With today’s post, we continue the WCET Steering Committee’s series on student return on investment (ROI) and the role of digital learning in improving that return. Thank you to Chantae Recasner of Northeast Lakeview College in San Antonio, Texas. She reminds us that student ROI requires institutional attention to equity. This is especially true for students who have not been well-served by institutions, such as minoritized and low-income students.
-Russ Poulin, WCET
In the last decade, conversations about college affordability have become increasingly nuanced ranging from thoughts on tuition scaling and college access to student loan debt management and workforce skills development. While many colleges and universities explore and implement initiatives to advance value for every credential offered, equity consciousness must remain at the core of the conversations to ensure all students experience that added value.
Historically minoritized and low-income students have been often the last to feel the impact of broad-based initiatives intended to improve student experiences.
Historically minoritized and low-income students have been often the last to feel the impact of broad-based initiatives intended to improve student experiences. Focused national DEI initiatives like the MBK Alliance and Excelencia in Education attempt to mitigate this reality. Yet, it is often the outcome(s) of systemic disadvantage (i.e., success gap data) that drives conversations about and decisions to prioritize certain initiatives at colleges and universities.
Learn About Value by Listening to Student Voices
As we navigate thoughts of college affordability and ROI, amplifying the voices of students can potentially provide insights on inclusive strategies and practices (Libassi, 2018). My thoughts here are informed by the perspectives of two college students with whom I’ve had conversations about the value of higher education. One student is a Black male (self-identified), Pell eligible, full-time enrolled, first-time-in-college attendee at a for-profit university. He attends college totally online. He is also a parent. The other is a Black immigrant student (self-identified) from a middle class family with parents who pay her tuition at the local community college. This is her second attempt at college.
Both students understand the concept of return on investment (ROI). However, from my conversations with both, I want to share their thoughts on the following questions:
Why college? And why now (during the Pandemic)?
What do you value most about your college?
What about the expenses?
Student A: Black, Male, Pell Eligible, First-time, Full-time Student at a For-Profit University
Why college? And why now?
I decided it was time for me to do something, something that I knew for sure would give me a way to provide for my son. I know the pandemic is going on, but I can go to school completely online…When I found the school, they made it easy for me to get started. I never went to college or did none of that, but I talked to somebody from the school and they got me set right up.
What do you value most about your college?
These people told me they would make sure I graduate. I’m doing okay, but I don’t feel like if I mess up one time they’re going to kick me out.
What about the expenses?
I’m getting financial aid. They [the college] take care of everything and send me what I need. It’s taken care of so I’m not worried about that.
Student B: Black, Female, Immigrant, Tuition Paid by Parents at a Community College
Why college? And why now?
Well, I was already enrolled so I had to finish. I know there are other ways to get ahead and you don’t need college for every way to make money. But, for some fields, like what I’m studying, you actually need a degree. I hate taking classes online, but I’m glad I could so that I didn’t fall behind during the pandemic.
What do you value most about your college?
I get way more support than I expected. I got a lot of support from (names the first college she attended), but I was focused on other things then. Now, I feel like everything I want to do, there’s support for me to do it…. Being a leader now is important, that’s a part of my development. And the experiences I have gained helped me grow. That’s the biggest part for me.
What about the expenses?
Well, I don’t have expenses (laughs). My parents pay my tuition. But, it sucks because things are really expensive now and it’s not just about the tuition. Everything is expensive. So I try to earn money however I can. I just hate that as a middle class person, I don’t qualify for Pell grants and I don’t want loans. Scholarships are hard to get. But, I’m doing everything I can to try to get scholarships when I transfer.
To be clear, this brief insight from the students is not intended as findings from a well-structured qualitative investigation. The goal here is simply to allow the voices of students to enter our considerations of ROI, and to remind us to actually listen to and for those voices—especially the historically silenced ones.
Students Want the Institution to “Care” about Them
Doug Lederman’s (2021) Inside Higher Eddiscussion of the Third Way and New America survey reveals that less than 75% of students surveyed believed “their institution cares about students like them.” Lederman also notes the survey revealed Black and LatinX college students are the students most likely to believe “Higher education is not worth the cost to students anymore.” In my very brief exchange, two Black students made it clear how important institutional support and care are for their journeys.
For Black and Latinx poor students, the economic returns do not trend as highly as they do for their White counterparts because these students still tend to select colleges that do not produce the highest earners (Steel-Figueredo, 2016). But, the “human value of a college education” (Gault, Reichlan, & Roman, 2014) could still have great possibility for these students.
In 2014, Arroyo and Gasman put forth an HBCU-based model for engendering success for Black students. Their conceptual framework suggested that beyond accessibility and affordability, institutions must focus on the interplay between identity formation, values cultivation, and achievement. Theirs is an example of the kind of humanistic consciousness needed as we consider how to advance access and increase the value of education.
Over the last two years, Northeast Lakeview College has partnered with Hanover Research to build an Early Warning Dashboard that helps us to look more closely at who our students are. One of Hanover’s proposed strategies for student and institution success is “creating safe and supportive environments.” Arroyo and Gasman fundamentally are calling for just that. In their framework, however, the student’s identity is centered—it’s the catalyst for the model.
Value is Subjective, But Successful Student ROI Requires and Applying and Equity Lens
The point here is that the concept of value is a deeply subjective one even if we connect tuition and fee costs to earning potential.
While Student A above will surely have to contend with the high cost of his education, his value currently is in being deemed worthy—being shown care, being provided help, being assured of opportunity to misstep without expulsion. Where Student B understands the economic relief provided by her parents’ support, she places a high value on the presence of personal growth opportunities and her ability to achieve her goals.
If college affordability exists when “students can anticipate substantial economic and social gain after graduation compared with a future without college,” (Gault, Reichlan, & Roman, 2014) then maybe all that matters is what each college/university does to fully invest in its students—all of its students.
Affordability in this sense then, cannot exist in the absence of equity. In fact, affordability then becomes synonymous with equity.
References
Libassi, C.J. (2018). The neglected college race gap: Racial disparities among college completers. Center for American Progress.
Gault, B., Reichlan, L. & Roman, S. (2014). College affordability for low-income adults: Improving returns on investment for families and society. Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
“Learning happens everywhere. Somehow, we have to figure out how to recognize that learning.”
That was one of the closing thoughts that stuck with me when I sat in on an interview between WCET’s Executive Director, Russ Poulin, and the inspiring Peter Smith late last month. The interview centered on Peter’s newest book on higher education, Stories from the Educational Underground: The New Frontier for Learning and Work, but really, it was just a great excuse to sit down (albeit virtually) with a wonderfully kind educator whose rich and varied experiences have provided him with some outstanding ideas about the future of higher education.
Today I’ll share with you segments of the interview broken up by topics. The full-length interview is available on our YouTube channel. Thank you to Russ and Peter for sharing your thoughts with us, your work for the higher education community, and your dedication to serving WCET members.
Enjoy the read and the listen!
Lindsey Downs, WCET
Introducing – Peter Smith
Inaugural president of a community college, congressman, state senator, lieutenant governor, assistant director for education at UNESCO, professor, endowed chair, senior advisor…. WCET executive council member (previous) and WCET award winner.
That’s quite the vast experience and range of titles for our interviewee, Peter Smith, who graciously sat down with WCET’s Executive Director in September to discuss his new book, his thoughts on the new frontier of higher education, and the personal interviews he conducted to fill the pages of said new book. Russ and Peter talked about the format of the interviews and final product, takeaways, today’s higher education system, and how we move forward from here.
Use of Personal Stories – and Owning One’s Place in the Telling of Them
Peter has written several books, most of which were written at “very arm’s length” and were more “data driven.” In this case, he wanted to show the actual stories, the “strands of reality,” and highlight how hard it was for these specific individuals to achieve their goals, to accomplish what they wanted to in life.
During the interview process, it came to Peter that he was a very privileged, white male who was trying to tell the stories of minoritized and underserved populations. He asked himself “what right do I have to write this book?” His wife advised him to include his own story as the counterpart or counterpoint to the stories of the interviewees. What a great way to “own your place” and “own your own privilege.”
Takeaways from the Interviews
The takeaways Russ and Peter discussed focused more on the reasons people do or do not go to college and whether ambition for postsecondary education has anything to do with persisting through to a credential. These interviews showed Peter that while the life stories were all very different, each interviewee had the ambition and the desire to go to college, but for some reason, felt they couldn’t or faced some barrier. Those highlighted in this book, though, are unique from others because they were eventually able to do something about that barrier. They spoke a lot (in this section and throughout the interview) about the help some receive when it comes to starting an educational journey – whether it’s a parent getting you an interview, a friend making an important call, having some connection with college admissions, or just plain old luck. Much of our society is built on making the most out of those kinds of incidents. But what about the students who don’t have that help? How can we make luck more inclusive?
