New on WCET Frontiers
Practice
Building Institutional Capacity Through Digital Learning Professional Development
Published by: WCET | 3/5/2026
This week, we are featuring Every Learner Everywhere’s Course Catalog. Thanks Every Learner for this great resource! Because digital learning has become a baseline institutional responsibility, colleges and universities must support professional learning for faculty and academic leaders. Meanwhile, instructional technologies evolve faster than conferences can accommodate. Within that context, Every Learner Everywhere has launched […]
Practice
How to Not Be an Ostrich in the Age of AI
Published by: WCET | 2/26/2026
I’m currently testing out Copilot for WICHE as we work to refine our AI strategy and implementation. This morning, when I opened a new Word document to write this blog post, I was greeted with a helpful window prompting me to tell it what I wanted to write. Three minutes and one refinement to the […]
Practice
The Exhausting Debate: Why Quality, Not Modality, Should Be the Question
Published by: WCET | 2/3/2026
“Distance education isn’t as good as face-to-face.”“You have an online degree? That’s not really a degree.”“You went to an online school? Your degree must be a fake!”“Online schools aren’t as rigorous as ‘real’ colleges.” If you’ve been around digital learning since the late 1990s and early 2000s, you likely remember hearing disparaging comments like these. […]
Practice
Five Common Myths About AI in Higher Education and What Our Research Actually Found
Published by: WCET | 1/29/2026
Cutting through the noise to help institutions make smarter AI decisions As AI continues to reshape conversations across higher education, leaders are navigating an increasingly crowded landscape of competing claims, vendor promises, and institutional anxieties. In the midst of this information overload, misconceptions can cloud decision-making and slow meaningful progress. Through our national study of […]
Practice
A Decade of Data: How SARA Is Strengthening Protections and Expanding Access for Distance Learners
Published by: WCET | 12/11/2025
As postsecondary institutions continue to expand their digital learning footprints, understanding the regulatory and consumer-protection landscape has never been more important. SARA plays a central role in that landscape, especially as distance education stabilizes beyond the pandemic and institutions look for efficient, student-centered ways to operate across state lines. To explore the latest data, trends, […]
Practice
From RISE to AHEAD: What We Learned and What Comes Next in Federal Rulemaking
Published by: WCET | 12/4/2025
The U.S. Department of Education (the Department) completed the first of two negotiated rulemaking committees established to implement the federal statute, One Big Beautiful Bill Act Public Law 119-21 (OB3), enacted July 4, 2025. As we shared in a previous Frontiers Post, the Department first convened the Re-imagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) Committee that recently […]
Practice
Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Year with WCET
Published by: WCET | 12/2/2025
When I was younger, and sleeping on the ground didn’t hurt quite so much, I liked to usher in the new year by camping. It offered a great opportunity to get away and find solitude to reflect on the previous year and contemplate the new year. I remember one New Year’s Eve when a huge […]
Practice
Meeting Students Where They Are: How Colorado Online is Transforming Digital Learning Through Collaboration
Published by: WCET | 11/20/2025
Each year, I look forward to the WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Awards because they give us the chance to shine a light on the incredible innovations happening across our community. These awards celebrate the projects that push digital learning forward—the ones that tackle real challenges, expand access, improve quality, and deliver meaningful results for today’s […]
Practice
Reading the Tea Leaves: WCET, the Learn & Work Ecosystem Library, and the Power of Information
Published by: WCET | 11/7/2025
WCET was founded by leaders who were willing to “read the tea leaves” and recognize the potential of emerging technologies to transform higher education. Acting on that foresight, they built a community dedicated to collaboration and to expanding access and success for learners. That same spirit continues to guide WCET today as we help our […]
Practice
Lessons from Tidepools: Connecting Learning and Work
Published by: WCET | 11/5/2025
I’m fascinated by tidepools. Perhaps it comes from growing up in a desert, where the idea of a self-contained aquatic world is both foreign and magical. Each pool is the perfect example of an interconnected system: seaweed, plankton, mussels, starfish, and even otters are all connected through these pools of water left behind by the […]