“The OSU Extended Campus Research Unit is designed to create an accessible and inclusive online learning environment.”
“Oregon State is in a position to build a robust research pipeline that ultimately will improve the access and quality of online teaching and learning for our adult learners,” [Lisa L.] Templeton said. “It will allow the university to expand its reach even further and give students more opportunities to succeed.”
Interview with Diana Wu, Dean of Extension at UC Berkeley, about students’ choosing institutions based on level of support as much as (or more than) the institutional reputation.
While the higher education marketplace is becoming increasingly competitive, both analysts and leaders have suggested that elite, big-name universities are protected from the change. However, this is not necessarily the case. Although students still want to be aligned with big names, they have the same heightened expectations of the institution as learners industry-wide. In this interview, Diana Wu discusses these heightened expectations, and shares her thoughts on why big-name institutions are not immune from this industry shift.
Op ed blog post commending a November 2015 report from New America entitled “Flipping the Paradigm: Why We Need Training-Based Pathways to the Bachelor’s Degree and How to Build Them” which advocates “flipping” the bachelor’s degree path to “start with applications and work upwards towards theories.”
We build degrees that move from the broad and general at the beginning — the theory, the survey — to the specific at the end. That structure pretty much guarantees that initial encounters with large and sweeping theories will be shallow at best, since they lack both context and a sense of why they matter. By the time students get to specifics, they’ve left the big questions behind. If they return to the big questions later, it’s despite, rather than because of, the way we’ve organized degrees. They rarely get the benefit of coming back to the big questions with the benefit of context, and that’s our failure.
Download the PDF of “Flipping the Paradigm: Why We Need Training-Based Pathways to the Bachelor’s Degree and How to Build Them” by Mary Alice McCarthy. November 2015.
Matt Reed. A Different Vision of the Bachelor’s Degree. Inside Higher Ed. November 12, 2015.
In 2012, University of Maryland University College (UMUC) created an Office of Analytics, comprising a team of 14 people. The office focuses on marketing, enrollment management, retention, service centers, financials, and executive and academic program dashboards. The office shares the four rules they follow and how UMUC benefits.
“We knew we had to take what we had left and invest in the priority: analytics.”
“Our approach is to demonstrate the ‘art of possible’ to the institution,” says Darren Catalano, VP of Analytics, “in other words, to make complex data simple.”
“Why one college created a full analytics office.” EAB Daily. November 4, 2015.
A summary of the attitudes that often accompany a faculty member’s reluctance to teach online, as well as advice on how to encourage those late adopters.
Subtle though it may seem, the center of higher education is shifting to learning and away from teaching. The enterprise is now about the student, not the faculty member. Students have become savvy consumers, demanding services and attention that they previously ceded to the faculty domain. The transition is not an easy one for the ego of faculty who are accustomed to being at the center.
The Reluctant Online Faculty Member (Online: Trending Now #62)
Anecdotal analysis of how a MOOC targeting younger learners (2nd–8th graders) succeeded in getting 50% of the students to complete the 5 week program.
“Brain Chase innovates on the uninspiring MOOC format through great storytelling–a mix of compelling online and offline experiences and the ability to customize the program for individual kids. But the program also has some things going for it based on the latest MOOC research: kids are encouraged to be active, not passive, learners and the program is structured to encourage regular, spaced activity. Both of these phenomenon are correlated with higher MOOC completion rates in the HarvardX and MITx study. Paying for the program may also increase commitment and completion. “
“This brief, based on conversations with over 150 higher education leaders across North America, analyzes the fundamental forces that will shape higher education over the next decade and highlights the strategies and competencies that colleges and universities will need to be successful.”
“Over the past decade, universities were able to grow revenue primarily by growing enrollment and increasing net tuition per student. But demographic and economic changes will make it increasingly difficult for all but a handful of institutions to grow tuition revenue at historic rates. Despite rising access rates, demographic projections suggest that the number of high school graduates will decline over the coming decade, leading to a dramatic drop-off in the overall rate of enrollment growth.”
Key Takeaways:
Comprehensive report on adult students and college completion. Sections include: demographics, marketing and outreach, institutional services, promoting academic success, and strategic partnerships. Published June 2015.
Interest in adult college completion, both for adults with some college credit and those who have never before attended college, has dramatically increased across the higher education community. This report draws from the considerable body of recent research focused on various populations of adult learners, including data gathered during Higher Ed Insight’s recent evaluation of Lumina Foundation’s adult college completion efforts. The goal of the report is to synthesize what has been learned about the needs of adult college students, particularly those returning to college after stopping out, as well as to identify areas where further inquiry is needed in order to demonstrate effective ways to support degree completion for adults.