The difference between the speed at which technology progresses and our ability to change how we think and act leads to what the book’s author, entrepreneur Azeem Azhar, calls an “exponential gap.”

The Exponential Age is full of stories of how this gap plays out in areas of AI and computing, biology, renewable energy, and manufacturing.

Little attention is given to the potential impacts of exponential technological change on higher education. This is not a critique of The Exponential Age, but instead an appreciation that Azhar provides us a framework to think about some possible higher education futures.

What will it mean for higher education that by 2030, computer power will be 100 times as fast?

Today, I would judge online education to be at roughly the same state of development as electric vehicles (EV).

An EV has some areas of superiority to a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine (ICE) and many other areas of comparative deficiency.

EVs are quieter and require less maintenance than an ICE vehicle, and they can be charged at home.

EVs, however, are today more expensive than comparable ICE vehicles, owing to the high costs of batteries. Electric cars also cannot travel as far on a full charge as a gas-powered car can travel on a full tank of gas. Charging an EV battery takes considerably longer than filling a gas tank. And the number of charging stations nationwide pales compared to the over 65,000 places in the US where you can fill up your gas tank.

Like EVs, online education does have some advantages over face-to-face learning. For adult working professionals, online education’s geographic and temporal flexibility makes this medium of learning and credentialing superior to residential alternatives.

For many learners, however, online education lacks many of the elements that make residential learning so impactful and effective. Online learning can make it challenging to structure one’s time effectively for students who are not well prepared to succeed in college.

The social element of learning, including the connection between educators and students, can be more challenging for some learners to achieve in a fully online environment. And today, creating high-quality immersive learning experiences that emphasize educator/learner relationships and active/experiential learning is not any less expensive for colleges and universities to deliver than comparable residential courses.

By 2030, the advantages that ICE vehicles have over battery-powered vehicles will likely have disappeared. Batteries may not get exponentially cheaper and faster, but they will drop in price and increase in capacity. By 2030, EV batteries will likely be a third as expensive and enable vehicles to travel twice as far between charges as today.

Will these changes mean that electric cars and trucks will replace gas-powered vehicles at a faster rate than we might comprehend today? I’d say that is likely.

How might online learning change by 2030?

One possible future is that advances in AI, coupled with a continued rapid scaling of online platforms, could fundamentally alter the economics of online education.

What happens when the integration of artificial intelligence into scaled online educational platforms enables the learning experience to feel entirely social, interactive, and immersive?

One of the points that Azhar makes is that exponential technologies make it harder to predict the future. We can never fully forecast how rapidly changing technologies, business models, and external events might accelerate changes in areas such as work, consumer behavior, and even politics. We are not good at thinking exponentially.

The point, however, is that we utilize a framework of exponential change to help us decide which areas we should invest in research, development, and experimentation.

Colleges and universities, even those fully dedicated to the delivery of a bundled residential learning experience, should carve out some time and space to invest in experimenting with tomorrow’s teaching and learning modalities.

Scaled online learning may never be as intimate, relational, interactive, and immersive as traditional online courses and programs. But it may get better much faster than we think, allowing the costs for teaching and credentialing to fall rapidly.

Investing in experimenting with new scaled online learning methods may also reveal new ways that residential education might be improved.

Reading and talking about The Exponential Age might be a tool to help us at colleges and universities to think beyond our day-to-day challenges and to imagine what higher education might look like in 2030.

What are you reading?

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Chaos to Clarity: Teaching Kindergarten Online

Chaos to Clarity: Teaching Kindergarten Online

Online classes have been painful for every student around the globe, but it has been even more problematic for kindergarteners and, of course, their families and teachers.

A five-year-old sitting in front of her computer screen during class time and crying in frustration has been a daily scenario in most households and children who are enjoying the online classes and also at a loss, since they have very little to no practical knowledge at all.

The most important thing is to know if the children are in clarity or chaos.

Hassle for teachers:

It is definitely not possible for teachers to teach and give 100{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} knowledge during online classes. Conveying a lot of things during online classes is hard and often not possible.

Teachers and their kindergartners can watch teaching videos and discuss, but that needs focus and young students often do not care about focus.

However, kindergarten teachers can help students develop literacy skills as well as things that can only be learned once in a lifetime, such as vocabulary and background knowledge during online classes.

Kindergartners usually need a lot of movement and exploration, and these are the things that you can’t really do remotely, especially having to sit and stare at the screen.

