With a focus on expanding options for student learning, better engaging prospective students, and reigning in costs in an increasingly competitive environment, many universities are building twenty-first century learning models that extend the boundaries of traditional campuses. Integral to these efforts is e-Learning – which has proven effective at enabling universities and colleges to deliver cost-effective, competitive programs and curriculum to students worldwide.
By leveraging the right e-Learning tools, universities can reach across the miles and offer students valuable information, programs, and services.
From the perspective of students, e-Learning maps to how they want to learn today, especially as they juggle the competing demands of work and family. Rather than having to move to a new location or leave a job to pursue their education, e-Learning offers individuals a new way to complete training, get a certificate, or earn a degree. In short, it provides people with more ways to participate in education, training, and professional development on their own terms.
Often, discussions of e-Learning focus solely on connecting students and instructors across distant locations. And while this is obviously a critical component, it is only part of the story. A comprehensive e-Learning environment can do much more than deliver course content to distributed audiences. The right approach to e-Learning can also support student and faculty recruitment, accelerate the creation of rich-media courses, and drive more real-time, spontaneous interactions between faculty, between students, and of course, between faculty and students.
An early adopter
The Academy of Art University (http://www.AcademyArt.edu) has had a physical campus in San Francisco, California, since 1929. Beginning in 2001, the Academy began building an online learning program that allowed us to teach students globally through best of breed, cost-effective art and design courses. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) gives full accreditation of our online programs. In 2007, we had approximately 8,000 students taking over 11,000 seats from more than 40 countries, making us the largest private school of art and design in the U.S.
In my role as the Director of Online Graduate Studies and Synchronous Services, I have been involved in distance learning for the past decade. Important advances in technology, and the widespread acceptance by students and faculty, have made it possible to offer online programs that truly parallel traditional classroom experiences, and in some instances surpass what is possible onsite.
Having created our own learning management system, we are able to create and control the online learning environment. With limited class sizes, custom critique tools, and integrated conferencing software, we enable our instructors to surround our students with input, and support multiple learning modalities. Our students can listen to instructors, receive visual critiques, view demonstrations and presentations (video and narrated slide shows), and actively engage in discussions with faculty and other students.
Selecting an e-Learning solution
At the Academy of Art University, we prepare aspiring artists and designers for professional careers by delivering portfolio-driven, accredited undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs. The Academy follows a disciplined approach to studies that encourage students to develop individual styles that blend talents, technical skills, and creativity with an understanding of current professional practices.
When we evaluated Web-conferencing software to supplement our primarily asynchronous online programs, we knew we needed a solution that would meet several criteria. It would have to:
- Operate across platforms,
- Enable faculty and administrators to easily engage students in two-way conversations,
- Deliver engaging experiences without requiring additional downloads or proprietary plug-ins,
- Be cost-effective (to keep operating and adoption costs low),
- Be easy for students and faculty to use, and
- Be scalable to meet the demands of students from around the globe.
It was also critical that a solution would enable us to incorporate our university brand into communications, and strengthen the feeling of engagement that students experience with the university.
For us, Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional software delivered a near perfect mix of features and ease of use that addressed the varied needs of our faculty and students. We started out with just two online courses and a handful of e-Learning students just a few years ago. Today, we deliver over 600 classes online with Acrobat Connect, to thousands of students worldwide in our online degree programs in 11 majors. We’re succeeding at taking online learning to a level we envisioned years ago, and are currently enrolling an exponentially growing number of students into online, accredited degree and certificate programs.
Beyond our extensive online offerings, we now use Adobe Acrobat Connect to support a broad range of collaboration and communication activities, such as live town hall meetings, admissions interviews, showcasing of student portfolios, mentoring between faculty and students, and engaging prospective students in live question-and-answer sessions with department directors and faculty. In addition, we use Connect to provide uninterrupted Help Desk services, and to troubleshoot computer problems by remotely viewing and controlling students’ desktops. In the rest of this article, I give you a better look at some of the details of these uses.
The challenges and opportunities of e-Learning
There are several issues to consider when you want develop, deliver, and maintain successful online learning programs that operate in parallel to traditional learning environments. The next few sections highlight some common issues and how we’ve addressed them, thus making e-Learning a viable option for students worldwide, as well as an important asset to the Academy of Art University. And of course, I will address additional possibilities for leveraging the tools, like those provided by Adobe and other companies, to support activities beyond academic instruction.
Let's start with the technology basics.
