You’ve moved everyone to remote learning – now what?

Reflections for higher education leaders and those who are working to support them

In recent weeks, higher education institutions across the country have implemented action plans in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these actions aim to ensure the safety of the students, faculty, and staff, as well as enabling business and operational continuity. (See our latest report for more on the sector's response.)

One inescapable implication of many institutions’ responses is that a significant number of faculty, including online advocates and detractors, are now conducting all instruction remotely. The typical remote learning models used by faculty today in response to COVID-19 are not directly comparable to fully online courses that are developed specifically for a distance-learning experience. Nevertheless, the forced transition to remote learning could represent either a catalyst in which institutions can invest and further develop their digital learning capabilities, or a major setback if faculty and students have negative experiences.

What’s next: building enterprise resiliency

As higher education leaders look to the spring and summer terms, they should focus on ensuring that faculty and students have a significant level of support to successfully facilitate remote learning:

1. Identify, codify, and share leading practices and resources

Giving faculty clear and applicable resources on how to best facilitate remote instruction is critical. Institutions that have invested in online learning resources will undoubtedly have already done this to some extent internally, but there are opportunities for enhanced knowledge sharing to further support faculty:

• Providing “tiers” of instructional best practices that correspond to the technology available to faculty and students
• Identifying industry-leading practices for remote teaching/learning specified at the vertical level (e.g., leveraging synchronous and asynchronous techniques to facilitate a discussion-oriented course vs. a technical engineering or science course)

Institutions can use this opportunity to advance collaborative efforts internally or externally to share existing resources. Institutions with fewer capabilities in online education could also look to third-party organizations specializing in online learning, many of whom are offering low-cost support in response to the current crisis.

2. Offer ongoing professional development

Virtual trainings and other content that provide nuanced guidance and examples are critical to supporting faculty and maximizing remote learning success. Institutions with less mature online learning capabilities can potentially leverage resources from other institutions or third-party organizations.

3. Provide robust, 24/7 technical support services

For many institutions that are primarily serving traditional, on-ground students, it may come as a surprise that your digital learners (and teachers) will need a lot of technical support, and at all hours! Institutions may consider ways to enhance the level of technical support offered as faculty and students engage with digital learning tools at significantly higher levels than before.

4. Ensure that students receive necessary support and services

Beyond technical support, students who are engaged in remote learning will still need to receive robust support services, such as academic advising, tutoring, and exam proctoring.

Services such as mental health support may be even more necessary during this time of prolonged social distancing. Students learning remotely will also require more proactive outreach, often provided by “success coaches,” that ensure that students are actively engaged in their learning.

Higher education leaders should work to ensure that students are receiving a consistent and cohesive suite of student support services; they may need to be open to finding partners who can provide high-quality support at scale.

5. Incorporate leading practices associated with high-quality online learning

Institutions can consider gradually incorporating or promoting leading practices used in high-quality online offerings into current remote instruction. An emphasis on establishing asynchronous components of the course (e.g., discussion boards, interactive video) is important, since many students will have different constraints on time.

Beyond: reframing the future

While the long-term impacts of this unprecedented migration to remote learning are unknown, institutions will need to think strategically about how to continue supporting their students in a distance environment on a more sustainable and high-quality basis. Some activities to prioritize potentially include:

1. Transition high-potential courses and/or programs to a high-quality online modality

Institutions can consider conducting analyses to identify high-impact courses (e.g., based on enrollment or importance to a field of study) to be prioritized for instructional design and online course development resources in order to maximize the impact of high-quality online offerings.

For institutions that currently offer, or are considering offering, fully online degree programs, now could be the time to consider strategic investments to develop or promote programs that are likely to be popular with their target student audience.

2. Identify and coordinate resources that support online learning

Institutions should consider standing up “centers of excellence” that consolidate or coordinate online learning resources (e.g., instructional designers, program coordinators, student success coaches) to provide a consistent set of services and tools to faculty and students across the institution.

3. Identify pre-developed content that could be shared/licensed

While the development of course content tends to be a core capability of faculty, there may be opportunities, if there is a strong need for additional online courses, to strategically leverage pre-developed content offered by other institutions or third parties while simultaneously devoting in-house resources to build high impact and specialized courses.

The rapid implementation of remote learning in response to COVID-19 could represent a catalyst to promote digital instruction innovation. However, without the right level of support, negative experiences over the next several weeks could generate significant resentment toward online learning that will be challenging to overcome in the near term. Higher education leaders looking to advance digital education should leverage all available internal and external resources to ensure that faculty and students achieve successful outcomes with remote learning ­­­in the coming months.

The views reflected in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other member firms of the global EY organization.

US SCORE no. 08775-201US