The good thing is, young teachers use various methods to help their younger students get to know each other through distance learning.

This year and in the future when children are unable to attend schools due to the pandemic, it is important for kindergarten teachers to view their students as parents and give them their respective time to understand things.

A kindergarten teacher, Monisha Arora, says, “when such young students are made to study and understand things online, it poses greater difficulty for teachers to make them understand.”

She believes that technical issues can hamper concentration and interest in children. Students need to invest a lot of interest in understanding in online classes. Hence, teachers have to put in extra effort.

Children psychology during online kindergarten classes:

The biggest problem about missing kindergarten in person is the least emotional growth. It is impossible for them to learn to work in a group, make friends or be socially acceptable.

Children’s psychologist, Kiran Yadav says that everyone has been affected by the current pandemic but it is affecting kids even more. They are missing the playful environment which is very important for their growth.

She also believes that staying at home can badly affect their mental and physical growth equally. They become less interactive, lack of concentration, become frustrated, deal with social anxiety, low self-esteem and nervousness.

Approaches that can make online kindergarten teaching better:

But it is said that necessity is truly the mother of invention. Faced with the imperative of teaching kindergartners online, the teachers have learned, adapted, innovated and transformed the e-learning experience for KG students.

The new paradigm has now moved from chaos to clarity through various measures and reforms.

Dhwani Jaipuria, Director, SRJ Edu Services, says that kindergarten education is aimed at initiating life skills in children, such as linguistics, logistics/mathematical, spatial, bodily, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalists, and teachers, students and parents should do that even during online classes.

She also says that active learning, student engagement, proper comprehension, peer bonding, a good learning environment and making e-learning at home interesting can solve all issues faced by such young students during online classes.

Parent’s take on online kindergarten class:

Having a parent or guardian to assist kindergarten children with online learning makes a big difference.

Children with such support are more likely to do well with remote instruction, while those without it are more likely to struggle.

Visual distance learning is a way to help families teach their children at home. Students learning at home need projects, large displays and a good sound system to record teachers’ voices and peers in the classroom.

Ankita Balkrishna Sharma, who is a mother of a kindergartner, believes it is important to keep the child engaged during the whole session.

She says the teachers help with making classes more interesting for our child and we do not encounter any difficulties when it comes to maintaining focus during classes because we as parents are equally involved and keep a check every now and then.

What schools can offer:

Schools are tasked with figuring out how to maintain a sense of normality for students and teachers are the first line of defence when it comes to implementing it.

The lessons children learn should guide them when it comes to the future of schools and work to ensure that students learn.

Today, preschool teachers have covered a lot of ground in streaming online kindergarten teaching.

The main aim has been to keep the children curious to explore fresh ideas and learn new concepts through oral lessons, activities and role-playing.

A special emphasis is also being laid on their health and physical fitness. Baby yoga sessions and workout workshops are becoming a big hit among the little ones.

Do It Yourself (DIY) online activities nurture life skills in them and help to develop their fine and gross motor skills.

Virtual groups and games have led to the resumption of peer bonding.

It is true that only kindergarten education can never be a substitute for in-person teaching, but it has acquired a lot more finesse and clarity to optimize children’s learning outcomes in today’s exceptional times.

– Vaishnavi Parashar

READ 43{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} teachers unhappy with online mode of teaching in pandemic: Survey

READ Covid-19 impact: How online classes are becoming the new normal

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Tel Education offers college credit for $99 a course

‘The Exponential Age’ and Online Learning in 2030

An Oklahoma-based nonprofit offering online courses and accompanying teaching support for $67 per credit hour – nearly half the average $113 per credit hour cost at community colleges – has so far signed up 32 regionally accredited universities in 15 states as part of an aggressive expansion effort.

Tel Education, launched in 2017 also works with 161 high schools nationwide, a key aspect of its model since the high schools then feed prospective students into Tel partner colleges seeking opportunities to connect with college-bound teenagers who may not otherwise consider their institutions.

High school students pay $200 for a class with $100 going back to Tel and $100 going to the college providing the credit. College partners pay Tel $99 per student enrolled. While Tel does not outright forbid its partners from raising the costs of its courses, fewer than 2 percent of institutional partners do so, Tel officials said.

