How Higher Ed CIOs Can Support Student Success Initiatives
Although many higher education institutions have for years sought to improve student success (increasingly known as student experience), the visible struggle of many students during COVID-19 renewed the urgency around institutions getting it right—right now. More schools are professionalizing advising, creating new student success divisions, and restructuring student and academic affairs to streamline oversight and […]
How Higher Education IT Leaders Contribute to Humanized Learning
For the last year, humanized learning has been top of mind at many higher education institutions. As I’ve written previously, it is not a new concept. The teaching and learning literature is brimming with resources, ranging from philosophical treatises to practical guides. Historically and currently, most educators and campus leaders use humanized learning to describe […]
Rebuilding Student-Institution Trust after Online Proctoring
When higher education shut down due to COVID-19 in spring 2020, the capacity to provide quality remote instruction varied widely within and across institutions. Diverse and complex social, economic, and physical factors made the transition to distance learning easier for some students than for others. Not surprisingly, tensions between displaced students and their institutions emerged […]
The Iron Triangle of Ed-Tech
Last week, I had the privilege to participate in a panel discussion at the 23rd International Conference of the SAP Higher Education and Research User Group. Joined by Jose Escamilla (Tecnologico de Monterrey), Malcolm Woodfield (SAP), and moderator Jill Mikros (The Johns Hopkins University), the panel explored the impact of COVID on higher education pedagogy […]
Hiding in Plain Sight: Online Proctoring as ‘Just Another Feature’
Even as institutions distance themselves from online proctoring platforms, the same technologies and functionality are emerging in other digital learning tools. Arguably, online proctoring platforms are the most controversial educational technologies in use on higher education campuses today. Student rights advocates have long voiced accessibility, equity, and privacy concerns about online proctoring, and its use […]
Record, Don’t Store: Advice for IT Leaders on Classroom Lecture Capture
As more faculty are recording and uploading every class lecture, IT leaders must advocate for quality over quantity—or face the consequences A year after higher education pivoted to remote instruction, video learning remains at the forefront of teaching and learning. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an advice piece in which the professor-author describes […]
Letting Go of Lecture Capture
When Teaching and Technology Evolve, the Naming Conventions Must Too “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” —William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare notwithstanding, we know that names matter. Research indicates that a person’s name can influence life choices, career success, and possibly physical […]
Hybrid Is Not the New Normal
This winter, I’ve been struck by how often I’ve heard that “hybrid is the new normal” for higher education.[1] EdTech vendor briefings are a common source, typically in the context of new or improved synchronous learning technology. Industry tends to define hybrid more broadly than institutions to include formal and informal combinations of asynchronous, synchronous, […]
HyFlex ByeFlex: Rethinking the Way Forward
As pandemic-related restrictions ease and pressures to return to campus increase, higher education institutions are pivoting away from remote instruction and towards what many call HyFlex learning, a hybrid-flexible format in which students attend class sessions in person or virtually, while faculty toggle their attention between environments. As Professor Kevin Gannon recently observed, “HyFlex courses […]
Online Proctoring: A Call for Action for Academic Technology Leaders
When COVID-19 first forced higher education institutions to adopt remote instruction, many colleges and universities prioritized online proctoring solutions among their academic technology needs. In April, an EDUCAUSE quick poll reported that 77 percent of responding institutions had already adopted online proctoring solutions or were planning to adopt them in the near future. This finding […]