Extension Engine
Blog

Many organizations deliver learning experiences (e.g., courses, training, workshops) that are central to their value proposition. 

Summary

In this piece, I make a case for why schools should lean into the hybrid and online course infrastructure that they have built during the pandemic. Hybrid and online courses and programs provide schools several advantages:

1. Increased flexibility, for both long-term and short-term student circumstances
2. Enhanced residential learning, by incorporating personalized course data, ongoing assessments, and richer media types
3. Better returns on investments already made, through continued emergency preparedness and differentiated education offerings for price-conscious audiences

Organizations that use teaching, mentoring, or consulting to deliver their mission have likely faced an existential challenge since the COVID-19  pandemic hit, restricting in-person connections. Perhaps they had previously considered moving online but had not yet made that commitment. When the pandemic struck, they had to quickly transition to an online-only delivery model. This has probably involved copious amounts of Zoom and Google Hangouts.  Organizations have no doubt discovered that filming a play and calling it a movie does not result in Avatar. 

The pandemic has challenged higher education institutions to move their courses and services online quickly. However, despite the vaccine rollout, schools still face unique challenges heading into the fall semester, including providing faculty support, ensuring student success, and minimizing risk.

Institutions of higher education need to get their courses online. When this consists of 500, 1000, 5000, or more courses, it is clear that the institution’s efforts at supporting its faculty need to be targeted. In order to know where to direct its support efforts, school leadership needs to understand where it has its greatest exposure to risk in the transition from face-to-face to online. Extension Engine has recently helped a college go through the process of building a framework for assessing its own particular risk exposure and designing a survey to gather the information to help measure its risk exposure. We are currently helping them interpret that data and build a plan that responds to it.