In the area of better serving and engaging college and university students in an online learning environment, there is a lot of discussion about precision.
“How do you know what to do for students, when to do it, to what degree to do it, how fast to do it, how often to do it? That’s a delicate balance to maintain, and when you’re doing that in person or online, there’s a lot at stake,” according to Amelia Parnell, Vice President for Research and Policy at National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.
Parnell gave the keynote address at the recent Online Learning Consortium Accelerate virtual event. The sessions on-demand here.
During the keynote session, “The Balance of Precision and Speed: How Online and Blended Learning Can Accelerate Student Success”, Parnell covered the ways higher education professionals are working to transform student experiences leveraging technology, promoting collaboration and ensuring equity.
In her address, Parnell identified six current trends in online and virtual learning.
- Full access. How we provide resources to everyone, regardless of where they’re located. “The idea that anybody who wants to access higher education should have full access to it is the current trend. I don’t know that we’re hitting the mark, but that’s the goal,” Parnell explained.
- Smooth transitions. The transition from the old to the new creates lots of pain points but also presents opportunities for improvement as well as we use technology to eliminate some of the things we used to do to make time for things we want to do doing forward. “That’s not always the smoothest transition, but that’s the goal,” Parnell pointed out.
- Prescribed experiences. Instructors who leverage technology in an online environment need to ensure that students find themselves connected at all times, whether they are learning synchronously or asynchronously. They need to pick up all the information they need and at the right cadence for them to say this was worth their time and investment,” Parnell noted.
- High expectations. We should deliver just-in-time resources, providing advising and other support when needed but also using data to proactively anticipate and prescribe what may be needed in the future. “These high expectations that virtual, blended, hybrid learning environments should still be able to give the programs and services I need is truly a high bar” Parnell offered.
- New partnerships. “We’re in a place where we’re seeing many more professionals across the campus working together to bring different perspectives to decisions and discussions and that includes students,” Parnell said.
- Expanded frameworks. It’s all about the learning, Parnell offered. “At some point, we’re going to have to figure out how to expand our frameworks,” she said. “Measuring learning wherever it happens is going to be a goal.”
Parnell also discussed practical ways to balance precision and speed, as well as ways to address these areas.
Assess our progress. Assessment involves asking the right questions, selecting the appropriate metrics and adequate interpretation of results, which involves assessing progress as an ongoing thing. “The metrics we use are not exclusively quantitative,” Parnell explained. “Should we be looking at numbers, counts and averages? What about the qualitative aspects? The environmental aspects and cultural influences? How does our progress look for students in a space where they’re not together in person but really, truly trying to be in a space that lets them feel like they belong? Progress looks a lot of different ways.”
She shared the top five questions policymakers should ask in order to generate data, adapted from Jason Laine. These include asking what happened, why did it happen, what is happening, what will happen and what should be done.
Other areas she discussed were:
Leverage Technology. We can’t talk about blended environments without talking about technology, but it’s not only about procurement, Parnell noted. “It’s about first identifying efficiencies, but it’s also about tailoring experiences and fixing issues and adjusting to the needs that we have,” she added.
Parnell sees technology advancements as tools we can leverage all the time to identify efficiencies, tailor experiences and fix issues. NASPA launched an application process where it was trying to identify schools across the U.S. that deserved an award to recognize the work they were doing to deliver virtual support services. This past summer, the organization bestowed honors to 10 higher education institutions. More details on the Virtual Innovation Awards are here.
Prioritize collaboration. Communication and collaboration across areas is essential. “It’s about sharing resources, and this can be financial, personnel, technology and other things,” Parnell pointed out. “It’s about supporting each other’s work and it’s about respecting perspectives.”
Ensuring Equity. Ensuring equity is necessary, affirming student identities and professional experiences validating those as being valuable and adjusting strategies to do business in a different way.
The future will require us to accept that learning happens everywhere, Parnell said. “There will be some need for a comprehensive type of record that can be digital in nature only, with no hard copy, that can be sent to a potential employer or graduate school,” she added. “Institutions are using data from these records to show the impact of engaging in out-of-classroom activities on student performance.”