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Annual SUNY Online Teaching Impact Report 2024-2025

Written by CEN-PICKETAL on . Posted in blog, presentation, project, research/reports.

The end of the year is a great opportunity to reflect and share an overview of the SUNY Online Teaching Impact Report and our accomplishments from the 2024/ 2025 academic year.

I want to especially thank Lin Lin, our Online Teaching graduate intern, for turning my narrative report into the beautiful presentation. She leveraged a tool called Genspark that you might want to check out. I also want to thank Erin Maney and Allene Slating for all that they contribute to this unit and the SUNY Online organization.

This annual snapshot helps tell the story of what SUNY Online Teaching  does to support all of you and how we contribute to quality, community, research, and learner success across our system and beyond. It also gives us an opportunity to look ahead to the work we are collectively shaping for the coming year.

OSCQR: Leading Global Standards in Online Course Quality

OSCQR continues to be one of the most visible indicators of SUNY’s leadership in online course quality. Over the past year, we’ve seen:

  • Close to 19K active OSCQR website users,
  • Almost 3k all time webinar attendees, and
  • 410 interactive rubric downloads.

Download data show that this year OSCQR has reached 112 countries across 6 continents, with the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, and Germany representing our top areas of engagement.

We also awarded 14 official OSCQR certifications, which provide faculty, instructional designers, and campus teams with nationally recognized recognition of their OSCQR review and refresh skills.

I want to highlight the quote from April Higgins, Instructional Designer at Delaware Technical Community College, who shared that her OSCQR certification offered “a nationally recognized, evidence-based credential and practical tools to support online faculty and improve online learner experiences.” That’s at the heart of this work—supporting all of you who support effective and efficient online learner experiences.

OSCQR Consultations & Engagement

This year, consultations grew significantly. Across SUNY campuses, I engaged in 52 consultations, representing 24 SUNY campuses. Topics ranged from OSCQR and certifications to AI in instruction, RSI, DEI considerations, badging, the DLE, and general online teaching scholarship.

Beyond SUNY, there were 35 national and international consultations, including work with universities in Guatemala, Germany, and South Africa. These conversations show that the work we are doing here in SUNY is informing global conversations about online teaching, quality, and emerging technologies.

Websites & Digital Presence

Our three core websites continue to grow in reach and importance:

  • The SUNY Online Teaching site had 5,887 active users across 102 countries this year .
  • The Interested in Teaching Online site had 226 active users, with certifications awarded.
  • The Faculty Readiness site is temporarily offline as we prepare a full redesign for an Academic Year 2025–26 relaunch.

We’re also seeing concentrated activity in New York State, as expected, but strong engagement from Virginia, California, Texas, and Washington as well.

This tells us that SUNY continues to be a resource far beyond our borders—another sign of the reputation this community has built.

SUNY Online Summit 2025

The 26th Annual SUNY Online Summit brought together 510 participants from 50 SUNY campuses, 9 countries, and 37 U.S. states.

Over 90% of attendees reported that the Summit met their expectations. The event continues to serve not only as a gathering for learning, but as a year-round resource through the video archive and curated playlists.

I appreciate John Locke’s reflection that these archives “support year-round online faculty learning”—a reminder that the Summit is one of SUNY Online’s most enduring tools for networking and professional engagement among the various online practitioners in our community.

Community Activities & Professional Development

Across the year, the SUNY Online Teaching community engaged in:

  • 15 webinars, with average attendance between 50 and 57 people, with 357 total attendees,
  • There were 8 OSCQR webinar sessions with 587 participants,
  • We have 845 SUNY Online Teaching YouTube channel subscribers and can track more than 1,100 watch hours, and
  • A combined 1,041 members across the online teaching networking group, the OSCQR user group, and the internal to SUNY Viva Engage group.

These numbers reflect a strong and growing community of practice. Every meeting, webinar, event, and shared resource help strengthen online teaching across the system.

Awards & Recognition

This year’s recognition programs allowed us to celebrate the many people across SUNY advancing high-quality online teaching.

We saw strong participation in the Effective Online Practices awards, and for the first time, launched the OSCQR Awards, recognizing individual, program-level, and institutional excellence.

We also honored 32 Online Teaching Ambassadors, representing 16 campuses. These educators demonstrate the creativity, innovation, and learner-centered approaches that make SUNY a leader in online education.

