Higher education is becoming more data driven, including in relation
to online education. The information that colleges and universities are
collecting about online education could be institutional data used in
accountability reports or accreditation reviews. It could also include data
related to teaching online courses, learning management system usage, and
faculty use of technology.
One suggestion I often give leaders in higher ed is to consider
creating an online education fact book. Most institutions are already
collecting some data related to online education, but many do not have that
data in a single, easily accessible location. Approximately 10 years ago I was
reviewing our institution’s fact book (sometimes called “Quick Facts”) and had
the thought that it would be helpful and informative to create a fact book
specific to online education. So we did.
Initially, a colleague and I started collecting online education data
such as the number of online courses being taught, the percentage of our online
courses that were for general education, how many instructors were teaching
online, and how many instructors were completing a three-week online instructor
training course offered through our institution’s Center for Advancing Teaching
and Learning.
After a few years we started getting requests to collect more
data. Much as conducting a research study often results in additional research
questions that should be examined, the data we were collecting and sharing with
campus was generating more questions that we could answer only by collecting
more data.
It didn’t take long, and we started to get overwhelmed with the
process and our limited querying abilities prevented us from collecting the
data being requested. So we reached out to folks in our Office of Institutional
Research, Assessment, and Planning, the individuals who love working with data
(I am not one of them) and had the skills and querying capabilities to gather
the data we needed. They were excited to help with our fact book, and we were
elated to have the assistance.
Eventually, we made the decision to convert our online education fact book to Tableau, an interactive data visualization software. If you are interested in viewing the fact book, you can find it at this link.
One benefit of having the fact book and our data in a single
location is that we now have the ability to easily review the past eight or 10
years and see online education trends on our campus. That can help with future
planning and budgetary decisions.
For institutions interested in creating an online education fact book
or another type of centralized repository for online education data, I’d offer
two pieces of advice. First, making it should be a team effort. If your
university has an online education committee or online education advisory
board, this might be an ideal group to charge with determining what data they could
and should collect. It would be beneficial if this group had wide
representation from across campus, including among staff, students, faculty,
and administration.
Second, it may be beneficial to reach out to your institution’s
regional accreditation liaison and discuss which types of data related to
online education would be helpful to have available, or will be required, for
the next regional accreditation review. Even if an accreditation review won’t
officially occur for seven or eight years, knowing what data to collect, collecting
that data on an annual basis, and keeping it in one location would most likely
help ease the stress and workload of preparing for a future review.
In addition to the abovementioned details about the types of institutional
data we are collecting, you might also look at, for example, student credit-hour
production in online courses, the percentage of your student body taking online
courses, the impact that taking online courses has on student graduation rates
at your institution, online course drop and completion rates, online program
graduation rates, and the respective GPAs of students taking online and
face-to-face courses.
More faculty and institutions are also paying closer attention to
course-level analytics. Examples of this may include the number of times
students log into a course, what time students most commonly log into a course,
the total time a student spends working in a course, what content students are
viewing and for how long, and how often students participate in discussion
forums. Such data can help instructors to identify students who are struggling
academically as well as tailor and
improve their teaching practices.
Over the years we have used our online education fact book as both
a communication tool and a way to disseminate information related to online
education across campus. We update our fact book every spring, and I then use
that data to share with the campus information such as how many online courses
were offered the previous year, how many instructors taught online for the
first time the previous year, and how students who take one or more online
courses at our institution graduate in less time than students who don’t take
online courses.
Finally, don’t collect data just to collect data. One of my favorite cartoons depicts two individuals gathering and holding lots of papers and reports with the caption, “Get all the information you can, we’ll think of a use for it later.” Get the right people involved, come up with a sensible plan regarding what data to collect, and use that data to advance online education on your campus.
Brian Udermann, PhD, is director of online education and professor
of exercise and sports science at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse.
