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There is a lot of speculation that online learning, which has been a feature of college and university education since 1994, is becoming disruptive. The suggestion is that online learners are changing the way colleges and universities function.

This all too common assertion misses the key point: all learners today are online learners to some degree. The real issue is how developments in technology are enabling changes in pedagogy, which in turn may affect the way in which colleges and universities operate.

There are five changes occurring in pedagogy as a result of the prevalence of technology that are having a significant impact on post-secondary education.
1. ACCESS TO IDEAS , KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION
Whether it's through digital textbooks, search engines, Wikipedia or online learning objects, teachers and students have significant access to knowledge in a way that is new in this century. We have the ability to track developments in a discipline using RSS feeds or apps that offer instant and continuous access to information and literature. This changes, not only what the student can know and learn, but also who is the gatekeeper to what the student can know and learn.
2. COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS
It used to be that learners worked in largely isolated ways, gathering only for class and coffee (or something stronger). Now, learners can be part of peer networks - institutional, local, regional, global - and receive support, exchange ideas, review assignments and explore project ideas together. In one PhD class there are 24 students in eight countries engaged in powerful conversations as a class. But each student is also using their LinkedIn networks to support their learning. This gives the class access to some six million potential people sources.
3. MOBILE MENTORING
Students can connect to their instructors online from anywhere at any time. In a single week, an instructor supported four learners through email (threaded conversation online), Skyped another who was having real difficulty, and recorded a short video to post to two who still could not understand a particular statistical technique. The instructor could have been anywhere, as could her students.
4. ADAPTIVE CURRICULUM
New technologies, which use machine learning, have the potential to adjust what the student is being asked to study according to their learning style and performance on assessments. Rather than having a single text-based course which is the same for all students, the course material is adaptive - different material (video, audio, text, simulation) for different students in the same course according to ability. While this is "new" (and is more commonplace in the K-12 system), it is quickly gaining traction in the post-secondary world.
5. DIFFERENTIATED TEACHING
The technology now makes it possible for instructors to focus on the needs of individual learners rather than the group of learners. A combination of self-study materials, peer networks for support, anytime mentoring and adaptive curriculum is making differentiated instruction a more realistic proposition than it has been in the past. While this was something always done by instructors, the request usually came from the student in office hours. This still takes place, but it can now also be driven by analytics that suggest who in a class needs help and for what.

These five developments in the changing external environment for students and institutions, chosen from a longer list, are leading to three kinds of changes in the design of college and university programs and their delivery. These are:

MORE JUST-IN-TIME AND ON DEMAND LEARNING

More colleges and universities are increasing the number of start dates and are looking to more flexible program designs. Shorter courses, courses which are .5, 1 or 1.5 credit weights, condensed 3 credit courses taught in four or six weeks or monthly start dates. What students look for, especially those who study part time and/or are working, is flexibility.

MORE CREDIT TRANSFER AND CREDIT RECOGNITION

Students want all of their learning to count and not to have to study again what they already know. In many European countries there have been substantial developments in fast track prior learning assessment, new models for integrating work-based learning into credit programs and more block transfer and credit recognition (two year associate college degrees transferring into three and four year degrees at universities, for example. This too is part of the new flexibility students seek.

MORE USE OF ADJUNCT FACULTY AND PEER NETWORKS

More use of adjunct faculty and peer networks and less reliance on the business model of a single instructor teaching a single class - the move to scale. Institutions which have moved away from the 1 professor = 1 class model to 1 course = many instructors can achieve growth in scale at a lower unit cost. A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) which has 50,000 students is demonstrating this in action, especially now that several universities and some colleges have agreed to award credit for such courses.

The demand for flexibility, the growing challenges of access and equity, and the increasing costs to the student of post-secondary education, especially at a time of economic uncertainty and recession, is changing how colleges and universities think about their future. Online learning is not "causing" these changes, but is an enabler of change.

As pedagogy changes, and with it student behavior, so will our colleges and universities. It's not online learning that is changing our post-secondary system, it is teachers and learners adapting and adopting the new technologies to their learning and teaching styles.

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Five Ways Online Learning is Enabling Change in Post-Secondary Education

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There is a lot of speculation that online learning, which has been a feature of college and university education since 1994, is becoming disruptive. The suggestion is that online learners are changing the way colleges and universities function. This all too common assertion misses the key point: all learners today are online learners to some degree.

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A free, simple to use app for creating digital stories. Get creative and give it a try! Here's an example of a 1-minute course bumper video created with Adobe Voice.

Create hip, high-energy videos that look like they belong on TV! Videos are generated from still images, text you type onto the screen, and you can choose to add 10-second video clips.

Sign-up for an Animoto classroom account and receive a free 6-month Plus account that includes the creation of unlimited full-length videos!

Clips
A free app for iOS devices that records video, auto-captions it, and enables sharing through social media and/or download and embed within your LMS.

Present a question (in writing) and your students respond in video, asynchrously. An image of each student appears to designate their comment.

A very popular live (synchronous) video meeting tool that provides options to join from a mobile app or phone. Zoom recordings can be used as a workflow to record your microlectures for students too.

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A free, simple to use app for creating digital stories. Get creative and give it a try! Here's an example of a 1-minute course bumper video created with Adobe Voice. Create hip, high-energy videos that look like they belong on TV!

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Active Learning | Center for Educational Innovation

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Active learning is any approach to instruction in

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This article underscores the importance of "belonging" in STEM as a way for students to succeed.

