Campus Technology Insider Podcast January 2022
Listen: Data-Informed Instructional Design and the Shift to Online Learning
00:13
Rhea Kelly: Hello and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast! I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
The pandemic has been a testament to the progress that has been made in the use of technology to support online learning, but it has also revealed how poorly traditional course design translates to a digital experience. And that's an opportunity for institutions to become more sophisticated in leveraging digital learning environments to go beyond what's possible in a brick-and-mortar classroom. That's according to my guest Luyen Chou, chief learning officer at 2U. In this episode of the podcast, we talk about transforming online pedagogy, the potential of emerging technologies, the beauty of simple data, essential human skills and more. Here's our chat.
Luyen, welcome to the podcast.
01:13
Luyen Chou: Hi, Rhea. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
01:15
Kelly: So to start, could you give, maybe talk a little bit about your role as chief learning officer at 2U. And also I know you have a long background in education technology, so I'd love to hear about that too.
01:27
Chou: Sure. Um, so I am 2U's first ever Chief Learning Officer. And I oversee all of the learning strategy, learning research, learning design, the production of our online courses, including all the work in our multimedia and video studios, as well, as well as our learning technology strategies — everything we do to make sure that we're delivering incredibly impactful, high-quality learning experiences for, for our higher education learners. So that's what I do. And as you alluded to my background is, I've been an educator for my entire, throughout the entire course of my career. So I started my career as a, as a high school history teacher in New York City, and was one of the people who introduced technology into the classroom, at our school. And I've always been a technologist, by way of, of avocation if not vocation, and have always been super interested in and excited about the application of digital technology to improve teaching and learning. I've also been an entrepreneur. So I've started several ed tech companies, and have been particularly enamored with sort of bringing the discipline of product management and product strategy as well as educational research and learning design to the field of ed tech. I was the founder of a company called Learn Tech many years ago, which I sold back in 2000. And then was the Chief Product Officer at a company called Schoolnet that did formative assessment and data systems for large urban school districts, or large school districts in general. Sold that to Pearson in 2011. I was the Chief Product and Chief Product Strategy Officer at Pearson for seven years, then was the first Chief Product Officer at Trilogy, which was the largest bootcamp provider, university bootcamp provider in the world, which we sold to 2U in 2018, which is how I ended up at 2U. But my passions are really in education, technology, and product management and how we can bring those disciplines together to really radically improve the quality of education for learners around the globe.
03:56
Kelly: You said first Chief Learning Officer, so I'm curious, like, how recently did they, did 2U create that position, and why?
04:05
Chou: Great question. So I was, 2U created the Chief Learning Officer role when I came to, to 2U through the Trilogy acquisition in 2019. And I think actually the fact that there wasn't a Chief Learning Officer role previously is an interesting indication of how the online program management OPM market has evolved in higher ed over the last decade plus. Because OPM really started in many respects as a pure tech services industry. And so the university partner was the education partner and the OPM was the marketing and, and technology partner. And to the extent that we were involved in, in learning design and learning production was really, "Hey university, give us the course that you've taught, your professor has taught for the last X number of years. And we're going to simply figure out how, the most efficient way to deliver it online."And I think what has happened, and frankly, this is all been, you know, sort of accelerated and validated as we've all learned through the last two years of COVID and online, you know, sort of remote instruction. I think what our partners have started to come to understand, as have we, is that there's a difference between the university's expertise in the subject matter, in the content material, material, in, in what you need to teach to deliver an effective degree outcome or certification for students on the one hand, and the learning design, learning research, learning technology, and, and digital pedagogy knowledge that you need to be able to deliver a highly compelling, outcome-focused digital learning experience, regardless of what the content is, or the subject matter is. And so increasingly, our partners are looking to us, because we work with 80 universities around the world to deliver hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of, of courses every year to millions of students, they are looking increasingly to us for thought partnership and thought leadership around, you know, what is the art and the science around delivering really compelling online learning experiences? And how do we differentiate a great online course from a Zoom-based remote instruction sort of emergency application of technology. And again, as I said, COVID has, if anything accelerated that realization that, that we as an industry need to do more than simply take traditional learning and stick it on, on the screen. And so I think that it was really kind of prescient of 2U in advance of even the pandemic, to realize that they needed a leader who had the educational background and expertise to bring the latest in learning research, learning science, learning strategy, learning design, as well as learning technology to really transform the pedagogy as well as the curriculum itself.