Expanding Online Degree Programs at Scale
Online Degrees at Scale is a unified approach to scaling online programs across both community colleges and four-year institutions within a large, public northeastern U.S. university system with 64 campuses. Best practices for these scaled programs include coaching, adoption of early alerts, fresh approaches for attracting, enrolling, and supporting adult learners including but not limited to consistent program design strategy, promotion and recruitment, faculty/student supports, technology infrastructure and support, funding models, and evaluation and assessment.
This effort is built off a culture of student success across the university system and strong history of transfer pathways connected by technology along with system-wide early alert and other technology degree planning support. The degrees at scale project continues the tradition of commitment to online learning initiatives and support of campus online courses and programs, while extending access across our state and beyond. It is built on a rich history of innovative online instruction within the system introduced with a shared online platform featuring online courses and programs from many of the colleges within the system in January of 2014. This system-wide effort is designed to maximize online-enabled learning opportunities for all current and future students. The platform continues to support campuses and faculty in increasing access, completion, and success for their students.
The vision for the online technology platform is to expand the reach of a the system’s colleges and their education mission to serve the lifelong learning needs of all of the state’s citizens and take online learning to scale with a significant increase in enrollments of online students at our campuses. We will do this by:
• Serving the educational needs of more 100% online adult learners in the state, across the US, and globally
• Providing a suite of programs organized into seamless curricular pathways responsive to student demand and job market needs
• Implementing new instructional models for program and course design at scale
• Implementing new models for student and faculty support at scale
• Redesigning the promotion and recruitment funnel to maximize conversions throughout
• Providing a frictionless (or seamless) experience for students as they traverse campuses and technology solutions
The online platform showcases online learning at both the campus and system level by:
• Providing exemplary models for online program development and campus provided services
• Delivering high quality, cost-effective services to support campus online learning operations
• Advocating for system-wide policy, infrastructure, and resources in support of online learning
• Promoting and engaging in research and innovation in online learning
Finally, as part of this effort the system provides its colleges with many supports for implementation including an enrollment planning roundtable. This is a free consulting service, provided by System Administration staff. The roundtable discussion encourages campus participants to take a strategic view of the path forward for online programs, including considerations related to academic mission of the campus, target populations, ways to serve online students, and strategic opportunities for enrollment growth and scalability.
This session will share the evolution, lessons learned, and current opportunities for growth of the degrees at scale project. We will also showcase some of the system-wide technology and transfer supports including the enrollment planning roundtable, transfer paths, early alerts, and other student success activities.
Which one or two theme(s) best describe the presentation? Enterprise and Technology Systems , Enrollment and Student Services
What Professional Application does this sessions apply to? You will learn more about how systems and colleges are designing and scaling online degree pathways and how to incorporate onboarding and student support activities.
Presentation Begins:
Thursday, July 14, 2022 at 11:15 AM Eastern Time
Presented By:
Jennifer Miller, State University of New York (SUNY)
Kim Scalzo State University of New York (SUNY)