Other online education providers have long occupied this space, with the low-cost StraighterLine standing out as a similar effort.  StraighterLine combines a $99 a month membership “with guaranteed credit pathways to accredited colleges, saving students up to 60{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} on their degrees,” according to its website. Burck Smith, the founder at Straighter Line, said he launched the company in 2008 based on his belief that “online delivery should be cheaper than face to face.” Today Straighter Line has about 67 mostly general education courses in its portfolio. Students access courses through a $99/month subscription. About 150 universities now accept StraighterLine credits for transfer.

A more recent entry into the space is Outlier, a for-credit offering from MasterClass co-founder Aaron Rasmussen.  Outlier is a for-profit online class provider and recently forged a five-year deal with the University of Pittsburgh to ensure credits transfer. The controversial deal has been subject to intense scrutiny by the Pennsylvania state legislature.  According to the company website, Outlier charges about $400 per course.

Tel Executive Director Rob Reynolds said he considers Tel to be unique in large part because of its nonprofit status.

“We’re trying to prove that you can have truly affordable education models for underserved communities that are sustainable, if you work together,” Reynolds said.

Twenty-six general education courses and three science labs are now included in Tel’s course catalogue.  Reynolds says Tel won’t expand its offerings beyond about 35 total courses because the organization’s mission is to help the rural poor and first-generation college students who may assume college is out of reach get started on their degree.

“Let’s say you’re 75 miles from the closest community college, and nobody in your family has gone to college before,” Reynolds said. “The idea of college is not even on the radar, first of all, and the thought of driving someplace to try to register for a course and go through the traditional college registration process is about the same as telling them they’re going to have to fly to a foreign country and learn a language – because it can be that daunting.”

Reynolds, a former literature professor turned educational technologies entrepreneur, said that by contrast registration for Tel’s online courses is nearly automatic. Designed for asynchronous learning and “self-pacing,” the Tel catalogue of general education courses meshes to fit the general education curriculum at most regionally accredited institutions, which are the schools Tel mostly partners with.

For many universities, Reynolds said, the lure of Tel is that it provides “a new way to reach students, to expand the reach of your university. Reach new counties that you’re not in and keep building, from a university perspective, the future.”

Many Tel partner universities are smaller regional or religious institutions with missions focused on reaching and empowering first-generation college students. These institutions also tend to want to become better known in their states and regions.

DeWayne Frazier, Provost at Iowa Wesleyan University, said his university, the oldest in Iowa, began partnering with Tel about 18 months ago because it wanted to offer students in need of extra classes the opportunity to take self-paced courses over winter and summer terms. Frazier said his team came away impressed by the Tel program, which not only included coursework but also “success coaches” who convene students for virtual study halls and track students who are struggling or have stopped their work.

Frazier’s institution recently became a Tel “partner of record,” meaning Iowa Wesleyan professors and Tel instructional designers collaborate to build curriculum and then work together to disseminate it statewide. As part of this partnership, Iowa Wesleyan validates the credits for the jointly designed curriculum and in exchange Tel officials market the program across the state, in places where Iowa Wesleyan isn’t as well-known as it is in its southeastern home base. Frazier said his school receives a “modest financial benefit” from Tel for every student enrolled.

Frazier grew up in Appalachian Kentucky, keenly aware of how limited access to education cuts lives off before they can even get started, which he said makes Tel’s mission-driven approach appealing. He said Iowa Wesleyan has signed up two high schools from elsewhere in the state to offer the classes to initially. The high school students will be allowed to take a maximum of 15-30 credits using the Tel coursework and the Iowa Wesleyan logo. Frazier said the opportunity to build “brand recognition” is invaluable for Iowa Wesleyan and will give the university a chance to stand out.

He said he has been impressed by the robust supports in place for students taking the Tel “self-paced” courses. Frazier said algorithms are built into the program which alert student coaches to difficult moments where others have struggled, prompting the coaches to check in with students. The Iowa Wesleyan faculty has been largely supportive of the Tel partnership, Frazier said, which he credits to the fact that they know there are no plans to use the Tel program to replace standard Iowa Wesleyan coursework.

“This is a recruitment tool and an enhancement tool more than a replacement for traditional education on campus tool,” Frazier said.

Reynolds said he quickly realized that since Tel wasn’t an accredited institution, it needed to partner with universities who were. He decided to build general education courses to align with those being offered by partner universities and combine forces to offer them at a very low cost with the universities offering the curriculum as their own. 

