In the 2022-23 academic year, colleges largely restored their in-person courses after a lengthy pandemic-era disruption. Students, however, didn’t want online- and hybrid-learning options to disappear — even among traditional-age undergraduates.
This is according to the annual Changing Landscape of Online Education report, which is based on a survey conducted in January and February by the nonprofit group Quality Matters and Encoura’s Eduventures, a higher-education-market research firm. The report, released Tuesday, includes responses from about 317 college administrators who oversee virtual learning at their institutions, described in the report as “chief online officers.”
Eighty-one percent of the administrators surveyed reported that enrollment of traditional-age undergraduates in in-person courses stagnated or declined between the fall of 2021 and the fall of 2022, the time period examined. Meanwhile, 56 percent of them said that enrollment in online or hybrid classes grew. The report defines traditional-age undergraduates as younger than 25 years old.
According to the report’s authors, this growing demand for online and hybrid education has “likely not yet reached its peak.”
Colleges, meanwhile, are still figuring out how to respond, the survey found. Around 40 percent of administrators surveyed said they are prioritizing the demand for online learning. Thirty-six percent agreed that their institutions are “reexamining our strategic priorities in light of demands,” while 10 percent said the push to online learning is “difficult to keep up” with.
The findings echo recent Chronicle reporting describing persistent student interest in online and hybrid courses, even as the pandemic has waned.
The perks of virtual learning, like being able to attend classes remotely, appeal to students, said Bethany Simunich, one of the report’s lead authors.
“What we’re seeing is college and university students are really demanding this flexibility for learning,” Simunich said. “It fits in with the busy demand of today’s students, whether they’re your traditional-age undergrad or a graduate student.”
Simunich, the vice president of innovation and research for Quality Matters, said this year’s survey aimed to follow up on the predictions outlined in last year’s report. Most 2022 respondents envisioned a mass adoption of a “more-balanced campus experience” by 2025, in which a typical traditional undergraduate would take a mix of in-person, hybrid, and online courses.
Those findings sparked conversations about what hybrid learning’s role might be in the future, Simunich said. Researchers also wondered how colleges were offering online learning — asynchronously or synchronously — and if colleges needed to do more to prepare.
Last year’s survey, which had asked about demand for online learning between the falls of 2020 and 2021, found that, unsurprisingly, older undergraduates and graduate students wanted online learning to stay, Simunich said. However, this year’s report shows that the demand has not only increased, but it also spans across the student population.
“This shift among traditional-age undergraduates solidifies that we’re post pandemic at this point,” Simunich said. “The pandemic had the unexpected influence of showing traditional-age undergraduates the potential of incorporating online into their college-degree program.”
Most administrators reported in this year’s survey that a majority of their colleges’ virtual-learning options took the form of asynchronous-online courses, in which students view lectures and complete assignments on their own time.
Administrators also said that their institutions’ faculty and students are still not adequately prepared for online learning. Only 22 percent said that their campuses’ full-time faculty have experience designing online courses. Additionally, the survey found that few colleges have mandatory student orientations specifically for learning in an online course.
Researchers suggest making these trainings mandatory, as they’ve proven to boost student success, according to the report.
Simunich said the pullback on making such training mandatory could reflect that institutions believe their students have already transitioned or are fully prepared for virtual learning. Still, the report applauded the fact that colleges have scaled up “better types of academic support” for online students, like improved tutoring services.
“We’re seeing that some of these institutions may not be giving further investment into [online classes], but there’s been this good, robust pattern in terms of other online student services,” Simunich said.
So far, the administrators surveyed say their colleges are “doing a fairly good job” offering online learning, with sixty-four percent saying they are committed to providing quality online teaching and technological support for online students.
The problem lies with how colleges are communicating these virtual-learning commitments, Simunich explained. Around 32 percent of institutions actually communicate their promises of providing tech support to students, while only 17 percent use it in recruitment, the survey showed. Around 11 percent say they promote quality teaching to current students.
“[When students] are going to a university or college, they want to make sure that it’s going to be a high-quality program,” Simunich said. “Very few institutions are communicating those qualities which, to me, is a lost opportunity.”