Connectivity and multi-platform support: the deal-breakers
A fundamental concern in building an online learning program is how students around the world are going to access content-rich, engaging, multi-modal lectures, demonstrations, critiques, and conversations. While high-speed Internet connections are standard in some regions, dial-up is still a reality for many students. Successful e-Learning solutions must consider these limitations, to deliver courses and content that execute well across either low- or high-bandwidth connections. In addition, students need to be able to access content reliably, regardless of the computing platform they are on – and to do so, with little or no investment in technologies.
Students taking Computer Arts New Media courses are typically quite computer savvy, but those in Fine Art, Fashion Design, or Interior Architecture and Design might not have the same technology acumen. Our online course delivery systems needed to enable all students, regardless of computer platform or connection speed, to access their course content and interact with instructors.
Students access Academy of Art University online courses without the need for special software or plug-ins. Because some of our students are not always comfortable with technology, we always want to minimize the technology requirements on their end. Otherwise, we would lose a portion of students, simply because roadblocks, that seem completely external to their class content, frustrated them. We want the online experience to be simple and intuitive, and the systems to be as transparent as possible.
For our synchronous needs, Connect was an obvious choice, as it simply relies on the Flash Player. By relying on a ubiquitous platform, we can reach the broadest audience possible, minimize hassles for our students, and limit the number of calls to our Help Desk.
Technical support: A student's lifeline
Students taking online courses are often afraid that they won’t get the help they need if they encounter technology problems. Often, students have to waste valuable time trying to reach technical support, or attempting to understand the directions of a support technician.
If any issues arise for our students, Academy of Art University operates a 24/7 Help Desk. Technical support personnel can use Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional to view a student’s desktop, and even take control of a remote computer if necessary. We find this is much easier than trying to walk the student through each menu option and selection over the phone.
Instructional design and delivery
Instructors now know they cannot just take traditional classroom content, and have it work in an e-Learning environment. For online courses to succeed, instructors need to create structured, engaging content that works online, and that is understandable by a broad demographic. For us, a team approach to production is essential, to guarantee consistent quality that meets our standards, and, if possible, surpass the expectations of our accreditors.
Instructor buy-in: success depends on it
At the Academy of Art University, a three-person team builds every online class – a Web designer, a content editor/instructional designer, and a subject-matter expert. Teams produce course content, by using an integrated suite of software solutions. To date, a 25-person video team has produced more than 10,000 hours of video content to supplement online classes.
For example, if the Academy of Art University is planning a photography class, the three-person team meets to define goals, brainstorm interactivity ideas, and review the curriculum. Our developers might create interactive Flash pieces to simulate how a camera works, include that simulation in HTML-based lecture materials, support those concepts with appropriate graphics/images, and include video clips or software simulations to enhance comprehension.
When a course is ready, the university sends out two to ten CDs with hours of video content. These demonstrations are fundamentally important, and allow our students to not only work at their own pace, but also to have the best possible seat in the class; and to accumulate an archive of learning materials they can refer to long after graduation.
As a side note, in support of the university’s goal of producing working professionals, we require our faculty to work in the field in which they teach. This helps ensure that instructors teach current professional practices and processes and can convey to students what it takes to succeed in a given field.
Live events: Leave room for personal creativity
Though our courses are primarily asynchronous, we do supplement them with live online seminars, reviews, and events. We save meeting room layouts and content as reusable Connect templates, for personal or system-wide use. These templates help us guarantee consistency in our students’ experience, and allow us to personalize and simplify the look of our synchronous events.
Students access online meeting rooms through personalized URLs that are subject, audience, or presenter specific. Presenters can also expand the viewing area for shared applications, documents, and whiteboards to fill the entire screen of participants, and can synchronize the view of all participants. Recording live portfolio reviews, final reviews, and town hall meetings offers students the opportunity to review content after the live event ends.
Participation: Is anyone out there?
Detailed statistics on classes and users also help instructors and administrators measure attendance and course demand, to identify where new courses are needed or interest is waning. It is this information that keeps a program moving in the right direction, with a clear understanding of student demand and program success.
Interaction: Give them a voice
Just as it is important to encourage interaction in a traditional classroom, it is equally important in an e-Learning environment. Instructors need to form relationships with students that transcend mere content delivery. There are many ways instructors interact with students in the classroom, such as fielding questions, hosting discussion sessions, and critiquing student work. Your online systems should facilitate these same interactions with online students.
At Academy of Art University, we’ve made Acrobat Connect available to all program advisors and directors, who use it to mentor students, hold regularly scheduled meetings, host portfolio reviews, conduct individual student counseling sessions, and field ad-hoc questions and answers. Town-hall style meetings mirror the onsite meetings attended by local students, and make remote students feel like they are part of a community. Online students can submit questions in advance of the meeting, to ensure that the director will address their question. Town-hall meetings are also available as recorded sessions, so students don’t feel left out if it is 3 a.m. where they are located.