The (Issues…? Challenges…? Problems?) with Today’s Higher Education System
Did you “pick yourself up with your own bootstraps?” That’s a wonderfully inspirational image to conjure up, but as Peter and Russ discuss, it’s a fallacy. And it’s a fallacy that assumes you even have boots with bootstraps to pull. Our higher education system makes many assumptions and requirements about our students, such as how prepared they are when they enroll. Peter and Russ also discuss new models of education and learning that are growing in numbers outside of the traditional higher education system, offered by companies for their own employees or for others.
Moving Forward – How to Make a Difference
This final video was not only a great conclusion to a great interview, but included Peter’s advice to for higher education leaders who want to make a difference.
My favorite piece of advice was for institutions to consider how they relate to the community around them and make sure that they are doing work that benefits the local area and the specific employers in the area. Peter also said that it’s his (our) job to see where people are, understand where they want to go, and help them get there. And that time spent getting there shouldn’t include having to relearn (or sit through hearing about) something they already know.
So again: learning happens everywhere. It’s our job (as higher education leaders, administrators, educators, etc.) to figure out how to not only recognize it…but help our students showcase and build upon that learning.
Thank you to Peter and Russ for your inspiring discussion, and a special shout out to Peter on his newest book!
It started before COVID-19. Students, families, businesses, and those considering college questioned the value, the “return on investment” (ROI), of postsecondary education. Could they do better doing something else? Was the debt worth it? Is college for them?
Those questions loomed larger during the pandemic. They will continue to haunt us moving forward. The WCET Steering Committee is entering into a several-week examination of ROI and, where we can, how digital learning can make an impact in the equation.
From Online to Remote to…. What?
Whether it is collectively referred to as The Big Shift, The Great Online Migration, or any other creative name – there is no denying the massive and rapid transformation in higher education since the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, be it on-campus, online, remote, digital, or any other modality. There has understandably been a tremendous focus on the impact of such a rapid and widespread transformation. This new reality has been followed by the prognostication of many that students will be unsatisfied without a return to campus, while some surveys show a sizeable number of students want to continue some of the gains of online learning and services.
Whatever the role of online or digital learning turns out to be, it is clear that students are re-assessing the return on investment of higher education in all modalities and outputs.
As you enter this ROI discussion, rest assured that we fully understand that value of college to individuals and society of an educated public beyond personal economic gains, but that is a discussion for another day.
With varying approaches nationally, regionally or locally, the higher education landscape feels like a very fluid new frontier fraught with concerns around managing programs, faculty, campus access, vaccine and mask mandates.
Of great concern is getting students back to community colleges and, especially minoritized students who were not well served by higher education even before the onslaught of the pandemic. After such a period of personal, economic, and health-related uncertainties, we are left with the sense that things will never be “normal” again. Or, perhaps, the “new normal” will require significant institutional re-engineering to serve the revised needs of a student populace that has changed both demographically and emotionally.
Whatever the long-lasting effects of this shift to a much more prevalent, mainstream, and essential role for online and digital learning turns out to be, one thing is clear: students are re-assessing the return on investment of higher education for them personally…regardless of modality.
Assessing ROI: The Macro Point-of-View
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the Gates Postsecondary Value Commission to “…explore ways to define and measure equitable postsecondary value and build momentum toward actionable change.” The work of the commission revolved around a “value definition” that stated:
“Students experience postsecondary value when provided equitable access and support to complete quality, affordable credentials that offer economic mobility and prepare them to advance racial and economic justice in our society.”
Informed by the pandemic and released in May 2021, the Commission’s report issues this finding that arises form research and underscores their recommendations:
“Postsecondary institutions have the power to create opportunities for economic and social mobility for all students—but especially Black, Latinx, Indigenous, underrepresented Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students, students from low-income backgrounds, and women…However, these life-altering credentials and their associated returns are not distributed equitably.”
To address the issues, the Commission’s offered “three equity-centered tools to identify, measure, and address inequities in access, completion, and post-college outcomes:”
A definition of postsecondary value.
“A Postsecondary Value Framework outlines the clear value-add that postsecondary education can provide to students and society, in both economic and non-economic terms. The centerpiece of this framework is a series of economic value thresholds that measure post-college earnings and wealth inequities.”
“An action agenda outlines policies and practices that institutional leaders and federal and state policymakers should implement…”
Oddly, the report does little to delve into online and digital learning’s role in “value.” That was not its purpose, but still odd. We will begin to address that intersection of ROI and digital learning in the blog posts we outline below.
“How do we make sure that education delivers value for all students, regardless of their race, ethnicity, income, or gender? These questions deserve the best answers we can give.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Value Commission
Assessing ROI: The Student Point-of-View
To an individual student, assessing ROI — determining where and how to invest their time, energy, and money — can be a complex and highly personalized set of considerations. We know, for example, that the true price that students pay for college can be quite different from tuition or fees associated with attendance, as recently evidenced by the California Community Colleges push to increase financial aid eligibility for its students. And this at colleges where students pay some of the lowest enrollment fees in the country, but typically shoulder higher external costs to provide essentials for themselves and families while attending college.
What follows are some of the ROI challenges that we will be addressing in the coming weeks.
Financial Aid Challenges
For students learning online, many face additional financial challenges. In an upcoming post in this series from our colleagues at Oregon State University, we will explore how federal and state financial aid and, especially scholarships lean toward students engaged in on-campus learning and leaves online learners short-changed (pun intended). Aid formulas are firmly entrenched in scenarios that favor on-campus, younger students. A good case-in-point is the challenge faced by student veterans in using the G.I. Bill. They receive about half of their housing allowance if they take all of their courses online, but receive the full allowance if they take as little as one course on-campus.
A growing part of the “opportunity cost” equation for students is the increased availability of alternatives. In the near term, employers are struggling to find workers. Colleges and universities typically lose enrollments when workers are in demand because the allure of a payday today will outweigh the promise of increased knowledge and income resulting from pursuing a degree. Many students can do both, but many struggle with the work/life/ school balancing act.
At the same time, there is staggering growth in the number and types of “credentials” that are available. Beyond the classic certificate, associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees are the credentials and certifications that meet the varying needs of industry and/or individual learners. They also vary in length, format, modality, and start times. Credential Engine is cataloging these options and of the 967,734 credentials they logged (as of February 2021), only 359,713 (37.2%) were offered by postsecondary educational institutions. Not only are colleges and universities not alone, but they are also outnumbered.
Considering alternatives fits well with opportunity costs. If there are more alternatives, there may be options that present better ROI for students.
Reduce Time-to-Degree
Accordingly, reducing time to degree and offering programs that result in stackable credentials valued by industry remains an important yet still under-utilized strategy for most institutions. In fact, some students are choosing to stick with non-degree credentials and according to a recent Strada-Gallup Education Survey finding that 65% percent of those who complete non-degree programs said their education was worth the cost, and 49 percent said it helped them achieve their goals. Non-degree credentials issued by community colleges also received the highest ratings in terms of quality and value. While a non-degree credential may meet short-term goals, having a pathway to a degree may help with meeting a student’s long-term needs, even if they do not yet know they have that need. In another upcoming post in this series, we will explore the role of stackable credentials in reducing time to degree while increasing earnings as part of the student ROI equation.
Partnerships to Better Serve Students
Still, colleges and universities have come up with innovative partnerships aimed at reducing sticker shock, such as Southern Utah University’s $9,000 bachelor’s degree, or the partnership between Sinclair Community College and University of Dayton that build an integrated transfer program that includes clear up-front pricing with “no surprises” and even boasts coordinated advising for students on both campuses. Workforce partnerships are sprouting up in a multitude of new flavors as well, and this series will further showcase innovative methods of turbo-charging the ROI for students who can earn while they learn via employer-institutional partnerships.
Access is Still a Barrier to Opportunities
While the price of attendance and projected economic gains are important factors, there are other intangibles such as being the first in one’s family to graduate from college, or bringing the empowerment of a college education to one’s own under-served community. A common choice for many students is simply to attend the nearest college to where they live, yet many find themselves in under-served areas such as education deserts, defined as a local area where there are either zero or only one public broad access colleges nearby within a reasonable commuting distance. The price of attendance can increase dramatically for these students, who either choose from online programs or often face the decision of whether to relocate to attend college. As a way of addressing inequitable access, many innovative course-sharing platforms and programs have emerged, such as the California Virtual Campus online course exchange to provide broader access and accelerate student completion by eliminating gaps in available courses and programs.