He sees the coaching and support services Tel offers as a point of differentiation. At first, Tel focused on reactive support, but soon pivoted to offer much more proactive support in the form of student coaches who are college students. Student coaches are armed with knowledge gleaned from algorithms built out of previous student data showing where courses become most difficult.

“Based on previous data, we know where students tend to struggle,” Reynolds said. “The student coaches are looking every day, throughout the courses, throughout all of our students, and seeing when students are coming to places where they might struggle, where they might find difficulties, and we’re trying to reach them before they ever know they have a problem.”

Pass and completion rates have soared as a result of the student coaching model, Reynolds said. He said that for students who continue to struggle, Tel works closely with both high school and college partners to provide support.

Alden Bass is a theology professor at Oklahoma Christian University, which has been using Tel both to reach high school students earning dual credit as well as students coming back to college after not being successful previously. Bass said that when the Tel partnership was revealed to faculty 18 months ago the announcement was met with great consternation.

“People were worried about job loss, people were worried about quality control and our name being attached to certain courses that we may not have vetted,” Bass said.

Bass said that much of the faculty concern has tapered in part because there has been little visible activity since COVID hit. Bass said that many now recognize the partnership is “a way for us to stay competitive in a changing market” and is part of a larger “effort to standardize online offerings.”

In a state like Oklahoma, where Tel has been working for some time now, they have already built an ecosystem of partner high schools and colleges in the state. Many of the colleges Tel works with are primarily interested in dual enrollment programs with high schools so Tel acts as a bridge between the entities.

Tel courses are meant to scale so dozens of schools might be using the program at the same time. Their software allows for some customization, but the underlying course is uniform, which allows Tel to keep prices so low.

Reynolds said the initial inspiration for Tel came from his goal to offer college credit at a price point where students wouldn’t need to incur debt.

“Where literally, if they could save up a little money, they can start taking a course, they don’t have to get student loans to do anything,” Reynolds said.  “That was really our goal. And what does that look like? And so we dug deeper, we tried to figure out what true affordability really is, how much could someone save in three to four months, and then take that first college course.”

 

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How Covid-19 and online education impacted practical-based courses: What you need to know

How Covid-19 and online education impacted practical-based courses: What you need to know

It has been more than a year that Covid-19 began its impact on our lives. Most aspects of our day-to-day life are still dictated and subject to changes due to the wreck Covid-19 continues to unleash upon this world.

It is not an unknown fact about how this perilous virus has drastically changed the face of education in India. The education sector hardly had any time to adjust to the changing times.

From teaching in real physical classrooms, learning in India, along with the rest of the world, suddenly shifted to online ‘classrooms’.

Impact on practical-based subjects

Despite the adoption of online education gaining momentum, this mode of learning cannot compensate for classroom learning.

This form of education is inherently flawed and lacks the basic elements of quality education such as the formation of a teacher-student relationship and the facility to carry out practical.

A new academic year will begin again, and students will again be at crossroads, in terms of which course to pursue. Covid-19 and the restrictions made it difficult for the students to choose a course of their choice.

While theory-based subjects such as English, sociology, or other humanities courses have accommodated well in this environment of online education, practical-based courses such as BSc, bachelor’s in biotechnology, or engineering, among others, have faced severe downside.

For example, a laboratory experiment that involves electrical/mechanical heavy equipment cannot be performed by students in an online setting. Lack of practical knowledge has been a burning issue ever since the initiation of online education.

Should students then enroll to practical-based subjects?

In spite of all the hurdles and troubles that will ensure if students opt for practical-based subjects in these months, academic life dominated by online education shouldn’t serve as the sole reason for not choosing a course the student genuinely likes.

While it is an undeniable fact that the absence of access to labs means that the theoretical knowledge of students wouldn’t have the opportunity to translate to practical knowledge.

Vaccination and opening up of higher education institutions

One positive side that should help students make the right decision is the ongoing vaccination drives and at the pace that these are being conducted.

Several states have opened educational institutes, especially higher education for those fully vaccinated. it is also true that their entire academic career in higher education won’t be held captive by online education.

Even during the first half of 2021, various authorities of different colleges and universities had decided to call back their final year students or students enrolled in practical-based courses.

Thus, the authorities concerned are aware of the need for practical education in a student’s life; therefore, they fight tooth and nail to ensure their arrival to the campus.