We’re also proud that 80% of our graduates work in the field in which they studied. One of the factors contributing to this statistic, is the university’s strong focus on portfolio review. Portfolio review courses use the Connect whiteboard feature to critique student work, and students can access recorded critiques of fellow students’ work if they couldn’t attend live sessions. Faculty members also have standing meeting rooms, where students can share online journals and post visuals for comment and review. Additionally, we’re creating an hour-long recording every time we host a course, enabling us to easily and effectively capture hours of useful content in real-time.
Competing with other universities
Strong competitive pressures usually drive development of a successful e-Learning program. However, valuable momentum can be lost if too much time is spent deciding on a solution, developing course content, or evaluating the program’s effectiveness. Nobody wants to get it wrong, but you also don’t want to get caught in perpetual planning, and miss the opportunity to grow. Though we are a university, we need to make decisions as nimbly as a business.
Since adopting our distance education platform, the Academy of Art University has expanded its e-Learning program from two classes to over 600 classes in four years, as I noted at the beginning of this article. In addition to offering more choices for students, the increase in the number of online classes has generated new revenue, and provided resources for the university as a whole.
Student recruitment: Cost effective outreach
When looking at solutions to support your e-Learning efforts, be sure to consider all the ways a technology can benefit your organization. For us, the same solutions that are integral to online courses have also become a primary tool for recruiting students worldwide.
Statistically, the conversion rate of prospects to enrollments runs less than 10%. However, the rate jumps to nearly 30% for attendees of our online recruiting events. Rather than incur expenses to send people all over the world to hold outreach sessions, we use Adobe Connect to hold live chat sessions with prospects. University specialists are on hand to field questions about degree programs, financial aid, housing options, and other issues that are top of mind for students.
Typically, we would have to fly four to six people to a city, put them up in a hotel for a few days, rent out meeting space, and then hope that prospects show up. The costs could easily total well over $10,000 per recruiting session. Compare this to our low-cost, high-impact online sessions, and the advantages to the university are evident.
Using our e-Learning system, we can have up to 300 people registered in a typical chat. After the recruiting event, we can end up with thousands of views of the posted event recordings, and hundreds of valid leads. Our solution also contains built-in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) capability, which adds to the cost savings. Clearly, the savings and impact of our online recruiting efforts are significant.
Think outside the e-Learning box
Once you begin envisioning other uses for your e-Learning platforms, possibilities abound. Many academic institutions benefit from using their e-Learning systems for administration, campus communications, and faculty development programs. Imagine enabling your instructors to refresh their knowledge, gain required certifications, or quickly get up to speed on administrative changes from the comfort of their home or office.
As effective as a synchronous tool like Connect is for student recruitment, opportunities also exist to use it for faculty recruitment. Administrators can easily host information sessions, conduct interviews, and review job requirements with prospects located in different geographic regions.
Instructors are often involved in academic research projects that require collaboration with other professionals in their field. When a research project is underway, effective communication and collaboration among team members is essential. However, because collaborators are typically geographically dispersed, ongoing collaboration can be tedious, time consuming, and expensive. Researchers must wait for documents or other data from colleagues, and travel only brings team members together for short periods of time.
Synchronous e-Learning systems offer these researchers an easy and immediate way to connect and collaborate on projects in real time. Application-sharing functionality enables instructors to meet in a truly cross-platform environment. Participants can share documents, spreadsheets, and other data in real-time. An integrated whiteboard enables users to create collaborative text, drawings, and other annotations in a meeting, as if they were located in the same room.
Summary
Overall, online learning provides huge benefits to colleges and universities wanting to extend their reach beyond the borders of physical campuses. With the right technology, institutions can ensure that all students have access to the same quality curriculum – whether they are at home or on campus – while overcoming barriers to success. As we know, technology alone cannot guarantee better learning, but it can engage students’ interest and focus their attention on what they need to know.
Beyond the obvious benefits of e-Learning, institutions should explore additional uses of technologies that support student recruitment, faculty development, and collaborative research. By adopting versatile solutions that support more than instruction design and delivery, universities can increase a solution’s value, and promote widespread buy-in from faculty, administrators, and students.
Finally, in today’s business environment, professionals must know how to interact with people everywhere. Our e-Learning initiatives do more than communicate valuable academic, subject specific, knowledge. They also strengthen students’ comfort with technology, and build real-world communication and collaboration skills that will serve them long after they graduate. In this way, we are not only providing students anywhere with ready access to best in class courses, but we are also helping to prepare future professionals for success in technology-driven workplaces.
