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What drives adoption?

Written by CEN-PICKETAL on . Posted in inspiration, program, reflection.

SUNY institutions have been innovating, developing, and delivering courses and programs online for more than 25 years.

How do you promote/make access easy for online students and faculty?

Most SUNY campuses have a landing page dedicated to their online activities for students and for faculty.

Here are a few examples:

Niagara County Community College:

Monroe Community College:

SUNY Fredonia:

SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology:

SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Anticipating and addressing online student needs and questions, and making the online student perspective part of the fabric of the  institution rather than an aside, or the responsibility of one person, is essential to the success, buy-in, and adoption of any online education initiatives. 

For institutions just starting out in Online Education, what would you recommend, or what have you learned will drive, support, encourage adoption?

There has to be a clear reason for why you are engaging in Online Education – at the institutional level, at the departmental level, at the faculty level, and at the student level.

At the organizational level the reasons might be:

  1. Efficiency: Perhaps a campus initiative to go paperless – to drive course materials and some processes online. Such as providing consistent accurate and complete access across all courses to campus links, policies, and student support services. Or, for example, reports can be used to streamline administrative processes, such as: 
    • Course syllabi collection by the department. 
    • Midterm and final grades submissions by faculty.
    • The syllabus quiz, or some other report could be automated as a mechanism to verify course enrollment.
    • Attendance – first and last day.
  2. Economy: Perhaps the development of selected online degree programs tied to specific workforce development needs to assist in the economic development of your state/region.
  3. Enrollments: Perhaps as an institutional initiative to enhance options and flexibility for students, or expand options to non-traditional learners
  4. Emergency: Perhaps an initiative to prepare the institution to have an online presence for all courses so they are ready to move online in the event of an emergency.
  5. Economies:. Perhaps an institutional initiative to reduce costs and achieve other economies. Such as, paperless classrooms as part of a green-initiative to reduce copying and printing costs, or allowing faculty to work remotely, to reduce heating and cooling costs at certain times of the year, if they teach online… ☺

No mater what the driver, it needs to be clear, transparent in objective, aligned with the mission, vision, and goals of the institution, and there needs to be alignment and buy-in from the executive leadership on down… policies, resources, organizational process and structures all need to be in place, consistent and systematic for buy-in, growth, scale, adoption, implementation, and institutionalization.

At the faculty level the reasons might be:

Efficiency: Perhaps faculty are interested in seeing how online learning environments and tools can assist them to be more efficient with time-saving practices and approaches. For example, a paperless classroom would:

    • Eliminate the need to print and distribute hard copies of documents/course materials. For example, facilitate syllabus distribution to students.
    • Provide easy and consistent 24/7 access to all course materials, readings, resources. 
    • Streamline student assignment submissions, feedback, and grading.
    • Online course presence is ready/available in case of emergency. 

Effectiveness: Perhaps faculty want to reduce the amount of administrative activities that occur at the start of every course. For example they might opt to provide a low-stakes online quiz on the course syllabus to confirm that all students have read it, and are aware of all course expectations, campus policies, and student supports available. Faculty can then use the first day of class as a learning activity, instead of a walking-the-students-through-the-syllabus activity. Or, rather than interacting with only the vocal learners, faculty can use online tools and approaches to more fully interact with and engage all learners including the introverts, neuro-divergent learners, and non-native English speakers. Faculty may also see the benefits of streamlining student assignment collection, tracking, and review. 

Equity: Perhaps faculty may want to explore ways to mitigate possible implicit bias, support equity, and help create a more inclusive learning environment. For example, implementing asynchronous online interactions can provide more time for all students to participate/contribute to class discussion. The effective use of an online grade book can also provide grade transparency, and support more prompt and consistent feedback, so all students know where they stand, and how to improve,, or get more help at any moment during the course. 

For faculty there has to be a clear benefit to change from what they are used to doing to something else, especially since moving into online teaching takes real time and effort. There has to be the authentic perception of tangible benefits to the individual to result in substantive sustainable change.  

At the student level the reasons might be:

Ease: Perhaps students have competing life priorities that making being in the classroom on certain days and at certain times impossible. Perhaps students would prefer to further their education at an institution in their own local community, rather than elsewhere. Perhaps students want or need more personalized educational support to succeed. There is demand for the flexibility and convenience of online educational options (some of whom may be non-traditional/adults) in response to these needs and preferences. Students have become more discerning and sophisticated in their expectations, and they have more options today than ever before.  For example, students may want/expect:

  • Easy, convenient, flexible access to their instructor, or other student help supports.
  • Immediate access to the syllabus and all course materials.
  • Consistency and organization in course expectations, materials, and activities.
  • Choices in how they are asked to make their thinking and learning visible and open to feedback from their instructor and/or peers.
  • Flexible due dates and choices in how they can demonstrate meeting course objectives.
  • All course assignments to be submitted and tracked in the same place. 
  • Easy access to the grade book and prompt feedback from the instructor. 

For some students flexible and convenient online educational options are the only way that they will be able to achieve their educational goals. The institution must evolve to meet the unique needs of online learners, not the other way around. 

I highly recommend the OLC quality scorecard for the administration of online programs. The scorecard/rubric is free and a VERY good framework to help understand and benchmark any institutional online education activities. Using the scorecard can assist to identify what gaps may exist, as well as where the institution may be meeting, or exceeding national standards, and what it might take to fill the gaps, or scale those best practices across the institution to make the efforts more systematic and consistent.

We use it to assist SUNY institutions to develop an implementation plan targeting continuous improvement efforts based on the categories and standards laid out in the the scorecard. We have used the OLC scorecard with 40+ SUNY institutions, in an Institutional Readiness Program developed by SUNY to assist SUNY institutions to self assess why and how they are engaging in online education, and to help them plan– based on that why–what they need to do to improve and move forward to achieve whatever goals they may identify for online education at the institutional level as part of the process.

Adoption and buy-in happen one instructor and one learner at a time, and require systematic and consistent support, adequate resources, appropriate policies and approaches, robust/stable technologies, research-based effective online pedagogical practices, and ways to measure effectiveness, success, and continuous improvements of all aspects of the enterprise. 

best practices, institutional readiness, OLC Scorecard, program, reflection, self-assessment, support, supporting success