While many of us live in a world of high-speed data powered conveniences, the digital divide continues to persist for students, particularly when infrastructure is not sufficient. As an example, various accounts detail student experiences on tribal reservations, where individuals have gone to great lengths to access online learning during the pandemic but issues such as a lack of broadband infrastructure create seemingly insurmountable barriers.
Learning from Students’ Lived Experiences
In order to create an environment in which institutions of higher learning can effectively adjust to student expectations and create an experience that creates sufficient ROI, it is important to hear the perspectives of students and how they think about navigating this complex and personal calculation for themselves. To provide some thought-provoking perspectives, we will feature a post in this series designed to challenge you, our WCET members, to learn about the lived experiences of a small sample of students. This will be an opportunity for members to think about how you might respond to some real-world, thought-provoking questions raised by students.
Come Join Us in the ROI Exploration
Students and their families will make choices that benefit them both in the short and long term. In a world undergoing The Big Shift, are colleges and universities rising to the challenge?
WCET members, as online and digital learning pioneers have long been at the forefront of bringing innovations to solve vexing problems. WCET’s Steering Committee’s Working Group on Student Return on Investment will be bringing different aspects of this conversation to you over the next several weeks through WCET Frontiers and a few questions in the wcetDiscuss Community and email list.
Learn about the different angles on the challenges posed and solutions tried. And, please share what you have done in your own setting.
WCET Steering Committee Student ROI Working Group
Jory Hadsell – California Virtual Campus Adam Cota – Western Governors University Justin Louder – Texas Tech University Chantae Recasner – Northeast Lakeview College Shannon Riggs – Oregon State University
Welcome to our continued celebration of 2021 WOW awardees! We’re joined today by Connie Johnson and Ellise Farber, both from Colorado Technical University, who were nominated this year for the Messenger app via CTU Mobile, which provided real time communication opportunities and help to struggling students.
Frontiers is currently hosting our annual blog post series featuring posts from our 2021 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Award Winners.
This year we took a slightly different focus and asked for stories that described the intensely hard work that WCET member institutional staff, instructors, administrators, and students heroically stepped up with to the meet the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Congratulations to the 2021 WOW awardees:
Colorado Technical University.
Miami University Regionals E-Campus.
University of Alabama.
University of Louisville.
University of North Dakota.
University of Texas at San Antonio.
Congrats and thank you to Colorado Technical University and the digital learning heroes highlighted in today’s post.Stay tuned for the rest of this blog series as we lead up to this year’s WCET Annual Meeting!
Enjoy the read and enjoy your day,
Lindsey Downs, WCET
A registered nurse who wanted to further her education, Susie Student was thrilled when she was accepted into Colorado Technical University’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. Her first few classes went well. However, in early 2020, Susie found herself struggling to balance her schoolwork along with working increasingly long hours at the hospital battling the front lines against COVID.
Battling on the Front Lines – While in School
Between the stress of the global pandemic and exhaustion from double-shifts, it was very difficult for Susie to participate in class and she found herself completely overwhelmed.
Fortunately, Susie had access to CTU’s mobile app and could quickly message her faculty member, through the two-way Messenger tool, to let her know why she was having trouble getting her assignments done. Not only was her faculty member able to help, but Susie’s outreach through Messenger and mention of COVID raised flags in CTU’s reporting systems, which helped Susie’s broader support team identify that she was struggling. Her student success advisor could then proactively reach out to Susie with specific tools and information to help her with time and stress management, including connecting her with peers dealing with similar problems.
CTU Mobile App – Messenger Conversation
Real Time Communication and Help
Susie is just one of the more than 20,000 CTU students who use CTU Messenger every month to connect directly with their faculty, university staff, and their classmates. While CTU has many ways for students to provide feedback about the challenges of today, a growing number of students do not respond to email, phone, surveys, or other traditional methods of outreach. CTU is delighted that the use of Messenger, accessible through CTU’s mobile app as well as its Learning Management System, is a widely-used mode of communication between students and faculty and staff. CTU Messenger provides an avenue for real-time communication about coursework, technology challenges, or any other issues related to the pandemic, natural disasters, and family and work challenges.
…thanks for reaching out. No, everything isn’t alright. I’ve been battling with COVID and just received my phone last night…
In 2020, more than 80 percent of CTU’s population used Messenger to send 240,000+ conversations and nearly 3.3 million exchanges. These conversations provide a vast reservoir of insights into the issues that students face which prevent them from successfully completing their degrees.
Finding the True Impact
Recent data from a representative sampling indicates that faculty messages sent to students through CTU Messenger are opened an average of 83 percent of the time.
We at CTU wanted to understand more about how the Messenger tool was being used. We gathered the messages sent through Messenger to see if there were overarching themes or issues we could address.
To collate the messages into themes, as well as actionable data, CTU’s marketing and academic teams uses Kapiche, a text analysis-reporting tool that utilizes machine learning and natural language processing algorithms, including Google Sentiment Analysis, to discern sentiment, trends, and themes in student comments. Given the size and complexity of text data, due to the volume of students using Messenger, this reporting is critical to identifying and responding effectively to student issues.
…apologize for slacking, I’ve just been super sick with covid for about a week now. I will get caught up this week. Thank you for checking in on me.
For example, when the pandemic began in early 2020, CTU mobilized Kapiche to identify how students talked about the pandemic and the challenges it was causing to their lives. If a student messaged to say that they, or a family member, were in distress using identified language concepts such as hospital, illness, economic hardship, or job challenges, faculty and student advising were equipped to reach out in real-time and offer support. Academics also used insights into what students were experiencing to enhance faculty outreach and communication expectations, as well as to adjust a number of academic policies for students impacted by the pandemic and to provide additional communications to students each session. More specifically, faculty responded to messages by working with the university to adjust late policies for student work and incomplete policies for courses. Referrals to student advising for support in scheduling, time management, and stress management also increased during this time.
Kapiche COVID Concept Mapping
When CTU first developed the Messenger app, the university believed this communication tool would help increase communication between the University and CTU students. What we could not foresee, however, is that Messenger’s accessibility on mobile and on the Learning Management System would lead students to increase and deepen their engagement with the University.
CTU Messenger has engaged CTU’s academic, student advising, and marketing teams to help thousands of students just like Susie with real-time assistance during the pandemic. An additional benefit is to build off this strong foundation for ongoing, targeted student outreach through the development of new tools designed to address specific student needs. We are excited to see what the future brings!
Welcome to our continued celebration of 2021 WOW awardees! We’re joined today by Melissa Vito and Claudia Arcolin, both from The University of Texas at San Antonio who shared the following post about UTSA’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their “non-negotiable objective” was to “continue to innovate and deliver a high-quality education despite the unprecedented circumstances.” Read on to learn how the UTSA teams met that objective.
Frontiers is currently hosting our annual blog post series featuring posts from our 2021 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Award Winners.
This year we took a slightly different focus and asked for stories that described the intensely hard work that WCET member institutional staff, instructors, administrators, and students heroically stepped up with to the meet the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Congratulations to the 2021 WOW awardees:
Colorado Technical University.
Miami University Regionals E-Campus.
University of Alabama.
University of Louisville.
University of North Dakota.
University of Texas at San Antonio.
Congrats and thank you to the University of Texas at San Antonio and the digital learning heroes highlighted in today’s post.Stay tuned for the rest of this blog series as we lead up to this year’s WCET Annual Meeting!
Enjoy the read and enjoy your day,
Lindsey Downs, WCET
A still from the production Defining Moments, an interdisciplinary project that asked students to reflect on 2020 and document their feelings, fears, and hopes during the global pandemic. Watch Defining Moments on VIMEO.
A Non-Negotiable Objective
Students were away at Spring Break 2020 when UTSA President Taylor Eighmy and the university’s senior leadership team decided that we would cease all in-person classes for three weeks – and then, ultimately, for the remainder of the spring semester. The Coronavirus pandemic was beginning to ripple worldwide, forcing organizations to find alternative ways to conduct business while federal, state, and local governments were mandating quarantine measures or strongly encouraging people to stay at home.
Like many other institutions, we had monitored the initial outbreak and were taking stock of our options and existing resources. We decided on one non-negotiable objective – that we would continue to innovate and deliver a high-quality education despite the unprecedented circumstances. We wanted to create a bold online learning experience that went beyond being familiar with new tools and instead emphasized digital fluency.
Key Investments and Decisions Pave the Way
Digital Learning Tools
Luckily, we didn’t have to build everything from scratch. UTSA had made key investments in digital resources and tools, notably becoming the only public university in Texas certified as an Adobe Creative Campus. In late 2019, UTSA was only 1 of 38 schools worldwide with that distinction.
