“Today, digital innovation is driving unprecedented change across the education sector. In doing so, it has the potential to both improve student learning outcomes and expand access to high-quality education opportunities in ways that would have been unimaginable even a decade ago…” – From Education and Skills 2.0: New Targets and Innovative Approaches

Number of students who took an online course in 2011: 6.7 Million

The investment in online education in 2012: 91 Billion

Technological innovations are transforming both what happens in the college classroom, as well as how students are supported in the admission process and enrollment. At scale, higher education’s migration to online will redefine what it means to provide a great education to students.

86.5% : According to Babson Survey Research Group, as of 2012, all but 13.5 % of institutions had some online offerings.

Universities offering online degree programs nearly doubled from 2002 to 2012.

2002: 34.5%

2012: 62.4%

Nonprofit institutions with online degree programs more than doubled from 2002 to 2012.

2002: 22.1%

2012: 48.4%

While these investments create new competition in the market, a focus on the market overlooks the potential educational value generated from these investments. Online education is producing vast amounts of data on student learning outcomes, data of the sort that was previously unavailable to student and educators. It will allow academic institutions to better deliver and market their degrees to the right type of students. And it will let students personalize their educational experience to best suit their needs, increasing the chance they graduate and succeed after.

Help predict student success

Improve graduation rates and student retention

Determine what a learner does and does not know

Monitor a student’s behavior and level of engagement

Notify a professor when learner is getting off track, bored, or frustrated

Increase engagement via game mechanics

Personalize the learning process

Reduce classroom administrative work

Help faculty refine content to keep relevant

Facilitate both global and local community development

Measure student performance beyond test scores

Online education generates a wide variety of data, which universities can use to improve the student learning experience. These data include:

Name

Administrative rights

School district or university

Permissions

Demographic information

Rosters

Grades

Disciplinary records

Attendance information

Engagement metrics

Time on page

Bounce rates

Do different segments of class perform differently on an assessment?

Do tailored questions improve learning outcomes for different groups?

Does the question actually assess what it is supposed to?

Universities and colleges must overcome the following challenges to take advantage of data that online education offers.

Historically slow to change

Innovation is nearly always incremental

Success in education is difficult to measure

Education has historically been very labor-intensive

Need for broadband Internet access may leave out unconnected households

Inadequate technology infrastructure may slow institutional adoption

Outside vendors, both for profit and nonprofit, are moving into higher educational space, a space that was historically left to colleges and universities.

Coursea

MOOC2Degree

Udacity

iTunesU

edX

The Open University

Saylor Foundation

OpenupEd

2U

Blackboard

Deltak

Embanet

Everspring

Capella

University of Phoenix

London School of Business and Finance

University of Atlanta

Walden

California Southern University

Devry

AltiusEd

American Honors College

Minerva

1 http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/changing_course_2012

2 http://www.inc.com/best-industries-2013/april-joyner/online-education-and-training.htm

3 Global Agenda Council on Education and Skills, “Education and Skills 2.0: New Targets and Innovative Approaches, 2014

4 http://www.babon.edu/Academics/faculty/provost/Pages/babson-survey-research-group.aspx

5 http://www.insidepolitics.org/brookingsreports/education%20big%20data.pdf