(Photo: PTI)

New approach to online education

The faculty of various colleges and universities have put their heart and soul into ensuring that they continue to deliver the best quality education to the students, despite the constraints put on them.

They usually save their practical’s for when the students will be physically brought back to campus. They also look for alternatives through which they can disseminate a resemblance, if not a replica, of the quality education they have been previously credited for, before Corona changed our lives forever.

In tandem with this thought, professors are resorting to using AI (Artificial Intelligence) and AR (Augmented Reality) to compensate for the lack of practical.

Remote practical

This concept is quickly gaining ground in this remote learning era. Though not a feasible replacement of actual practice, the induction of such technology-based practicals should encourage students to not swerve from their decision of enrolling in a practical-oriented subject.

As an example, there are companies that support many institutions across India by providing them with applications that help educators create virtual laboratories and home lab kits. These are providing an actual practical knowledge.

Desirability toward a course

Another important criterion that should push the students in the right direction is their level of likeability for the subject.

If a student holds a level of affection towards a subject, even if it is practical based, no virus should have the upper hand and compel them to make wrong decisions.

Future move

Therefore, with the right level of dedication and patience, students can manage their way through online education and anticipate their arrival in their respective campuses, sooner or later.

Students must have the ability to straighten up these few bumps’ life has thrown that way and try to make the most of their time.

Thus, no restraint, let alone a virus like Covid-19 should be bestowed with so much power that it will stop a student from following their heart.

If willing to accommodate for a few months, the prevailing situation would never be considered to serve as a reason for opting out of a practical based course. With optimism, students should march ahead and await a bright future, no matter the prevailing situation.

– Article by Vivek Jain, Chief Business Officer, Shiksha.com and Naukri Fastforward

Read: Covid-19 impact: 4 major challenges faced by students of rural India

Read: Covid-19: 4 negative impacts and 4 opportunities created for education

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How Education Institutions Can Improve Online Learning Security

How Education Institutions Can Improve Online Learning Security

Education looks vastly different today than it was a few years ago. While online learning was present even then, it was only a small percentage of all educational institutions. Due to the pandemic, schools, and colleges, and all forms of educational institutions needed to find a way to transfer their processes and procedures online in order to accommodate the restrictions and to ensure their students’ learning progress doesn’t suffer.

Even when restrictions eased and it was possible to return to physical locations, a large number of institutions decided to remain online as they realized how much more convenient and accessible it is. But while they were concentrating on making the process run as smoothly as possible, online learning security wasn’t prioritized as much as it needed to be. Cyberattacks caused numerous schools and colleges to delay classes or even forced them to pay ransom to regain access to their servers.

Luckily, there are a few steps you can take to improve online learning security.

Implement cyber security tools

It is imperative that all educational institutions implement proper cybersecurity tools in order to protect their employees, students, and their data. Tools like firewall and anti-virus protection, browser fingerprinting, data enrichment, end-to-end encryption, and multi-level verification are the first line of defense and when used properly they can stop cyberattacks causing any damage.

Update Everything

This is actually the easiest step you can take to ensure online learning security as you can complete it just by turning on automatic system updates. By keeping your operating system, programs, and applications up to date, you can remove any security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious actors.

While educational institutions have only control over their equipment, they should educate their students about the importance of keeping their equipment up to date to ensure the safety of both sides.

Secure File Sharing

Regardless of the type of educational institution, students and teachers or instructors need to have a secure method of sharing their files. By having a policy in place that mandates requirements and procedures of file sharing, providing a secure connection for uploads, and encrypting the files you can significantly reduce the risk of a data breach or ransomware attack. Make sure to make this process as simple as possible because students will have different levels of technical knowledge.

Backup all files

Having a backup can make a difference between having all of your data held hostage forcing you to pay the ransom or utilizing your backup and resuming normal business operations. Once you determine what data needs to get backed up, you need to make sure you back it up regularly.

Provide regular training

Ensure that you provide regular cybersecurity training to all of your employees and students to ensure everyone knows what their responsibilities are when it comes to mitigating cyber security risks. They need to be aware of what cyber security threats they might encounter, how to avoid them, or how to react if they happen.

The University of Utah had to pay cybercriminals almost half a million dollars after a ransomware attack on some of its computer servers, and it is just one in the long line of educational institutions that have become a victim of cyberattacks. By following these steps, and staying proactive you can avoid becoming one of them.

