ExtensionEngine Blog

I am sitting at the SeaTac airport waiting to fly back to Boston from the 2019 UPCEA Annual Conference, and I thought I’d share some observations from my conversations with conference attendees.

Our colleagues at Quality Matters and Eduventures Research (the research division of ACT | NRCCUA) have just released the third edition of the The Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE): Behind the Numbers. The report is a hefty summary and analysis of data collected through a comprehensive survey of 280 chief online learning officers at colleges and universities across the United States.

As we enter 2019, many institutions that have tiptoed around the digital landscape are coming to grips with the realization that online learning is almost certainly in their future, one way or another. One driver is declining overall enrollments; the latest statistics show a drop of 90,000 students — or a half of a percentage point — during 2017, the most recent period for which we have data. At the same time, enrollments in online learning increased by 350,000, or 5.7%.

Student enrollments in online learning continue to increase but are very concentrated in public institutions and large private universities. Left out in the cold — and seemingly content to remain there — are the smaller private institutions.

Goldie Blumenstyk’s recent column, “Online Learning Is Misunderstood. Here’s How,” in The Chronicle of Higher Education, raises compelling issues about online learning.

We exhibited at the DevLearn show in Las Vegas last week, and it was an interesting experience. Well, of course just being in Las Vegas is an interesting experience. But more relevant to the interests of our blog readers is the experience we had in our conversations with conference attendees.

The online program management (OPM) landscape is a confusing one, the result of rapid evolution and an ever-greater assortment of businesses keen on winning their share of what has become a very lucrative market. We do not envy the task of any institution of higher learning seeking to upgrade their online learning program, and even less one considering the launch of their first program.

It’s not personal — it’s demographic.

An Eduventures Summit panel discussion

At the 2018 Eduventures Summit in Boston, a panel of representatives from Harvard Business School (HBX), ArtCenter College of Design, Moravian College, and ExtensionEngine discussed the following tenet:

John Leh at Talented Learning recently interviewed Meera Chary of The Bridgespan Group about how that organization has leveraged online learning to reach a broader client base for their consulting services.