Read time
In Fall 2018, a group of online learning practitioners focused on postsecondary student success participated in a two-day workshop in Salt Lake City, Utah to discuss their challenges, innovative practices, and future opportunities. Participants included the leadership of ASU Online, Western Governors University, BYU-Pathway Worldwide, Penn State World Campus, Purdue Global, InsideTrack, StraighterLine, and ReUp Education. This report includes a summary of presentations, key takeaways, and questions to explore further as educators collaborate to help students succeed in school and in life.
Understand current and future student populations.
Design online programs and courses to delivery personalized learning.
Leverage new technologies to optimize the impact of human coaching and mentoring.
Explore multiple models for building community.
Build a data-driven culture of innovation and accountability.
To help all learners succeed, participants recommend that online education providers:
1. Understand current and future student populations: To best serve the online learner population now and in the future, it is critical to gain a thorough understanding of these educational consumers, including their potential risk factors, curricular interests, educational and career goals, and interventions that will support their success. While the average undergraduate in online education today is age 32, the fastest-growing set of online customers are under 24, and many 18-22-year-olds now believe they should be able to get a college education entirely online. This demographic shift will require online providers to adapt their curricula and programs.
2. Design online programs and courses to deliver personalized learning: Students are individuals, and the power of online learning is in using real-time data to identify individual needs and develop curricula that provide individualized instruction, remediation, and tailored support directly to individual students. Avoid attempting to replicate the campus environment online. Instead, build a new culture of engagement and accountability.
3. Leverage new technologies to optimize the impact of human coaching and mentoring: Delivering the appropriate balance between online group instruction, individualized virtual coaching and mentoring, and in-person meetings is important for keeping students engaged, focused, and moving forward in their studies.
4. Explore multiple models for building community: While providers approach community building differently, they share a vision of its strategic importance to the success of individual students. There are lessons to be learned everywhere and customized to fit different institutions.
5. Build a data-driven culture of innovation and accountability: It is crucial to agree, not only on outcome goals, but also on how these goals will be reached, how success will be measured, and how students and faculty will be held accountable. Using hard data that everyone values as relevant can help build a culture that puts student success and lifelong outcomes at the forefront.
Authors and Contributors
Strada Institute advances our understanding of the changing nature of work, so that we can design and create the learning ecosystem of the future.
The list of benefits associated with earning a college degree is extensive and oft-repeated. It includes higher average lifetime earnings, employment security, greater self-esteem, and better health, among many others.
Amid all of this disruption, the number of U.S. workers leaving or changing their jobs sharply increased. Known variously as the Great Resignation, Reshuffle, or Realignment, the trend has been cast in the cultural imagination as a collective desire on the part of the American workforce for more rewarding or meaningful work.
Over the past 80 years, our nation has made great strides in improving access to college, and then ensuring that many more students could complete a college degree.
Spring 2022 enrollment numbers from the National Student Clearinghouse reveal a fifth straight semester of enrollment declines, with more than 1 million fewer students enrolled compared to spring 2020
Higher education’s measurement of student success is in the midst of an evolution. For nearly five decades, success efforts focused on access, then two decades with completion as the horizon for success, and now the focus is extending to student outcomes beyond completion.
Applied connections between education and work are increasingly a part of undergraduate education in the United States.
Two centuries after the first historically Black colleges and universities were founded, the 101 accredited HBCUs in operation today continue to deliver on their legacy of expanding educational opportunity for Black students that leads to successful and fulfilling lives.
As a field, higher education has experienced a continuing evolution in how to measure success. For nearly five decades success efforts were focused on access, followed by the past decade and a half pursuing completion, and the field now has a growing focus on the value of a degree and student outcomes beyond completion.
Strada’s prior research on undergraduate perceptions of the value of their education demonstrates that students value their education most when they receive support to connect their education and career interests.
In the wake of historic pandemic-related enrollment declines, postsecondary institutions have responded by developing and expanding innovative approaches to engaging learners.
The baccalaureate degree remains the surest path to economic mobility, employment stability, and a host of associated social benefits.
Steep declines in undergraduate enrollment during 2020 and 2021 threaten to widen existing equity gaps in college completion and career opportunities.
Nondegree credentials have been growing rapidly for decades. During the COVID-19 economic crisis, interest in nondegree credentials and skills training options was especially high. Questions about their quality and value, however, remain.
The high school classes of 2020 and 2021 have endured massive disruption to their education.
From its onset in early 2020, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has upended life across the world, leading to uncertainty around health, work, finances, education, and a host of other issues.
The pandemic has led to a national crisis of widespread disruption to both work and education for millions of adults in the U.S., especially those from historically marginalized groups.
We asked alumni nationwide who had borrowed money to go to school if their loans were worth it. Strada Education Network and Gallup surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 6,000 student loan holders.
Our mission is to improve lives by forging clearer and more purposeful pathways between education and employment.
How Intermediaries Can Connect Education and Work in a Postpandemic World
How is COVID-19 affecting college students currently enrolled at American four-year institutions?