Featured Image: cottonbro, Unsplash. 

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Scaling online education: Five lessons for colleges

Scaling online education: Five lessons for colleges

As the COVID-19 pandemic surges across the United States, colleges have been forced to adjust their plans almost daily. As of late August 2020, just one-fifth of colleges in the United States were planning to return to campus fully or primarily in-person,


with the balance either undecided or planning for hybrid, online, or other remote teaching models. Already, several colleges have had to rapidly shift to 100 percent remote instruction following local COVID-19 outbreaks.

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Last spring, as colleges were forced to move to remote models from one day to the next, the focus was on ensuring engagement and access for students, and just-in-time training for faculty to finish the academic year. As restrictions on in-person learning extended through the fall, the imperative shifted to building the capability to provide a robust remote offering for the longer term. This need for remote learning has expanded interest in developing or scaling proper online education, leveraging the best practices learned from a set of institutions that have successfully implemented this educational model.

In this article, we briefly outline trends in online higher education over the past decade. Then, we review five critical lessons from leading online institutions that could help every university improve and scale their online offerings. The marketplace is moving quickly, so institutions of higher learning must act now.

The shift to online: At first a trickle, and now a flood

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, online education was a driver of growth in higher education. As traditional enrollment in postsecondary institutions continues to decline, distance learning has increased by around 40 percent in five years, from 2.2 million students in 2012 to 3.1 million students in 2017. While some students studied online exclusively, more took a combination of online and in-person courses. Before the pandemic hit, roughly one-third of students had taken at least one online course.

However, this growth was unevenly distributed. Big institutions such as Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), Western Governors University (WGU), and Arizona State University (ASU) accounted for around 10 percent of the growth, building national brands for online higher education that set them apart from their peers (Exhibit 1).

Exhibit 1




Online education growth is uneven among institutions, with the top ten players consolidating 20 percent of the market.





A trend that was playing out over a decade was then compressed into a semester. While many students will likely return to in-person learning when it is safe, others may stay remote for the long term, raising the
stakes on building sustainable offerings, not just stopgaps. Indeed, GSV Ventures, a venture-capital fund focusing on digital education, forecasts that “online-first pedagogy will become normalized for virtually every college student” and all growth in higher education until 2030 will happen online.


The imperative is clear: every university should build a robust online offering, and fast.

Taking the plunge: Standing up online programs

We interviewed leading online universities to understand what it takes to plan and implement quality online programs in higher education. We identified five key success factors.

Develop a student-centered approach

“The secret sauce to our success is our student-advising operation,” says Paul LeBlanc, president of SNHU. Leading institutions agree with this statement and have developed online strategies with one main objective in mind: support students to successfully complete their programs. Institutions have put in place three types of student support mechanisms to achieve this goal:

  • Personalized counseling and guidance. ASU and SNHU use personal success coaches and academic advisers to help students navigate admissions, enrollment, degree selection, and course requirements. Counselors also employ predictive analytics to identify students at risk of struggling academically and provide the required interventions.
  • Engagement with in-person and online communities. Part of student success relies on developing strong ties with faculty and peers. To ensure student engagement, Pennsylvania State University and SNHU have introduced personalized feedback sessions between faculty and students, enhanced peer-to-peer interactions through video calls, access to in-person networking events, and development of online
    communities (for example, an honors society).
  • 24/7 IT support to enhance learning experience. State University of New York and ASU installed a 24/7 IT concierge service that helps students with technical questions related to course access, course materials, and software.

Invest heavily in marketing

The biggest players spend heavily on marketing (Exhibit 2). Institutions with the largest online enrollment have marketing budgets similar to fast-growth tech and digital-retail companies. We found a positive correlation between share of voice and market share; in other words, the more an institution spent on marketing, the higher its market share. This highlights the role of marketing in spurring enrollment.

Exhibit 2




Institutions that spend more on marketing have a higher market share of online enrollment.





Two-thirds of students complete their first application within four weeks of starting a search for online programs. Leading institutions recognize that online students move faster in their decision-making process than their peers in the in-person applicant pool and have seamlessly integrated their marketing efforts with enrollment departments. Students not only move faster during their application process but also expect to receive timely information on financial aid and transferring credits when finalizing enrollment. The Online College Students report shows that within two weeks of having applied, 71 percent of online students expect to find out how to transfer previously earned credits, while 66 percent expect to receive an estimate of their financial aid award.

