Campus Technology Insider Podcast August 2023
Listen: Why It's Time to Examine Institutional Strategy for a Multi-Modal Future
Rhea Kelly 00:08
Hello and welcome to the Campus Technology Insider podcast. I'm Rhea Kelly, editor in chief of Campus Technology, and your host.
Since 2016, the Changing Landscape of Online Education Project, also known as CHLOE, has been surveying chief online officers at colleges and universities across the country about the current state of online learning in higher ed as well as institutions' strategic vision for the future. A joint effort between Quality Matters and Encoura Eduventures research, the project recently released its eight survey report. Among the core themes: Growing student demand for online and hybrid learning is moving higher education toward a multi-modal future. For this episode of the podcast, I spoke with Dr. Bethany Simunich, co-director of the CHLOE Project and one of the principal authors of the CHLOE 8 report, about key takeaways from the survey and why institutions that aren't examining their online strategy may be putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. Here's our chat.
To start, could you introduce yourself, your background, and your role at Quality Matters?
Bethany Simunich 01:22
Sure. And first of all, thank you for having me today. I really appreciate this opportunity to speak with you. So I'm Dr. Bethany Simonich. I'm currently the vice president of innovation and research at Quality Matters. I've worked in higher ed for about 20 years now. So I started out as a faculty member —teaching face-to-face by the way, and very happy in doing that. And I've told this story before, but the reason I got into online is one day they asked me to teach an online course. And I thought, well, how hard can that be? I would love to do that, because then I don't have to come to campus as frequently and whatnot. And I mean, this was many, many years ago, before institutions had the level of online support that they do now. So I quickly realized that it was not easy. It completely upended my teaching in many ways. And so very long story short, I made a move into working exclusively in online learning. So I started teaching online, and eventually became an instructional designer to help with online learning and did faculty development for online learning and teaching — just really wanting to support faculty in what I understood then was a much higher effort, you know, to deliver high-quality online teaching versus face-to-face. I've done a lot of research over the years in this area, as well as served as an online learning administrator and, and working specifically in quality assurance. So kind of run the gamut there, from, you know, teaching, to ID, to faculty development, been working with, with Quality Matters before I came to work for Quality Matters for a while, especially as an instructional designer as well. So happy to be there now.
Rhea Kelly 02:58
I love that story that you started online teaching just because they asked you to.
Bethany Simunich 03:03
Yes. And it was not a good experience. It was, it was the frustrations from that, really, that, that led me into online learning, you know, so I could, I could help faculty have a better experience than I did.
Rhea Kelly 03:15
So of course, the new Changing Landscape of Online Education report just recently came out, CHLOE 8. And one of the major themes is the growing student demand for online learning modalities. Is this a case of the pandemic impact kind of playing out with students getting a taste for more flexibility in their learning experiences?
Bethany Simunich 03:39
I think so. I think you're seeing a couple of things that are merging at this time. So you know, during the pandemic, I think you had faculty and students alike experiencing remote learning, when many of, you know, that group of faculty and students thought, you know, online teaching may not be for me, or online learning may not be for me as a student. And then you have this experience with remote learning, and you discover that maybe it is a good fit for you. Maybe it's a good fit for your lifestyle and your needs in terms of that flexibility. So I think that flexibility aspect especially of online learning really appealed to a lot of students. And that translated into this increased demand that we're seeing now, steady now for two years in terms of CHLOE reporting on this. So chief online officers telling us that there's, they're seeing a growing demand for online learning from their students. They're seeing higher enrollment in online courses and online programs. They're seeing those sections fill first. So a real big reason there is that flexibility. There's also, though, in tandem with that, the fact that institutions made investments in better online learning during the pandemic. It was a time where they needed to support remote learning. They needed to support academic continuity. They also had some, some funds to invest there. So, you know, now we're a little bit past that and institutions look at the strategic investments that they made. They look at the fact that they have faculty now who are more experienced delivering online learning. And again, some of their faculty also found a new home there. And you have students that had a remote learning experience hopefully that has matured into experiencing purposefully designed online courses, but they're seeing how well it fits in with their needs. So it's a couple of things playing out at once, but definitely all leading to what looks to be rising demand for online learning from our students.