Digital Learning Prep and Coaching
UTSA notified students that it was immediately extending Spring Break by a week. It bought our team in UTSA’s Office of Academic Innovation a critical five additional days to prepare every faculty member to provide online instruction, even though most had never taught in a digital learning environment.
It was clear that we had to quickly disseminate a suite of materials, but simply distributing tutorials and tools wouldn’t be enough. If we were going to overcome faculty hesitation, we needed to create a group of digital learning ambassadors to encourage confidence and comfort with online instruction.
Our 50 Faculty Champions and Points of Contact became trusted sources of information amidst the fear and disruption of the pandemic. As peer mentors, they were embedded in colleges to help us distribute information to their colleagues. They were vital figures in helping their peers learn how to broadcast lectures – but, more importantly, they took part in reimagining how we help our students learn. Faculty Champions and Points of Contact were selected by their college’s dean, so organizational buy-in was baked-in from the beginning.
“Faculty were able to obtain assistance both within their departments and from a larger support structure, so they felt confident seeking help from colleagues who were familiar with their course content.”
Arturo Montoya, Faculty Champion, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs, Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Together, we held listening sessions and met individually with groups of students and faculty. In addition, we engaged the student and faculty representative organizations and conducted system-wide surveys.
From the feedback, our team in Academic Innovation created extensive resources and guidance to help faculty succeed online. We designed and conducted intensive Blackboard Learn bootcamps at the start of the transition online, and within one week, offered 40 live sessions to all departments. We provided each college with an instructional designer to implement new online teaching and learning practices. We also shared services that may seem small but significantly impact the student experience – like when we counseled faculty on how to stage their home workspaces to be optimized for online broadcasts.
Traditionally the center of campus activity, UTSA’s Sombrilla Plaza was quiet through much of 2020 after all classes moved online. Photo by freelance photographer Mark Humphries.
Faculty Champions helped their colleagues gain confidence in their online teaching capabilities by offering one-on-one peer mentoring and identifying actions to support student success. Ultimately, our team and the Faculty Champions trained more than 1,000 instructors in less than a week to move 2,298 courses online.
Once students returned online after Spring Break, we continued to listen to their feedback and helped faculty tweak or improve their courses. We also obtained new tools and licenses that helped us continue to enrich the student experience and improve accessibility. Initiatives like Gamify Physics, for example, helped transport our students across the world and show the diversity and expertise of physics professors that more closely resembled our majority non-white campus.
Supporting and Connecting the UTSA Community
Even with all these tools and strategies, we still needed to combat the isolation and loneliness of COVID-19 and social distancing. So UTSA, with the help of Faculty Champion Jodi Peterson and many others, developed an interdisciplinary project to help spur interactions between students. We provided students with an opportunity to capture this moment in their lives. It was not just an exercise in experiential learning — the project connected them to each other, encouraged deep thinking in a virtual environment, and provided future historians with the feelings, fears, and hopes of our students through tangible artifacts that would last beyond this moment in time.
What it All Led To – Our Defining Moments
Defining Moments showcases the creative and collaborative prowess of the Roadrunner community. More than 500 students across six disciplines were invited to participate in the project. They worked with faculty in history, English, art, music, dance, and architecture to turn their reflections into creative and expressive works. Students utilized collaborative tools, like Adobe, and leveraged the expertise of instructors who had been shown how to excel in digital learning environments. Academic Innovation’s team captured interviews, shot videos, and placed students’ creative output together in an artifact repository.
Faculty Champions and Points of Contact were critical to successfully flipping operations online and reimagining how we deliver an inclusive, equitable, and engaging education in a digital setting. Many of the strategies we implemented during the beginning of the pandemic are now standard practice at UTSA. Faculty Champions and Points of Contact continue to inform UTSA’s work to build better student resources. They ensured that UTSA continued to deliver high-quality education to our students regardless of the volatile world or how students come to the classroom.
Welcome to our continued celebration of 2021 WOW awardees! We’re joined today by Alicia Montgomery Dunlap and Aimee Greene both from the University of Louisville, who wrote the following post about the outstanding work from the staff with Louisville’s Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning. Alicia and Aimee share several lessons learned from the remote shift facilitated by their Instructional Design and Technology and Blackboard Learning and Technology Teams. These lessons are helpful as we continue to face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as we consider emergency and crisis management in the future.
Frontiers is currently hosting our annual blog post series featuring posts from our 2021 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Award Winners.
This year we took a slightly different focus and asked for stories that described the intensely hard work that WCET member institutional staff, instructors, administrators, and students heroically stepped up with to the meet the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Congratulations to the 2021 WOW awardees:
Colorado Technical University.
Miami University Regionals E-Campus.
University of Alabama.
University of Louisville.
University of North Dakota.
University of Texas at San Antonio.
Congrats and thank you to the University of Louisvilleand the digital learning heroes highlighted in today’s post.Stay tuned for the rest of this blog series as we lead up to this year’s WCET Annual Meeting!
Enjoy the read and enjoy your day,
Lindsey Downs, WCET
The Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning was the touchstone for University of Louisville faculty and students alike as the COVID-19 pandemic forced courses to move online. Our Instructional Design and Technology team and Blackboard Learning and Technology team worked in tandem daily to meet faculty technology and instructional design needs, so we were able to move swiftly to coordinate support efforts for faculty learning to teach remotely for the first time. In the process, we learned several lessons about agility, scalability, and future support. Today we’re excited to share those lessons learned with you.
Lesson 1: Leverage existing systems, relationships, and processes.
Our first major lesson learned was to lean on existing programs and processes as much as possible.
The University of Louisville has been offering online programs and courses since 2000. Because of this, we had already developed several systems and processes to support online learning. At the start of COVID-19, our challenge was scaling what was already in place. These systems, in addition to existing collaborative relationships, allowed us to respond quickly.
The University of Louisville requires that a course shell be created for every course in the university’s learning management system, Blackboard. This saved a very time and labor-intensive step when needing to move courses online quickly. With these shells already in place, we were able to help faculty add course content immediately.
Additionally, the university had an existing Continuity of Instruction plan, which was updated and communicated to faculty annually. While the Continuity of Instruction plan was intended primarily to address disruptions due to inclement weather, this plan gave a solid foundation for moving all courses online at the start of COVID-19. Finally, the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning leveraged a number of existing training programs to provide support without the need to develop new modules and training content.
Lesson 2: Pivot support as university needs change.
The second big lesson learned was to be flexible when offering programs and other types of support.
We rolled out four waves of support to meet faculty needs at different times and as the university’s response to COVID developed. Trainings were offered in-person, remote or self-paced. The initial wave of training was launched in March 2020, just three days after the university’s decision to move online. We developed and offered three subsequent waves of training in April, July and October to prepare for the summer, fall and spring semesters. Sessions and resources were focused on topics and tools prioritized based on faculty feedback.
To offer these trainings, we established six cohorts arranged by discipline within Blackboard. The cohorts had access to a dedicated instructional designer, paced and self-paced resources, modules, and recordings of live sessions. Establishing cohorts of faculty allowed individual instructional designers to focus on a single discipline and limited the number of users in each group, making interactions easier to manage.
During these four waves, we offered 146 training opportunities attended by 2,187 faculty for a total of 2,701 hours. In addition to formal trainings, we also provided over 7,400 consultations in 2020 (more than 2.5 times the number held in 2019), serving 1,231 faculty and 3,444 hours.
Lesson 3: Upgrade support systems to scale.
Our next lesson learned was to ensure adequate support coverage outside regular business hours.
To ensure maximum help desk support, we added weekend coverage and extended evening support hours until 10 p.m., including 24/7 on-call hours. Blackboard’s help desk processed 4,800 tickets in 2020 – approximately 35% more than in 2019, without adding any staff members. Eighty percent of those tickets were closed within our goal of 48 hours. We leveraged existing ticketing and support systems, as well as a new, cloud-based call center platform that allowed us to respond to evening and weekend calls without adding staff. These tools also provided data used to make decisions about help desk hours and support, which were reduced after the initial pivot to online instruction. However, extended hours remain that were not available pre-pandemic.
The help desk is staffed by the Blackboard and Learning Technology team, instructional designers and students. Student employees were involved in decisions about extending hours and volunteered to be included in the call support pool. We also set up Microsoft Teams and text groups to be able to communicate with each other in case there was an issue someone couldn’t address while on call.
Lesson 4: Keep what works and continue to iterate.
Our final lesson – once you level up, don’t look back. Just keep moving forward.
