3. Higher Ed is in a vice between… K-12 27% HS and 21% of MS took an online course last year Workplace 77% of US companies use online training for their workforce
4. The World of Online Learning Source: Campus Computing Project
29% college students took online course F09 66% of colleges offer fully online courses Publics lead the way 2/3 of colleges say online ed critical to strategy 65% of US grad schools offer online courses 96% of surveyed colleges expect online enrollments to grow 20-30% over next 3 years (Campus Computing Report) Est enrollment in online course will reach 3.9 mill students by ’14 (1.2 million currently) This data from Chronicle of Higher Ed Report
Focus on different population – older (55% over age 30), PT, “at risk” 1.4 million students in ’08 (3000 for profit institutions with 2 million student) Grown 95% over 30 years Univ of Phoenix: founded in ‘76, 472K students (2 nd only to SUNY, larger than Cal State), 32k faculty, 100 degree programs Kaplan: Owed by WA Post (half the Post Company’s revenue), 100k students, 59 degree programs Outcome-focused learning: career, skills, advancement Strong faculty development: guidance, consistency – rely heavily on part-time/adjunct-type instructors (Note: a lack of academic curricular freedom) Classes all year ‘round – not a traditional academic schedule Education Management Corporation (136,000 students) Careeer Educatino Corporation (114,000) DeVry, Inc. (102,000 students)
Focus on different population – older (55% over age 30), PT, “at risk” 1.4 million students in ’08 (3000 for profit institutions with 2 million student) Grown 95% over 30 years Univ of Phoenix: founded in ‘76, 472K students (2 nd only to SUNY, larger than Cal State), 32k faculty, 100 degree programs Kaplan: Owed by WA Post (half the Post Company’s revenue), 100k students, 59 degree programs Outcome-focused learning: career, skills, advancement Strong faculty development: guidance, consistency – rely heavily on part-time/adjunct-type instructors (Note: a lack of academic curricular freedom) Classes all year ‘round – not a traditional academic schedule
Low graduation rates, poor retention Recruit heavily among low-income, self-supported, military – less prepared, less quallified (need lots of support) Student debt and default rates high Spend big $$ on recruiting/marketing (as compared to curriculum development) Not academia, in the traditional sense (profit making orientation) – no research or publishing happening Not transparent – private, profit orientation No objective research on outcomes – no more proof of effectiveness than public and private not-for-profits have
Other possible approaches: -Prep, inform faculty and see what happens (grassroots?) -More research with target audience to determine their needs -Consider “the hybrid student”: tech savvy, expectations, academic orientation AND they want skills/career advancement
3D Immersive Virtual Worlds: Immersive, three-dimensional, online environments like ActiveWorlds, Second Life, Protosphere, and Open Wonderland are rapidly becoming a part of the educational technology landscape. Mobile Learning: The International Association for K-12 Online Learning and other thought leaders have identified mobile learning as an emerging trend. Whether it’s course content adapted for mobile devices, supplemental activities delivered to student mobile devises, or a fully mobile course, it is clear that handheld devices and pads will exert a strong force on educational technology. Cloud Computing: The impact of location independent computing, whereby shared servers provide applications, resources, and data, is being felt throughout education and industry. Institutional planning for course development must take the power and affordances of cloud computing into account when building their strategic plans. Social Media: Increasingly, higher education students enter college with the expectation that social media will be a seamless part of their learning. Syndicated courses: For-profit organizations like Omnicademy , are beginning to encourage higher education faculty to syndicate their online courses through them in order to expand the student pool and generate revenue.
What are the issues? faculty buy-in, governance and IP, IT support, retain your quality, gov’t regs, pending institutional changes with various NACU members Advantages/Disadvantages of a collaboration Pluses: much in common, wole greater than sum of parts, reduce cost, inc efficiency, share best practices and research, diversity=resilience Minuses: governance, all participants or just some?,IP issues, dilution of member brands, complexity of enterprise, uneven contributions, 4 Collaboration Scenarios
They will have to see this on paper in front of them. Nazareth College is on there.
Shared Support Support staff and resource assets for online courses could be shared across all institutions, including professional development, IT support, and instructional design online course development and assessment/approval Shared Course Components Online course components shared amongst all institutions—e.g. virtual science equipment, language modules, online labs, simulations, or video Shared Courses Member institutions share their own online courses with students from participating consortium institutions, sharing revenue and support New American University Online Joint investment in the creation of a new fully-accredited, online university with students matriculating and graduating from the entity; faculty have joint appointments with their home institution and the new entity
Shared Support 24/7 Tech Support : Participating schools select a shared online course (offered during break?) and either one institution’s IT group or an outside vendor provides tech support for the professor and enrolled students. IT group could likely absorb additional cost or vendor might be willing to offer the service for free as a conditional trial. Monitor demand, staff time, and deployed help tools. PD Camp : One of the participating schools, with an existing professional development group, could offer a one-week intensive online course instructional design and implementation program for a pair of selected professors from each participating institution. By week’s end, each participant creates a NACU-sanctioned online course. With a few campuses already running summer PD, this proposal might be incorporated into an existing program. It would be important, however, to isolate the start-up and implementation costs so an accurate assessment is made of consortium-wide scale-up costs. Also, perhaps the same pilot PD camp could be run at more than one institution in order to compare the nature and costs of the distinct efforts. Course Components Online Organic Chemistry Lab : Interested institutions investigate creation of an online organic chemistry laboratory or perhaps an online version of one or two of the more expensive pieces of equipment of such a lab. An outside vendor sells and installs (at each school) either the whole online lab or the virtual pieces of equipment. A negotiation is conducted with the vendor for multiple implementations and shared institutional costs. Also, chemistry faculty would need to buy-in on pilot participation and potential pay-off. Once a course or two is run at each institution, cost comparisons for equipment and staff can be made. A similar pilot can be run for larger enrolled courses such as astronomy (a virtual observatory) or economics (modeling software or virtual scenarios). Courses Unique or Boutique Course : One institution offers a popular, unique (e.g. Chinese or local history) course online to all participating institutions. The professor is offered instructional design and implementation training. (Note the possible connection to Shared Support pilot proposal.) The participating campuses gauge and compare increased capacity and revenue as well as local student support requests and any other unanticipated costs. Project the scalability costs to offer a full range of complementary online courses jointly or individually owned and shared. Introductory Course : Choose a uniform curriculum introductory course—e.g. Calculus or Economics or even a remedial math course—currently being offered online at a member institution and run the course at schools not currently offering the course online. After running the course, measure and compare increased capacity and revenue as well as local student support requests and any other unanticipated costs. Determine the increased capacity and revenue and saved costs at the participating schools. How much revenue is available to share with the sponsoring institution? Enough when scaled up with additional offerings to create a win-win? Fears of on campus course cannibalization from faculty would be better addressed starting with the pilot to build buy-in. Also, after the pilot, results can be used to allay faculty fears. New American University Online University (NAUO) NAC&U MBA or Project Management Certification : Select and combine the best teaching assets and virtual facilities from amongst existing online MBA or Project Management certificate programs currently offered by member institutions, and offer the program across the participating institutions. For purposes of the pilot, the degree or certification may need to be offered under the accreditation auspices of the one contributing institution, but the process of accrediting NAUO to offer the degree or certification should be investigated as a preferable option. Determine the cost savings of shared training, implementation, and support courses to develop and deliver the program.