Higher Ed Needs a Long-Term Plan for Virtual Learning

06 / 05 / 2020

By Harvard Business Review - -

The staggering impact of Covid-19 on education systems around the world is unlike anything we have seen in the post-war era. More than 1.6 billion students have been affected, representing over 91% of all students in the world. Unsurprisingly, demand for online learning has skyrocketed. In the last 30 days, there were 10.3 million enrollments in courses on Coursera, up 644% from the same period last year.

Unable to deliver on-campus learning, universities have scrambled to provide academic continuity through “emergency remote teaching.” At this moment, universities are (rightly) focused on ensuring academic continuity for students, and in many cases that has meant relying on existing, ready-made, online courseware from other trusted, leading institutions into their curricula. Colleges can reference the vast set of remote teaching resources that leading universities have made available under Creative Commons, for example. Or consider the example of Duke Kunshan University in China, a partnership between Duke University and Wuhan University: Dealing early with the Covid-19 crisis, the school moved to remote teaching using Coursera for Campus. These measures, though effective, are stopgaps.

As the emergency subsides but normal fails to return, higher ed institutions need to do more. There’s a good likelihood that virtual learning — in some capacity — will need to be a part of education for the foreseeable future. Higher ed institutions need a response framework that looks beyond the immediate actions. They have to prepare for an intermediate period of transition and begin future-proofing their institutions for the long term.

Building Mature Digital Learning Ecosystems

Evolution in the higher education ecosystem happens through “punctuated equilibrium”: long periods of relatively slow change interspersed with occasional moments of rapid adaptation. The current pandemic is a punctuation moment. Educators, faced with unprecedented urgency, are working hard to restore teaching and learning using technology, innovation, and collaboration.

Universities want — and need — to be providing their own online content from their own faculty. But many faculty members have never designed or delivered a course online. Universities have to work with faculty to make quick decisions: Which courses must be reimagined online and which content can be transferred directly without a significant loss of experience?Faculty will need to reimagine seminars, making improvements to how they teach online. For example, a two-hour lecture may actually consist of multiple activities rather than a continuous, monolithic video. Finally, as universities begin to transition to a more robust digital infrastructure during this period, virtualization, guided projects, and gamification will take online learning solutions beyond video conferencing. As universities develop their own digital competencies, what started as a short-term response to a crisis could well become an enduring digital transformation of higher education.

Universities are in varying stages of digital transformation. What separates the digital newcomers from the advanced institutions? And what actions do education leaders need to take to move their organization forward? We’ve developed the following framework to help universities identify where digital learning fits into their education ecosystem and, with that knowledge, transform their teaching and learning in response to Covid-19. The guide draws on our collective experiences leading digital strategy at the University of Michigan, Imperial College London, Duke University, and Coursera.

Digital Newcomers
Institutions that lack the necessary prerequisites of online learning and remote teaching face a daunting challenge. These institutions are characterized by having less than 3% of their courses available online, no experience in teaching online, and not having allocated any team or budget to exploring or expanding online content. But it’s not all about teachers and administration. In these schools, students and faculty have no or limited access to software (collaboration tools, video conferencing) and hardware (laptops, webcams). They have poor or no internet connectivity. They may have mobile and wifi connectivity but are inhibited by expensive data costs.

The current state of technology and platform choices make it easier for universities in this position to take quick actions. Had the coronavirus crisis occurred a decade ago, it would have completely crippled these institutions. We now have extensive broadband access, reliable communications tools, user-friendly video conferencing, and widespread smartphone adoption. Institutions can easily and cost-effectively secure licenses for students, and faculty can immediately start engaging online. Getting the faculty and students comfortable with the medium is the first step — if possible, seek help from peer institutions, consultants and companies to train the group on what it means to teach effectively in an online setting.

Emerging Adopters
These are universities that have successfully experimented with online learning in pockets. They already have basic communication and collaboration tools in place, with a few departments delivering programs online. Faculty and instructors have experienced the benefit and have the conviction to embrace the medium. These institutions now need to accelerate their digital transformation journey with institutional intent and a task force dedicated to building online strategy.

They should use early adopters among departments, faculty, and staff as mentors and key architects of their strategy. That means empowering them with authority, resources, and decision-making latitude to adopt turnkey solutions. They will also need to accelerate the production of online courses, wherever required, supplement with widely available open content from other institutions. They can minimize human curation by using machine-learning solutions like CourseMatch to map the most relevant courses to their curriculum. Universities can begin to explore virtual and take-home labs for courses that require hands-on problem solving, given the uncertainty around access to physical labs in the months ahead. Finally, they will need to rapidly upgrade software and hardware infrastructure for on and off-campus learning, including alternate plans for students who don’t have reliable connectivity.

Advanced Institutions
Advanced institutions are the ones that have the robust technical infrastructure, a large catalog of digital content, and a faculty that is well-versed in teaching online. They usually have dedicated centers of academic innovation (like this one at the University of Michigan) driving their digital strategy. For such institutions, this moments is about scaling the infrastructure across all programs and using online courseware as digital textbooks, developed by their own instructors or by integrating courses produced by other institutions.

That said, advanced institutions should accelerate pedagogical innovations to serve diverse online communities with varying socio-economic backgrounds and increase the commitment to creating an inclusive environment for learning by championing breakout group discussions, live discussion boards, and student presentations. Outside of the virtual classroom, community engagement can be strengthened through crowd-sourced notes, study groups, virtual coffee/happy hours, and live-streamed events. Advanced institutions are best positioned to explore immersive technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) in fields like medicine and engineering, as Imperial College London is doing. These universities are well-positioned to become leading contributors to the global higher ed ecosystem, with their expertise and content.

Digital Transformation Is Now Risk Mitigation

Previously, when higher ed institutions thought of digital transformation, it was to achieve greater access, global reach, personalized instruction, and rapid improvements in pedagogical practices. Now, as schools contemplate the possibility that students may not be allowed on campus in traditional ways for extended periods of time, risk mitigation will become an equally important driver of digital transformation and allow universities to continue enrolling — and serving — students. Universities that build digital capabilities will have the resilience to seamlessly pivot through any crisis, whether that’s an extended Covid-19 outbreak or a future calamity.