The outlook on online education has shifted. If there is one thing we’ve learned, it’s that there is no going back.
Given this new outlook, several departments shifted their vision to offering fully online programs – and quickly. Between March and December 2020, we launched 12 new online programs, compared to only five programs within the same timeframe in 2019. The number of students enrolled in fully online programs for our summer and fall 2020 terms exceeded the prior year by 33% and 41% respectively, helping the university realize its highest enrollment in more than 20 years.
Our Instructional Design and Blackboard teams continue to support this growth in online programs and courses. We see that faculty have retained and are using skills they acquired during the pandemic as they return to in-person instruction (using Blackboard course shells to collect assignments, for instance). In fact, as most faculty have mastered the basics and have access to self-help resources in their Blackboard cohorts, help desk tickets are down 20% for the first few weeks of the 2021 fall semester as compared to pre-pandemic numbers. Now, we are shifting our professional development offerings so instructors can level up their skills.
We are continuing to support our Blackboard cohorts by adding new faculty and updating resources for online and hybrid instruction as well as technology tools. This has become a go-to resource for our faculty with questions about online and hybrid instruction. The Blackboard team continues to offer extended support hours and is considering additional ways to streamline support, such as a self-service knowledge-base.
By keeping many of our extended support systems in place, we are prepared to address faculty needs as the online education landscape continues to evolve.
As the COVID-19 pandemic lurches on, many employers, including postsecondary institutions, are navigating the reality of what many feel is the future of work: remote employment. By the end of 2021, its predicted that over a quarter of the workforce will remain remote. Furthermore, its estimated that 36.2 million Americans will work remotely by 2025, an increase of 16.8 million people from pre-pandemic rates. While these are astounding statistics, many higher education leaders nationwide are trying to consolidate the necessity of remote work, even as our society pushes into a new culture of work modality. Whether that future means more hybrid or fully remote employment options, these leaders are struggling to preserve some semblance of their traditional campus or organizational cultures or find a balance to move forward. It’s an unenviable position.
Presumably, with more flexible work options in a growing, digitized economy, increased interest and opportunities for movement will follow. Recruitment and worker mobility outside of the institution’s physical location or state may carry implications for both short and long-term work arrangements. Regardless of intentionality or emergency response, an increase to an institution’s out-of-state footprint triggers a critical reality and complexity of our country: We are one country, comprised of 54 unique states and territories, each with their own laws and regulations. States maintain a role and authority to oversee activities within their respective borders.
Management of faculty, instructors, and/or staff in multiple jurisdictions necessitates the need to be mindful of and comply with complex legal issues. Today we will discuss some of the many issues pertaining to a multistate workforce. Employment laws are nuanced and ever-changing. Institutions will be well-served to bring together a group of campus stakeholders to align interests, consider the investment and steps to obtain compliance.
Shifting the question – Do you know where your employees are?
Sound familiar? If you are a champion of state authorization for distance learning, you may be sheepishly grinning as you recall the key question… “Do I know where my students are?”
A multi-state workforce follows a similar principle to traditional state authorization: institutions who engage in activities outside of their primary state must comply with rules and regulations pursuant to the conditions wherever they may be operating. Instead of focusing on “physical presence” as our standard terminology, we’ll shift to the term “Nexus,” by which we mean ‘a relationship or connection between two or more entities which creates a legal presence.’ In tax law, it’s a relationship between a taxing authority, such as a state, and a business. Like traditional state authorization, parameters as to what constitutes that “nexus” will vary widely among U.S. states and territories, ranging from:
owning or leasing a property,
deriving income,
storing products or supplies,
engaging contract employees,
threshold of employees in a locality,
an employee working from a home office, etc.
Employee location, or the presence of their home office, is the critical first piece of information to pursue a tangible step on the path to compliance, establishing an initial approval (registration) to operate in a particular locality.
Many institutions will be familiar with some business registration practices, including those which govern “interstate commerce” and are not covered through reciprocity. State oversight of these registration functions will vary by location, and responsibility may fall to the Department of Labor or Treasury, Secretary of State, etc. Non-profit entities may qualify for an exemption, however bonding or other requirements may still be in effect. In many cases, unless the organization obtains and maintains all required state tax exemptions, it may be treated as a for-profit entity. It is likely that a business services, counsel, or other campus office may already be familiar with registration requirements and state-by-state contacts.
Temporary exemptions in response to COVID-19
In response to the challenges of COVID-19, some states offered flexibility and guidance to both employees and employers to accommodate temporary adjustments due to remote work orders.
Many of these are tied to “State of Emergency” orders, and may have expired. Employers should anticipate state variation and should not assume that flexibility has been granted, or will continue into the future.
For example, New Jersey has offered guidance and notice resuming out-of-state corporation registration and tax effective October 1, 2021.
States offering temporary waivers in response to COVID
Classification is the key to decoding a variety of provisions related to taxation, state employment laws, and benefits. In addition to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), states maintain their own provisions to regulate respective, and in some cases, stricter classification criteria. Simply because an employee is exempt under federal law, does not mean that they follow that same classification under state law. Parameters may stipulate or address wage requirements (nonexempt, exempt, contractor), overtime rules, recordkeeping standards, unemployment, or other leave scenarios, etc. Failure to accurately classify an employee may result in wage penalties, back taxes, back payments to the employee, etc. Misclassification becomes a more complex issue where independent contracting is concerned.
Classification may be particularly impactful when seeking to hire instructional or administrative staff. For example, the U.S. Department of Labor provided FLSA guidance in 2018 addressing “white-collar exemptions” for postsecondary operations, including instruction and student employment. The guidance explains the basis for wage and overtime in several scenarios. However, it also emphasizes that when state law differs from FLSA, an employer must comply with the standard most protective to employees.
Peeling back the layers of taxation
Authority to conduct business
Photo by Mockup Graphics on Unsplash
As previously mentioned, when an employee is working outside the state borders of the employer’s base of operations, it may require the employer to pursue a registration in a particular locality. The registration requirement is critical to establishing employer contributions to fund state programs or compliance with mandates such as unemployment insurance, family or other leave programs, disability or workers compensation.
Both the employer and employee may be subject to a variety of taxes specific to the state, county, and in some cases, even a city. A recent KPMG presentation cited that there are approximately 10,000 taxing jurisdictions in the U.S. Some payroll software systems or other vendors may offer employers support in navigating tax rates and withholding procedures among the different jurisdictions from which they operate.
Income tax withholding
State law generally requires employers to withhold state income tax based primarily on where an employee performs services, and secondarily where the employee resides.
In 43 states and Washington, D.C., a remote employee typically receives a tax credit or deduction from their home state and will file a second return as a “nonresident” in their work state. Employers may offer a reminder to their remote employees to adjust withholding in the event one state maintains a higher income tax rate over the other.
In some cases, states who border one another may establish a reciprocal agreement to address incurring tax liability. For example, the Commonwealth of Virginia maintains respective reciprocal agreements (specific parameters apply) with a few neighboring states to simplify income tax for employees. These agreements allow the employee to pay the income tax of the state in which they live, and not the state where they work.
Nonresident and temporary work arrangements
Additionally, the majority of U.S. states have established thresholds as to how long a nonresident may work in a state before an employer is required to withhold state income taxes. Stipulations around these rules will vary. For example, Arizona maintains a 60-day rule before an employer is obligated to withhold income tax. Some state rules may be as short as 14-days, or stipulate an income threshold. This is an important data point for employees who move or travel at increased intervals and localities with additional income sourcing rules.
Convenience and income sourcing rules
Five states, Connecticut, Delaware, Nebraska, New York, and Pennsylvania tax employees where their office is located, even if that office is outside of the employer’s state. This is often referred to as a “convenience” or income sourcing rule. In many of these states, the employee may be denied a tax credit or deduction from taxes paid to another state, potentially resulting in double taxation. Generally, if the employee may only carry out their work in that specific state location, they may be exempt from this rule. Specific conditions by state and the employee’s situation will apply. The following are recent notable and unique developments:
Arkansas’ Governor signed a bill in April 2021 amending its convenience rule.
Connecticut’s Governor has signed a bill amending its convenience rule for the 2020 year only.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts instituted a new income sourcing rule in March 2020 requiring employees of Massachusetts based employers to pay income tax to the Commonwealth if they were a remote (non-resident) employee during the pandemic. In October 2020, New Hampshire filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asserting that the emergency regulation violates the Commerce and Due Process constitutional provision by imposing tax on New Hampshire residents even though they did not enter Massachusetts to work. New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Iowa filed an amicus brief supporting New Hampshire. Similar suits in other states have escalated in the past, however the U.S. Supreme Court has historically held to the determination that states hold broad latitude to tax in-state activity, including nonresidents on in-state earnings.