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The seismic events of recent months -- both the pandemic and national protests in response to police shootings of Black Americans -- have given faculty members an unprecedented view into our students' lives. We have seen into family dining rooms and private bedrooms through our Zoom screens and supported students who have difficulty connecting to classes at all. We have listened to our students speak out passionately against anti-Black violence and systemic racial bias on our campuses. Both crises have highlighted how our students' complex identities are not abandoned at our classroom doors, but directly influence their academic development.

This shift in viewpoint has been especially stark among science faculty. In department meetings and across social media, we are discussing how to engage with our students by acknowledging the distinct backdrops of their lives. We are beginning to overcome the idea that the nature of science -- with its golden talismans, objectivity and independence -- means that our students' identities are irrelevant, and that our overwhelmingly white, male classrooms encourage all students equally.

It is urgent that we not forget the empathy of this moment. A rich body of research highlights how fostering a sense of belonging is key to allowing a diverse undergraduate population of STEM majors to flourish. As we modify our classes to accommodate our altered fall semester plans, we should use this opportunity to make belonging a vital component of course design.

In my own field of physics, just 20 percent of bachelor's degrees in the United States were awarded to women in 2017. Just 3 percent were awarded to Black students of any gender. Only 2.6 percent were awarded to Black, Hispanic or Indigenous American women. Throughout my own time as a physics student, I was frequently the only underrepresented racial or ethnic minority student, sometimes the only woman, and almost always the only Hispanic woman.

In the physics department at my university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has 79 active faculty members, I am one of roughly four professors who identify as underrepresented racial or ethnic minorities, and one of only 13 women. At award luncheons, I am constantly aware when the only other brown faces in the room are the catering staff. I reflexively scan every conference hall to count the visible women.

"Belonging" gives name to the growing tightness between my shoulders as I approach campus each day, arranging my mental armor to defend my own sense of worth. Belonging recognizes how many of us readjust our clothes and our speech to negotiate the unspoken norms of our profession, where brash confidence is confused for competence and where humility, uncertainty and collective questioning are seen as failings. It recognizes what Mia Ong calls " the challenges of conducting oneself so as to be considered thoroughly ordinary."

The American Institute of Physics TEAM-UP report, which examines the root causes of the appalling underrepresentation of African American undergraduates in physics and astronomy, defines belonging as the feeling of being "a welcome and contributing member" of a community. Belonging is not merely an abstract concept, but is tied to how resources such as study groups, dialogue with instructors and scholarly reputation are allocated.

Research has shown that this feeling of cultural dissonance, not a lack of ability or interest, is what prompts students to leave undergraduate programs in STEM. In their seminal study of undergraduate science students across seven American higher education institutions, Elaine Seymour and Nancy Hewitt note that students' decisions to leave the sciences were dominated by "criticisms of the practices and attitudes which define and sustain the structure and culture of STEM majors." Specifically, students who leave fault STEM faculty teaching, advising and mentoring practices, and reject STEM faculty and graduate students as role models.

The persistent myth that underrepresented students leave science because they cannot keep up with rigorous standards reflects an unwillingness to grapple with the truth that it is we, the instructors, who must change. And once we are ready to change, we must recognize that we have tremendous power to reset the cultural norms within our classrooms and labs.

Such a change requires us to engage with experts in pedagogy, educational research and social psychology who can advise us on implementing evidence-based methods to foster belonging in classrooms. Most of us in STEM receive little to no formal guidance in teaching -- as reflected in student attrition and the 96 percent of students who leave a STEM major citing poor teaching as a motivating factor. Expert coaching can prevent us from thoughtlessly replicating the same course structures and teaching styles that pervaded our own educations but failed to produce a diverse community of scientists.

We should revise elements of our courses that reinforce the competitive, individualistic culture that is particularly harmful for students from underrepresented groups. That includes eliminating the common practice of grading on a curve, which encourages students to judge themselves based on comparison with their peers rather than objective measures of mastery. We should implement flexible assessment options that demonstrate and build mutual trust with our students. And we should provide opportunities for revision that recognize the ultimate depth of understanding, not the speed with which a skill is acquired.

Crucially, institutions must reform hiring and promotions procedures that disincentivize time spent teaching and mentoring. Fostering belonging requires focused attention to building relationships with our students, particularly in online teaching environments. Nontenured scientists cannot make the time for this work if we know that our future job security relies on research productivity above all else.

Of course, reforming undergraduate STEM classroom cultures is not sufficient to correct long-standing inequities. Higher education institutions bear a responsibility to improve recruitment of underrepresented scholars at all stages of academe -- including graduate students, researchers and instructors -- and to provide the financial and social support that allows them to thrive. In particular, institutions should recognize that the cost of creating a welcoming environment frequently falls unevenly on scholars from minoritized groups. They should compensate the faculty members engaged in this work with research resources and relief from other service duties.

This moment, although difficult, presents an opportunity to correct the long-standing practices that have excluded students from our classrooms. I have been heartened to see my own department at MIT begin tackling many of these necessary reforms.

As we enter an unprecedented academic year, each individual instructor has the power, and responsibility, to ensure belonging is a critical component of course design and pedagogy. To do otherwise not only impedes scientific progress, by excluding the talent of the majority of humanity, but also is an injustice to students who enter our classrooms trusting in the promise of education.

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Encouraging a sense of belonging among underrepresented students is key to their success in STEM fields (opinion)

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The seismic events of recent months -- both the pandemic and national protests in response to police shootings of Black Americans -- have given faculty members an unprecedented view into our students' lives. We have seen into family dining rooms and private bedrooms through our Zoom screens and supported students who have difficulty connecting to classes at all.