OSCQR Awards Excellence: Inaugural Honorees

Our inaugural OSCQR Award recipients demonstrate how thoughtfully integrating OSCQR can elevate online course design and improve online learner engagement.

  • At Delaware Tech, April Higgins helped increase faculty adoption of quality online course standards.
  • At SUNY Potsdam, Dr. Karen Caldwell embedded OSCQR program-wide, supporting consistency in design and professional development for her faculty and graduate students.
  • At SUNY Adirondack,  Doris Ostrander incorporated OSCQR into their institutional culture through a peer review and continuous improvement initiative.

Their work reflects how the rubric can support meaningful, sustained change.

Faculty Support & Services

SUNY Online Teaching continues to provide direct campus support through our Service-Level Agreement offerings, which include new faculty development and consultations.

The FIT case study in growth is especially powerful. That’s exactly the kind of partnership that demonstrates the impact of this work.

The Courses for Observation program was launched in Brightspace showcasing exemplary course models in the SUNY DLE, helping faculty and instructional designers see examples and possibilities in Brightspace, the use of our DLE templates, and a variety of high-quality course designs.

Our OSCQR-aligned templates, webinars, showcases, direct faculty supports and consultations support campus efforts to ensure that online learners experience clarity, consistency, and thoughtful design.

Research, Collaboration & DEI Leadership

The DEI4All project continues to advance SUNY’s leadership in integrating inclusive online teaching practices into OSCQR and the broader ecosystem of online teaching and learning.

This year:

In addition to the inclusive online teaching practices, research and collaboration are deeply woven into the SUNY Online Teaching ecosystem.

  • We promoted and supported national research including the CHLOE 10 report on growth, competition, and AI in online higher education, and contributed to several research and dissertation projects—one of which centered on resilience among graduate student parents, another from ASU on AI, and yet another focused on distance learning leaders.

National & International Recognition

SUNY’s leadership is also reflected in national recognition.

We received the 2024 WCET WOW Award for the COIL + OSCQR standards project, highlighting SUNY’s role in advancing global-quality frameworks. Video

This year also included invitations to advisory boards, international keynotes, national presentations, and a feature on ASU’s Futures in Digital Learning podcast focused on SUNY’s award-winning and pioneering badging ecosystem.

These recognitions are really acknowledgements of the work that all of you have contributed to—and represent our collective reputation for leading, sharing, and innovating in online teaching and learning.

Impact Summary & Future Vision

To close, I want to return to the bigger picture.

Across the SUNY Online Teaching ecosystem, we are serving nearly 19,000 OSCQR users, 1,000+ community members, and a global audience from 112 countries. We have supported 510 Summit participants, issued 2,410 digital badges, and facilitated 87 consultations.

This work reflects the collective commitment of our SUNY community to advancing excellence in online education.

Looking Ahead — Our Focus for Next Year

As we look toward the coming year, a few focus areas stand out:

  • We will be updating all SUNY Online Teaching resources for accessibility and usability
  • A full website review and redesign for clarity, updating and navigation
  • A review and refresh of OSCQR’s accessibility standards leading toward a new version of OSCQR.
  • Incorporating inclusive online teaching practices into OSCQR 5.0 as part of the DEI4All project
  • AI and mobile standards review and inclusion in the new OSCQR version.
  • Promoting the full range of SOT supports and services, including SLA services,  and programs – mentoring course reviewers, awards, etc.
  • Promoting and Expanding OSCQR certifications among our SUNY faculty and IDs.
  • Exploring a system-wide initiative to strengthen online STEM faculty development

These are our proposed areas of focus and opportunities for the coming year, and represent areas where collaboration across the system can continue to make a difference for online faculty and learners. We invite your input and your contributions to this work.

⭐ A Gentle Call to Action

As we move into the next cycle of this work, I invite all of us—across every campus, role, and modality—to stay connected, share what we’re learning, and continue contributing to the rich ecosystem we’ve built together. Take advantage of the supports, tools, and resources we provide. If you have something you would like to share, let us know. And, let us know if you need something. We are here to assist.

Our collective insights, innovations, and commitments to quality are what make SUNY a leader in online education. I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve and work alongside this community, and I look forward to what we will create together in the year ahead.

Thank you!

2024/2025, impact, report