As an employer, it’s important to be aware of these rules as they may carry implications for remote employees working in new locations because of the pandemic, working in localities on a short-term basis, or in the long term, have an adverse effect on competitiveness to recruit in a particular state. As an employee, it’s critical to inform your employer of your location to ensure it withholds tax from the correct state.
Action steps to take at the institution
…the expansion of a multi-state workforce introduces a set of complex compliance requirements which require close, coordinated, and detailed communication with a multitude of cross-campus constituents. This team may include the hiring division or department, business operations, general counsel, human resources, payroll, IT, and finance professionals.”
Registration and taxation aside, the expansion of a multi-state workforce introduces a set of complex compliance requirements which require close, coordinated, and detailed communication with a multitude of cross-campus constituents.
This team may include the hiring division or department, business operations, general counsel, human resources, payroll, IT, and finance professionals. The following are few considerations to begin:
Re-create your institutional compliance team to align campus stakeholders in the institution’s strategy, procedures, policies, and risks addressing remote work and multistate operations.
Institutional contacts in HR and Payroll are critical resources when considering potential remote positions. Payroll services may support compliance functionality for tax purposes, however verification of laws and compliance at the local level should always be encouraged.
Well-defined policies are critical:
Determine factors and parameters to define which campus positions may be remote.
Location is everything. Acknowledge that where employees want to be, and where it is realistic for them to be, may not always align. Consider the institution’s level of risk and investment in investigating specific states and potential issues. Institute language which requires the remote employee to notify the institution if they move or if a current on-premises employee desires to transition into a remote capacity.
If fully remote, articulate expectations for in-person engagement, travel, and related expenses.
If temporarily remote, define an end date for the work agreement and include parameters for reconsideration or extension.
Communicate and document determinations regarding state laws, employee classifications, and agreements meticulously.
Schedule an audit: Review the respective state laws, reassess the goal(s) of operating in a multi-state capacity, and revisit the cost-benefit analysis of remote work.
Engage and ensure the institution’s government relations contacts are aware of the interest and investments in the institution’s multi-state workforce. Help them stay connected to local laws and congressional interest in efforts to simplify nonresident tax laws such as the Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act or the Multi-state Worker Fairness Act.
Student and organizational culture considerations are critical
It can be tempting to allow the burdensome process of managing state-by-state compliance to determine where remote work may occur. However, it’s important to weigh the investment of resources against the strategic direction of the respective department, division, or institution as a whole. I encourage institutions to review the numerous stories shared in the Chronicle of Higher Education over the last several months addressing campus and student culture considerations. Some key conversations to consider in addition to aspect of compliance:
How dependent is the program or campus culture on in-person engagement? How does that factor into student support? How has virtual student support been received?
What is the goal of remote work? How does it factor into individual roles? Are roles hybrid or fully remote? Are there implications for employee retention?
What does the out-of-state(s) expansion achieve? Does it support access to a broader or specific talent pool?
Share your questions, progress, and challenges with WCET & SAN
The information provided in this piece is sourced broadly and intended to provide an overview of some considerations relative to managing a multi-state workforce. I encourage you to evaluate any determinations alongside specific details of the institution, employment situation, and locality with general counsel. There is a myriad of additional state-by-state provisions pertaining to the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA) or Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), protected class, WARN laws, reimbursement rules, employee privacy, hiring practices, unions, etc. not included in this piece.
Your experiences and reflections navigating these issues are helpful to inform additional research, tools, and conversations with the WCET State Authorization Network (SAN) going forward. Myself and my colleagues would love to hear from you. Please reach out: rstachowiak@wiche.edu or 303-541-0289. If you have questions or want to discuss the considerations presented here, engage the WCET membership through our DISCUSS or SAN Network member communities.
Today we continue our celebration of 2021 WOW awardees with a post from Rachel S. Thompson, Director, Center for Instructional Technology Office of Information Technology with The University of Alabama. When the higher education world moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Alabama’s ITAS and CIT teams collaborated to shift their student orientation online, and then doubled down to help the rest of the university shift operations remote as well.
As started last week, Frontiers is currently hosting our annual blog post series featuring posts from our 2021 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Award Winners.
This year we took a slightly different focus and asked for stories that described the intensely hard work that WCET member institutional staff, instructors, administrators, and students heroically stepped up with to the meet the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Congratulations to the 2021 WOW awardees:
Colorado Technical University.
Miami University Regionals E-Campus.
University of Alabama.
University of Louisville.
University of North Dakota.
University of Texas at San Antonio.
Congrats to the University of Alabama and the digital learning heroes highlighted in today’s post.Stay tuned for the rest of this blog series as we lead up to this year’s WCET Annual Meeting!
Enjoy the read and enjoy your day,
Lindsey Downs, WCET
“Hey! Are we going entirely remote?”
“Yup. Faculty and students get an extra week of break. We go fully remote for the rest of the Spring 2020 semester on March 31.”
“Wow…how many Zoom accounts can the System office spin up quickly? How many of the 10,000 courses offered this term are already fully online or meeting virtually?”
“We’ve requested a Pro account for each of the 5,400 instructors and staff. And teaching assistants. Oh and tutors and advisors need them too.
"About 1,000 of the 10,000 sections this term are fully online now, but every class has a shell in Blackboard as of this morning.”
“Well, I guess we will get them up to speed quickly. Glad instructors and students get an extra week of break. We can use that time to get our cats herded and our ducks in a row. 😊”
“Sounds good. I’m going into the office tonight to get my plants and my laptop.”
“Stay safe. Wear your mask. Wash your hands. Don’t lick any doorknobs. Roll tide.”
In March of 2020, The University of Alabama joined universities across the world in a quick shift to emergency remote teaching.
The conversation above and others like it happened throughout the Capstone, many of them between the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) and UA’s Department of Instructional Technology and Academic Services (ITAS) as we moved to remote operations. Together, these two teams ensured faculty, staff and students could continue their learning experience during the unprecedented circumstances associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the University of Alabama was thrust into remote operations in March 2020, the ITAS and CIT teams exemplified their on-going commitment to faculty, staff, and students by collaboratively assisting the Department of Orientation in delivering Bama Bound – what we call our student orientation – virtually to over 7,000 incoming Fall 2020 main campus students.
Over the course of a five-week period, ITAS staff provided instructional design, media production and technical support to the development of the online version of the orientation. CIT staff provided technical support for the learning management system and virtual web conferencing sessions.
As a result, the Department of Orientation was able to deliver Bama Bound to all incoming freshmen and their families, in a virtual environment, in preparation for their fall arrival on campus.
It wasn’t just orientation that had to go virtual. Now that orientation was available remotely, we needed to ensure our other operations could shift as well.
ITAS and CIT had helped push orientation online, and next the ITAS and CIT teams were called upon to collaboratively provide the entire University of Alabama campus with innovative and creative solutions in the areas of instructional design, technical support for faculty/staff and students, media production, and faculty training. ITAS and CIT expanded available tools and support for:
web conferencing,
assessment,
evaluation and proctoring,
accessibility, and,
rights and resources and collaborative writing tools,
… to meet the needs of the campus during remote operations.
These collaborative ITAS/CIT initiatives have been implemented at the University of Alabama since March 2020:
Delivered Faculty Roundtables and co-offered faculty development sessions to share ideas and explore issues.
Developed resources and training about flexible learning modes based on Quality Matters and on Online Learning Consortium suggested practices.
Provided online content (from Bama By Distance online courses) for main campus faculty to enhance the delivery of their face-to-face courses that had been moved to the virtual environment.
Provided 24/7 technical support, in collaboration with Blackboard Student Services, for all University of Alabama main campus and Bama By Distance students.
Opened the University Hall media production studios, using appropriate covid-19 mitigation strategies, so that faculty could record media content for online delivery during remote operations.
Developed and promoted resources for on-campus students who were suddenly studying remotely.
As a result of the efforts of ITAS and CIT, the University of Alabama persevered to deliver instruction to students all over the world, and without interruption.
All of our faculty, staff, and students are proud of the work our ITAS and CIT teams accomplished in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Remember, don’t lick any doorknobs and Roll Tide!
WCET’s staff and Steering Committee work groups continue their efforts toward increasing access to quality higher education. Previously our work groups have shared incredible research and discussed opportunities for creating a more equitable and inclusive future for higher education and next up we’ll focus on the ROI of digital learning.
Today we’re highlighting to work from our Steering Committee work group on quality in digital learning. This work is ongoing, but today’s post provides real world examples of how postsecondary instructors and administrators can be involved with quality assurance of course design and programs.
