Although higher education institutions underwent some major reforms during the past year, there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to creating quality online and blended curriculum.
“What happened in the past year in many cases was merely remote learning, not online learning,” said Dr. Jennifer Mathes, CEO of the Online Learning Consortium (OLC). “What we learned is when people are forced into that situation, they simply try to replicate the in-class experience, which is what we saw a lot of in the early days of online learning,” she said.
Mathes shares the sentiment of many colleagues in higher education. The OLC—a collaborative community of higher education leaders and innovators, dedicated to advancing digital teaching and learning experiences—recently released a Digital Learning Pulse Survey, which reported that while students ranked their learning during the pandemic with a letter grade of “A,” faculty and administrators were less optimistic and gave it a “B.”
Mathes believes that colleges and universities did not take advantage of technology’s capabilities to the fullest-extent possible during the pandemic. She sees a missed opportunity in creating opportunities for students to engage and interact with other students, teachers and course content in a variety of ways. In other words, not enough higher ed courses were designed to take advantage of the online tools available.
Heeding its own advice, in May, the OLC announced a new partnership with tech tool creator Panopto—a video management system provider for higher education—to expand the use of video-based learning within the organization, especially within OLC’s Institute for Professional Development.
The OLC sees this partnership as an opportunity to implement and model creative uses of technology that highlight the evidence-based practices used by faculty, course designers and students.
“One of the new things we did this year, because we couldn’t meet in person, was move our in-person offerings into a virtual format, which we have had a lot of success in. This has served us well because we can give real-life examples to our members that they can then use in their own environments,” said Mathes.
"Scaling effective methods for the design and delivery of quality online and blended learning is born of remixing and reimagining both our practices and our collaborations, building upon existing frameworks within a rapidly changing landscape," said Angela Gunder, chief academic officer, OLC. "By partnering with industry leaders and providing feedback on the usage of their products in the work we do, we are able to provide context and perspective on the diverse use cases across the field, helping to inform the creation of product roadmaps that center the needs of educators and students alike."
Mathes recognizes that many challenges still lay ahead for institutions that will continue with online learning. Some of these challenges include getting staff the appropriate training, understanding student needs, and adapting instruction to best meet students where they are at in an online environment.
Although OLC’s latest Digital Learning Pulse Survey revealed that students are more likely than faculty or administrators to want some courses delivered fully online post-pandemic, the combination of face-to-face and online experiences in individual courses is likely to rise as the pandemic wanes. Mathes said that this “middle ground” has “the opportunity to fulfill the promise of being the ‘best of both worlds.’”
Moving forward, the OLC will continue to drive its mission to better serve its members in online learning, which in turn will offer better opportunities for students. As just a few of many examples of changes in the past year, the OLC plans to focus on blended learning, online learning opportunities for STEM, and how the organization can best support institutions in their DEI initiatives in online, blended and digital learning.
As a collaborative community of educators, innovators and supporting technologists, the OLC serves as a space to work with others across various industries, better understand the affordances of technologies, and help drive roadmaps that benefit the community. By partnering with industry leaders like Panopto and providing feedback on the usage of their products in education, the OLC can help construct innovative technology centers around the needs that are top-of-mind for educators and students.
As for the faculty of the future, Mathes offers this advice to institutions:
First, it is important to support faculty in their professional development, so faculty have what they need to implement and adjust in a quality manner. Second, schools need to collect feedback from students so they can look at courses from a comprehensive standpoint. Third, institutions should implement a strategy around online and blended learning that includes cross-functional stakeholders. Finally, colleges need to continuously review their design and best practices, and to identify areas for improvement.
OTC Resources for Building Online Instruction
If faculty starting in online learning need to enroll in some professional development in order to learn from others who have already forged a path. The OLC offers plenty of professional development opportunities in a variety of formats, such as Quality Scorecards that can help faculty understand best practices in designing and teaching an online course, the Faculty Playbook for Delivering High-Quality Instruction Online in Response to COVID-19, the Planning for a Blended Future Playbook, recurring Ideate events, and the OLC Accelerate conference this September and October, which is one of the largest, most impactful professional development experiences in online, blended, and digital learning.
For faculty who is further along in the online curriculum development stage, they should be presenting at conferences, submitting use cases for awards, and sharing their best practices with others.