The Changing Landscape of Online Education: Findings from the CHLOE 7 Study

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Brief Abstract

The pandemic has prompted changes in the way institutions are managing online learning and accelerated initiatives that had begun but had not yet taken hold. Connectedly, Since 2016 QM and Eduventures Research have partnered to explore and fill the knowledge gap about how online learning is actually being managed at post-secondary institutions in the United States. They have done this by surveying the people who are most closely involved in this endeavor: those serving as chief online officer at their institutions. Join us for this rich and thought-provoking session, which will feature the full report of the most recent Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE) study.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Eric Fredericksen, University of Rochester

Eric E. Fredericksen is the associate vice president of online learning at the University of Rochester and professor in educational leadership at the Warner School of Education. A national leader in online education, Fredericksen provides leadership for the exploration of online learning initiatives across the University. Previously, he was the associate vice provost at the University, where he provided leadership and services that supported the academic and research missions of the University. Prior to the University of Rochester, Fredericksen served as the director of academic technology and media services at Cornell University. As a senior manager in Cornell Information Technologies, he helped craft Cornell's presence and direction in the use of contemporary technologies to support research, outreach, and teaching & learning both in and out of the classroom. Before Cornell, Fredericksen was the assistant provost for advanced learning technology in the Office of the Provost in the State University of New York System Administration, where he provided leadership and direction for all of SUNY's system-wide programs focused on the innovative use of technology to support teaching and learning. This included the nationally-recognized SUNY Learning Network - winner of the EDUCAUSE Award for Systemic Progress in Teaching and Learning and Sloan-C Awards for Excellence in Faculty Development and Excellence in Institution-wide Online Programming. It also included the SUNY Teaching Learning and Technology Program and Project MERLOT, which were designed to complement the classroom with technology-supported instruction. Fredericksen was also a co-principal investigator and administrative officer for three multi-year, multi-million dollar grants on Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN) from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He was responsible for the fiscal management, strategic planning, policy development, faculty development, marketing & promotion, a technical support center for faculty and students, and operations and technology infrastructure. He managed a distributed statewide staff of IT, administrative, instructional design, and faculty support professionals. Under his leadership, the program grew from two campuses offering eight courses to 119 enrollments to 53 campuses offering 2,500 courses to more than 40,000 enrollments in just seven years. He has also designed, developed, and taught online courses for the Department of Educational Theory and Practice in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Albany for the past 12 years. Fredericksen is active in national efforts, including EDUCAUSE, the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, and the Online Learning Consortium (formerly Sloan-C). He was chair of the Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning and previously served as chair of the Sloan-C Awards Program for Excellence in Online Teaching and Learning. He also served on the advisory board for Enterprise Learning at NYU. In 2012, Fredericksen was elected to the board of directors for the Sloan Consortium and served as the President of the Board of OLC in 2018 and 2019. He was honored as a Sloan-C Fellow in 2013.

Co-presenter: Bethany Simunich, Quality Matters

Co-presenter: Richard Garrett, Eduventures Inc.

Richard Garrett is Chief Research Officer of Eduventures Research, an NRCCUA company. Richard has 20+ years experience in higher education research, consulting, and policy. Richard is co-director of the CHLOE Project, a survey of online learning leaders conducted in partnership with Quality Matters. He combines his work at Eduventures with heading up the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, a think tank focused on global developments in online learning and cross-border higher education. The Observatory is part of i-graduate and Tribal Group.

Co-presenter: Ron Legon, Quality Matters

Dr. Ron Legon served as Executive Director of Quality Matters from 2006 until early 2016. While President of MarylandOnline in 2005-2006, Dr. Legon led the evolution of QM from grant support to self-support. Subsequently, he led the growth of QM from its MarylandOnline base to the more than one thousand member institutions it has today. Currently, Dr. Legon Executive Director Emeritus, Senior Adviser for Knowledge Initiatives, and co-director of the CHLOE (Changing Landscape of Online Education) Project. In his 10 years as Executive Director of Quality Matters, Dr. Legon broadened QM’s focus on quality online course design in higher education by leading the development of online design rubrics for secondary school, continuing and professional education, MOOCs, and publisher provided courses. Under his guidance, QM began to spread internationally, and QM’s scope in quality assurance grew to include program design, online teaching, learner outcomes, and support for the online learner. In 2008, the U. S. Distance Learning Association recognized Dr. Legon for Outstanding Leadership in Distance Education. In the past several years, he represented QM as a Thought Partner in the CBE Landscape Project sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Legon also holds the title of Provost Emeritus from the University of Baltimore (UB), where he was Provost from 1992 to 2003. At UB he also served as Director of the Helen P. Denit Honors Program and Director of the MBNA e-Learning Center, where, in 1998, he led the development of the first AACSB accredited fully online MBA program.

Extended Abstract

Since 2016 QM and Eduventures Research have partnered to explore and fill the knowledge gap about how online learning is actually being managed at post-secondary institutions in the United States. They have done this by surveying the people who are most closely involved in this endeavor: those serving as chief online officer at their institutions.

These Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE) studies have resulted in in-depth yearly reports, beginning in 2017 - with two during 2020, including a special report on the pivot to remote teaching. The CHLOE surveys, of which OLC is a Gold sponsor, run the gamut from the day-to-day management of online learning to student, faculty, and staff support to quality assurance to strategic planning.

The pandemic has prompted some changes in the way institutions are managing online learning and accelerated initiatives that had begun but had not yet taken hold. As we move forward with the current of the pandemic ebbing and flowing, it is crucial to have a good context for planning and managing online learning. What are institutions, on the whole, doing to support students, faculty, and staff? How about institutions similar to mine? What functions are centralized and decentralized and to what extent? How are services from third parties incorporated to help institutions meet their online learning goals? What is the demand for online learning now and for the near future? How can an institution effectively assure its students are having a quality learning experience and achieving their learning goals? 

All of these questions will be addressed in this rich and thought-provoking session, which will also have a full report as a resource for participants to reference.