We’re thrilled to welcome several members of the work group who discussed quality in digital learning with WCET staff member Megan Raymond. Megan shared several questions on ensuring quality of teaching and learning, especially as we head back to school this fall, and the future of digital learning in higher education. Thank you to today’s interviewees:
Brenda Boyd, Senior Academic Director – Program Services with Quality Matters,
Gary Chinn, Assistant Dean, Digital Learning, with The Pennsylvania State University,
Michelle Pacansky-Brock, Faculty Mentor, Online Teaching & Learning with CCC California Virtual Campus, Online Education Initiative.
I’d like to extend a special invitation to WCET members to join us for our upcoming WCET Closer Conversation on Ensuring Quality in Digital Learning – September 17, 12:00 pm MDT. During this event members of the WCET Steering Committee quality work group will discuss:
Quality metrics across modalities,
Developing internal policies to drive quality,
Integrating continuous improvement and backward design into high-quality course design,
Including the voice of the student and ensuring students that they are making a sound investment with their time and money,
Quality in program development vs. ensuring quality in mature programs.
Now, onto our interview with Megan and our interviewees!
-Lindsey Downs, WCET
Q: From what lens are you approaching quality in digital learning (i.e., instructional and curriculum, program management, student support, or other)?
Brenda Boyd (BB): Instructional and curriculum, continuous quality improvement, and quality assurance.
Gary Chinn (GC): COVID has asked us to confront so many aspects of quality in digital learning, it’s hard to choose a particular one. While we had strong quality guidelines for the creation of digital course materials for fully online courses, we are now looking to build out resources that address quality in hybrid and synchronous remote classes. This expansion in focus does require that we look more closely at the student experience. What does a better Zoom-based learning experience look like? How might we harness the good thinking that has gone into the past 18 months to make lasting changes to our design practice?
Michelle Pacansky-Brock (MPB): Through the lens of achieving educational equity for all humans.
Shannon Riggs (SR): All the above! Providing high-quality online educational experiences is complex and requires quality assurance measures in several areas. Quality Matters has long used the concept of a “quality pie” to explain which aspect of online education their Higher Education Rubric addresses, course design. Other pieces of the pie are important, too, though they are not directly addressed by the QM Rubric: course delivery, course content, institutional infrastructure, the learning management system, faculty readiness, and student readiness.
Q: From your vantage point, what are the most significant concerns about quality in digital learning?
BB: The most significant concerns about quality in digital learning include the same concerns we have always had about digital learning. The pandemic has amplified and scaled these concerns and shone a spotlight on the lack of comprehensive support provided to online learners that on-ground students have long had available to them. The key concern is to make clear learning promises and to deliver on them, regardless of modality.
GC: Historically in my role, I have primarily been concerned about the quality of the student experience in fully online programs. In that context, it’s both the quality of the program experience, as well as the quality of individual courses, that have been the focal point.
Because of the work we’ve undertaken to help navigate our response to COVID, quality has taken on new aspects. With the emphasis on hybrid models of learning that I expect going forward, the opportunity ahead of us is to build supports for the thoughtful design of learning opportunities that use digital learning tools in the most beneficial ways possible.
MPB: The most significant concern is the paradox that digital learning presents to the increasingly diverse group of students served by higher education. For decades, online and blended courses have increased access to students who have traditionally been left out of higher education. Increasing access to college for students who are low income, first generation, Black, Hispanic, and other students of color is something to celebrate. But we also know that these same students are less likely to succeed in online courses than their White and Asian peers.
SR: Right now, my main concern is that students, faculty, and administrators might not understand that the emergency remote education is not the same as “traditional” online education – that is, online courses and programs that were intentionally and methodically designed to be delivered in an online format.
What faculty have been able to do with remote instruction during the pandemic has been remarkable. What a feat to pivot to a new way of teaching in such a short and stressful time. At Oregon State, we have heard many times through the pandemic that our faculty who had training and experience in online course design and delivery had a much easier time shifting their campus-based classes to remote courses. However, I’m sure that nation-wide, many faculty who did not have that training and experience struggled.
On the flip side of that concern, though, is a lot of excitement and hope. This is a very exciting time to be working in online education. Experienced online educators are poised to serve as leaders to all who work in higher education right now. Online educators, administrators, instructional designers, and faculty development professionals know a lot about how to design and deliver high-quality online education. Once we move into a post-pandemic era in higher education, it is likely that students will seek the flexibility that blended and online education afford and those more experienced online education leaders can share what they know.
Q: Where do opportunities exist in improving quality of digital learning and/or what opportunities come from improving quality in digital learning (programs, courses, management, etc.)?
BB: Providing professional development for faculty and staff to help support learners across modalities is a major opportunity area. Faculty who never anticipated teaching online are doing so now or have pivoted from emergency remote instruction toward online learning that is more organized and thoughtful. Instructional designers have been amazing allies and supports throughout the pandemic to help faculty learn to use technologies for teaching and how best to leverage them, if faculty did not know already.
No matter where a campus is in terms of their evolution in digital learning, there is always room to improve. If campuses are already on the pathway to continuous improvement, the opportunities that come from that investment include growing programs, increasing enrollments, and improving the student experience. Institutional leadership supporting what works well across the institution is another area of opportunity. Willingness to change and use a growth mindset to learn from this experience and pivot to providing students with quality learning experiences through faculty and staff development will be critical during this time of many models and flexible pathways for student success.
Learner support services and initiatives were highlighted as major drivers of student success in the recent QM President’s Summit report. Through making services and supports available to students in digital environments, all students are helped. How to provide learner and academic support at scale is a big opportunity area for institutions.
GC: I believe that the opportunity we have collectively for improving digital learning is the creation of a more flexible and coherent student experience. Can we marshal the ideas, technologies, and institutional will to create reliable and varied pathways for our learners? This runs the gamut from individual courses through full programs. A quality lens plays an essential role in this transformation because our students will benefit most from learning designs, policies, and supports that are consistent and advance their educational experiences.
MPB: Too often, educators (which I use as an inclusive term for all faculty, staff, and administrators) approach quality through the lens of equality, as opposed to equity. Equality implies that it is fair to treat everyone the same. But we know everyone is not the same. An equity lens enables us to see that each student brings unique needs, and our learning and support environments must be responsive in order to be high-quality and meet those needs to ensure all students can succeed.
A great opportunity for improving quality lies in creating institutional cultures that value teaching. Course design rubrics serve a valuable role for faculty but course design is just one side of the coin. Teaching is the other side. In the past ten years, course design rubrics have gained significant traction in quality efforts in online education across the United States. And that work has been important. I can remember when I first saw a course design rubric a few years after I started teaching online. I made really valuable changes to my course, as a result.
But a well-designed course doesn’t translate directly into a meaningful online learning experience that supports the needs of our diverse students. The quality of faculty-student interactions is critical to building trust and motivation in digital learning environments. Cultivating positive instructor-student relationships is a huge opportunity for advancing equity in high-quality digital learning environments. And the moment is ripe for this. Human connection is revitalizing, particularly when a person feels depleted and burned out.
SR: One of the challenges we faced during the pandemic was with exam proctoring. The inability to proctor exams in person was a significant hurdle. Online proctoring helped in many cases, but there are still some concerns about student privacy. To my mind, this means that we have some opportunity to improve our approach to assessment in digital learning.
Peer review tools seem especially promising – they foster active learning and critical thinking while also keeping the grading burden on faculty reasonable. Who doesn’t want rigorous assessment options that aren’t prohibitive workload-wise? Some faculty may have qualms about relinquishing grading to a peer review system, because providing feedback is so much a part of their identity as an educator. The research on these systems is very promising and I believe that once faculty understand how critical their input is in the design process of an assignment using a tool like this, and that they can override a grade in the rare cases when something goes awry, that they may be more open to using these kinds of tools.
Q: As we enter the 2021 Fall semester, what is top of mind regarding high-quality digital teaching and learning? From your perspective, this could mean a high-quality learning experience, a high-quality teaching experience, or supporting high-quality teaching and learning?
BB: What’s top of mind is how administration and faculty support must be in place to support students as they enter a precarious and uncertain academic year. How is the institution committing to supporting quality teaching and learning through faculty support and student support? Providing these crucial services at scale challenges the most committed institution because it is the culture of the institution that may need to pivot now to support learning. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, so said Peter Drucker, so institutions will need to align their strategies with their institutional cultures to drive successful change.