To enable a seamless application and enrollment process, SNHU established a team of 275 admissions representatives that follow up with interested students within two minutes of a query. It also uses a credit-transfer team that supports students tracking down the necessary transcripts for a small fee. The university recognizes that time-sensitive adult learners are the target of its programs and require a streamlined application and enrollment process.

Involve faculty early and enable academic staff to launch successful programs

Helping faculty develop successful online programs comprises two areas of support:

  • Provide faculty with the time required to develop online offerings. In our interviews, faculty members cited fear of time commitment and lack of recognition for remote teaching when asked to develop an online offering. Universities have added monetary and nonmonetary incentives to address those issues. University of Central Florida provides faculty with stipends and time for instructors to pursue the training required to develop and launch quality online courses. Similarly, Pennsylvania State University gives faculty the same credit for developing and teaching remote courses that they would receive for teaching in-person programs. The latter is aimed at addressing the perception that online classes are inferior to in-person courses.
  • Develop a standardized end-to-end process to support faculty. We identified a series of best practices that some universities have put in place to support faculty, from the assessment of the idea to quality assurance when launching an offering:
    • Create a standardized course proposal and approval process. To launch viable online courses, University of Florida created a central curriculum-development team with a dual mission: first, identify potential offerings that respond to both students’ needs and labor-market demand while taking advantage of the university’s strengths, and second, assess ideas proposed by faculty using the same framework.
    • Provide instructional design and course-production support to ensure offerings meet students’ needs. University of Florida’s Center for Online Innovation and Production supports faculty with training, instructional designers, and all production needs.
    • Develop a strict quality assurance process. ASU has a dedicated design and development team that manages quality assurance with a detailed rubric to measure course quality. It includes 22 instructional designers who each support 50 to 75 faculty members.

Establish an online organization with clear accountability

When defining the organizational structure required to carry out and grow an online program, institutions reported following three guiding principles (see sidebar, “Choosing an appropriate operationalization model”):





  • Have a clearly designated unit, with budget responsibility and decision-making power, that is responsible for executing the online program.
  • Enable faculty participation to ensure that implementation meets student needs and provides the support faculty requires to develop quality programs. Most of the public institutions interviewed reported having the online organization under the provost as a mechanism to enable faculty to take a leadership role in shaping the organization’s value proposition.
  • Define clear targets and ensure standardized practices are put in place to meet these targets. Examples of standardized practices include a vetting system to assess financial viability of new programs along with a clear resource-allocation framework for course development.

Adjust standard operating procedures to align with the needs of frequent online start options and shorter terms

Online programs that scale rapidly typically offer concentrated learning modules of six to eight weeks. They have multiple, staggered start options ranging from four to six in a given year (for example, January, March, May, June, August, and October) to provide several flexible entry points for target audiences. August and January are the most popular and have the highest enrollment of the start options. Most traditional university programs offer only fall, spring and, in some cases, summer admissions cycles.

The multiple-starts approach has important implications for several teams involved with the operations and student life cycle, including:

  • Admissions. Six application-processing cycles, with shorter turnaround times compared with schools that have three traditional cycles.
  • Marketing. Digital and print advertising must be rapidly readjusted and relaunched for each of the six starts.
  • Financial aid. Turnaround and application-processing times ramp up with significant spikes in activity in the five days before the admissions deadline versus traditional admissions cycles, in which financial aid processing is typically completed several months before the deposit deadline.
  • Student success. Advisers and counselors must get accustomed to digital responses, broader availability, and proactive outreach to address motivation and persistence.

Universities that operationalize online programs successfully also take into account these adjustments:

  • appointing people dedicated to directing online operations within their respective teams
  • instilling a strong customer-focused view in colleagues who support online operations
  • tweaking the school calendar to be flexible for the variations needed with multiple starts (for example, flexible work hours over the holiday break to ensure support for the January launch)
  • creating buffer capacity in their teams to address spikes in activity just before and after a new class start compared with traditional enrollment cycle activity

The transition to any form of online education is a major effort. In the past, universities could choose whether to invest in a first-rate online offering. Now, they have little choice, and they need to act fast. The good news is that there is plenty of experience from which to draw and build. Universities that take these lessons to heart can create or scale an online offering that will not only carry them through the pandemic but also set them up for success in a post-COVID-19 higher-education world.