GC: For this fall, what is top of mind for me is broadly the professional development aspect. How can we support instructors who might be experiencing new teaching modalities, new tools, and very unpredictable environments? What do they need most right now? How can they hear from students in a way that might benefit teaching practice? How do we introduce instructors to tools that may be of benefit, while being mindful not to overwhelm people who are navigating a very stressful experience? So, a collaborative strategy for the provision of guidance and tools is part of what’s on my mind this fall.
MPB: We need to shift mindsets about online courses and misperceptions about quality. One thing we can do more of is locating bright spots from the past year and a half – and you must believe that there are bright spots. Have faculty at your institution been given the opportunity to share why they love teaching online? Or share something they are proud of about their course? Create a stage for these examples and be sure to cast a wide net to include a diverse array of faculty in your efforts.
From my experiences working with and supporting educators who teach at a distance, online professional development can also shift mindsets about online courses. When an educator participates in an online program facilitated by an engaged, empathetic instructor with high expectations, they begin to comprehend how relationships can be developed at a distance and fuel intrinsic motivation. Faculty want to be proud of their courses. If they haven’t experienced an online learning experience that inspires them, how will they see that high-quality online teaching can be transformative? And if they don’t have the digital fluency to use technologies beyond a learning management system, then we aren’t serving them as we should.
SR: Top of mind for me heading into fall is investing in the continual improvement of mature online programs at Oregon State, in addition to developing exciting new online programs. I am especially interested in exploring standards for online program quality that will help us set stretch goals for improving our students’ educational experiences and collaborate with academic partners using a common language around online program management.
Q: What effective strategies have you implemented at your institution or what piece of advice do you have to share regarding quality in digital learning with the WCET Community?
GC: I think it’s been a plus to have an established quality assurance design standards for digital learning experiences. These standards have been around for years, and address aspects like accessibility, orientation, learning activities, assessments, and student feedback for course improvements. While the standards were built with fully online courses in mind, the framework was a great starting place when supporting large-scale remote teaching. One positive outcome of all we’ve learned might be that more institutions could establish their own quality standards. We’ve all learned so much that could benefit a resource like that.
BB: My best advice is to define a measurable goal and work toward it incrementally. A commitment to continuous improvement with incremental change is a path that everyone can follow. Save big changes for when there are blocks of time to devote to redesign or work in parallel. Have a goal and work toward it in small ways regularly.
MPB: As institutions move forward with Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI) efforts, we must recognize that each of us plays a role in creating a more inclusive and equitable future for all.
SR: One strategy I am especially excited would be the Oregon State Ecampus Online Teaching Principles. These research-based principles help faculty new to online education appreciate what good online teaching looks like, and help experienced faculty reflect on their teaching practice. As a Quality Matters institution, we felt we had a strong foundation for online course design, but we felt there was a need for a tool that could paint a picture of what good online teaching looks like, after the design work is completed. We made our teaching principles openly available under a Creative Commons license to help fill that gap for other institutions that felt the need to better support online teaching.
Q: Other comments/reflections?
BB: Every institution and their faculty and staff are in a different place with their efforts toward quality. Getting the right people at the table to implement any kind of quality assurance plan is the first step. The next step is defining goals. What is important to administrators may not be the same things that are important to faculty, so those conversations are crucial to coming to common goals that enable everyone to achieve them. When those goals are not met, what supports are in place to enable continuous improvement?
Lastly, I know that Every Learner Everywhere has put out resources including the Playbooks that are very helpful for online course planning and helping faculty do incremental changes to their courses. QM has also provided the Bridge to Quality: An Online Course Design Guide that is free to everyone. It is designed as “an instructional designer at your elbow” for those who don’t have instructional design resources available to them at their campus to help them move online in an intentional and quality way. The design process is aligned to QM Standards and helps faculty ensure they include important things in their courses such as institutional policies and links to support services for students.
SR: The pandemic and the need to provide instruction remotely has pushed higher education to be more student-centric in how we deliver education. I believe that students will now (rightfully) expect a student-centered approach to continue. Experienced online educators know a lot about delivering education in a student-centered manner and have much to offer higher ed in leading us to more student-centered ways of doing business. There’s never been a more exciting time to be working in online, blended, and digital education.
Thank you again to our wonderful interviewees and interviewer for today’s discussion. Remember to register now for our WCET member-only Closer Conversation on quality in digital learning, September 17, 12:00 pm MDT!
Thank you to our interviewees:
Brenda Boyd, Quality Matters
Gary Chinn, The Pennsylvania State University
Shannon Riggs, Oregon State University
Michelle Pacansky-Brock, CCC California Virtual Campus, Online Education Initiative.
Today’s post from Chantae Recasner, Dean, Academic Success with Northeast Lakeview College – Alamo Colleges District and the WCET Steering Committee working group on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, who joins us to close out the Frontiers series started at the beginning of this month on “Enabling Difference.”
During the month of August, members of this working group shared their advice, strategies, and research regarding equity and inclusion in higher education digital learning. As Chantae confirms below, this isn’t the end of WCET’s work on diversity and inclusion in higher education, but just the start.
Stay tuned to learn more about our work in the future.
Thank you again to our WCET leadership for your outstanding work with us on this topic and your dedication to improving the educational experiences for all of our students.
Enjoy the read,
Lindsey Downs, WCET
This month’s examination of diversity, equity and inclusion has been but one example of how WCET is invested in living its values and engaging the expressed concerns and interests of its members. Our theme of “Enabling Difference” was intended to inspire openness about how we approach DEI challenges and aspirations as individual professionals and organizations.
From conceptualization of terms to strategic planning, from data analysis to eliminating barriers in tech, this series offered members a place to start, a place to re-engage, a place to re-consider. While the month has ended, DEI engagement for the WCET Steering Committee, the DEI Workgroup, and all of you does not and should not stop here.
Online Learning as an Emergency Response
As we wrap up this series, Hurricane Ida is raging through Louisiana—a triggering moment for anyone who, like me, has experienced trauma associate with natural disasters, especially hurricanes. In many ways, the nested realities of a natural disaster amidst a global pandemic is yet another provocateur of debates about access. As I write this, the entire city of New Orleans is without power. What an apropos description of a city where the majority of its residents identify as members of a historically minoritized group, less than 50% have earned a higher education credential, and the average person earns about $35K a year. My house in San Antonio is currently occupied by family who evacuated from my hometown of New Orleans in search of safety, and my mind is now overrun with thoughts of how safety and recovery are intimately connected to equity and justice.
16 years ago, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we saw stimulation of the digital marketplace in higher education as many colleges and universities across the country enabled online course offerings in partnership with those campuses most victimized by the storm. Thus, online learning as emergency response was not a new idea when leaders gathered to determine how we would continue instruction in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Systemic inequities can indeed seem most evident during moments of great distress, but they also manifest in micro-moments that distress individuals greatly.
My point here is that from the microaggression to the natural disaster, we are literally still navigating recovery strategies from historic inequities and building preparedness strategies as safeguards against future injustice. As we learned from the “Closer Conversation” on Friday, many of us are doing great work in our personal lives and at/with our institutions, but the challenges are varied if not vast. Are our different lived experiences enabling common conceptualizations of equity, equality, justice, inclusion? No. But, it is in the drudges of critical, courageous, brave, safe conversations that we at least build collective will to pursue the ideal, if not robust and clear strategy.
Where Do We Go From Here?
So where do we go from here? The best lesson I ever learned in instructional design was that well designed instruction is iterative. We look back to learn where to clear paths and innovate for higher achievement and for greater learning. Our journey toward creating greater access and equity in higher education in general and digital integration specifically is contingent upon our collective willingness to identify, value, and empower difference.
As Tina Parscal and Van Davis acknowledged, “…erasing equity issues at our institutions is everyone’s job,” and we press forward ever mindful of Janelle Elias’s counsel that “planning to plan is a critical part of centering DEI work.” In other words, we will never be able to “change some experiences for all students” and provide what Adam Cota described as “personalization at scale” if we fail to plan and then refuse to act. We should find comfort in taking a chance at doing it differently, thinking about it differently, and assessing it differently because there is no true failure in operating with the intention to increase access and eliminate inequity. If the concept of iteration holds, then we will continue to grow as we go. Thus, as Anna Porcaro exclaimed, “Educators have a responsibility — and really an exciting opportunity — to identify and remove as many [barriers] as they can as they build and revise online courses.”
“…what happens in the world impacts the classroom and what happens in the classroom impacts the world.“
I would extend the vision of that impact opportunity beyond the course itself. If classrooms are but microcosms of our world(s), then the symbiotic influence holds—what happens in the world impacts the classroom and what happens in the classroom impacts the world.
So, let’s keep talking, planning, and doing. WCET would like to thank all you for engaging the blog series this month, and we invite you to continue the conversations with us and among your colleagues.
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