Effective Strategies for the Adult Degree Completion Market

The bleak economy and an increased focus on degree attainment are driving a growing number of adults back to school. Some are finishing a degree they started years ago, while others are looking to develop new job-specific skills. These adult students are looking for online options and a campus culture that fits their learning style and their lifestyle. Are you prepared to serve this growing population of non-traditional students?

Meeting the unique demands of adult learners is increasingly critical for today’s higher education institutions. Incredible opportunities for growth are coming from non-traditional students … if you’re properly prepared to serve them.

Don’t guess what adult students are looking for. Ensure your institution’s online education options align with proven programs and policies for capitalizing on the adult market.

Join Sloan Consortium President Bruce N. Chaloux, PhD. for Effective Strategies for the Adult Degree Completion Market. During this video seminar, Dr. Chaloux provides a blueprint for success in the adult learning arena – from online offerings to campus life.

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This 90-minute seminar gives you the tools and concrete strategies necessary to refine online course offerings and capitalize on this lucrative new trend in education. You will learn how to:

• Track the size, scope, and needs of the adult learning market
• Identify ways to reach prospective adult learners
• Create an adult-friendly campus culture
• Evaluate credit transfer and prior learning
• Refine online and distance education program development and support

The seminar also features a self-evaluation activity that allows you to assess your institution’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential areas of opportunity. Valuable checklists and supporting materials to help in the implementation of new policies and programs are included in the handouts.

Train your entire team
This seminar benefits anyone interested in expanding programming and online initiatives to better serve adults seeking to complete a degree. It’s especially suitable for:

• Deans
• Department Heads
• Continuing Education Coordinators
• Online/Distance Learning Personnel
• Adult Learning/Outreach Units

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“Online enrollments in U.S. higher education show no signs of slowing,” said study co-author Jeff Seaman, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group at Babson College. “More than one out of four college and university students now take at least one course online.”

The seventh annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group, the College Board, and the Sloan Consortium, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States. The complete survey report, “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009″ is available on the Sloan Consortium Web site. The report seeks to answer some of the fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education.

Some of these questions include:

• Is retention of students harder in online courses?
• Are learning outcomes in online courses comparable to face-to-face courses?
• Do faculty receive training for teaching online?
• What is the impact of the economy on online education?

Not surprisingly, the survey found that online enrollment numbers continue to increase. The 17 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population. More than one in four higher education students now take at least one course online.

Faculty Acceptance and Training
While the number of online courses continues to grow, the survey found that faculty acceptance has been relatively constant since first measured in 2002. Meanwhile faculty training seems to vary by institution type. The survey found:

• Less than one-third of chief academic officers believe that their faculty accept the value
  and legitimacy of online education.
• 19 percent of institutions with online offerings have no training or mentoring programs for their online teaching faculty.
• The most common training approaches for online faculty are internally run training
  courses (65 percent) and informal mentoring (59 percent).

Go here to download “Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States, 2009.”

Q: Was the online AS in veterinary technology an online program from the beginning, or did it develop out of a face-to-face program?

Flora: The online program grew out of the face-to-face program. The distance program was accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) in 1995, but the conversion process started in 1991. We were kind of online pioneers. Our online program was the first online vet tech program fully accredited by the AVMA.

Q: Was it hard to enlist the participation and support of faculty?

Flora: At first there was a little bit of uncertainty. It wasn’t really “I’m not going to do this,” but they were just wondering how it was going to work. But the faculty here really has and does embrace the online environment. The same faculty that teaches on campus teaches online; the courses are exactly the same, just delivered differently. And so the faculty has really embraced this and really has developed it to the point where it is now.

Q: Were there struggles getting the program accepted by the market?

Flora: Back then online instruction was just something that wasn’t being done. So the reputation of an online college wasn’t that great. People looked at it pretty skeptically. When the accreditation process went through at the AVMA they really took a pretty hard look at it, and that helped the acceptance.

I think the biggest milestone in acceptance was the performance of the online students on the national licensing test. The online students consistently score a good standard deviation above the on-campus students. The first students would have taken the test in ’94/’95. That’s when you could start comparing performance on a standardized test. We’ve used the fact that our online students perform so well to market the course to prospective students. We still make sure students are aware of that right from the start.

Q: Do you regularly revise the curriculum?

Flora: Yes, we’re continually looking at the curriculum because veterinary medicine is changing so rapidly. Part of what we have to do is make sure we maintain the requirements to be accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association. They put out the things that an accredited program has to cover. Our faculty’s really good about staying current, altering courses every semester for the new information that’s out there. It changes from semester to semester; nothing’s static at all.

Q: What were some of the aspects of the program cited by Sloan-C in presenting the award?

Flora: Student performance was a big one. And then they went in to look at the courses and look at the technology that was being used. That was the other big thing that they liked about it. We do a lot of audio chats instead of texting. And with reusable learning objects, our instructors have gone in and created video presentations especially for the lab classes. They might be talking about analyzing blood samples where they can narrate over slides of what they’re instructing about, and they are able to highlight different areas of the slides.

Or they can do video over their PowerPoint so that as they instruct on an abnormality in one of the white blood cell lines, the students can come into the class, open up that video presentation, listen to the instructor talk about the cells, and at the same time they’re talking about it, the technology gives them the capability of taking a cell off the slide, enlarging it, and highlighting the different areas of the cell that they’re talking about as they instruct the students.

Q: How do you train your instructors to teach online?

Flora: The College has what’s called the Web and Instructional Technology Services [WITS] Department, and they’ve created some great instructor training modules that instructors can go through at their own pace online, where it talks about the online environment, the college in general, and then goes through the capabilities of our course management system, in particular.

We have a very stable faculty. We may bring one or two adjuncts a year, but other than that we’ve had the same faculty teaching for several years now. We’re very fortunate there. We have eight full-time professors in the AS program and we have twelve adjuncts.

The same training program is effective for adjuncts, but we also always pair them with experienced instructors so they always have that experienced instructor in the background to monitor what goes on in the course or to answer questions or help when needed. So it’s kind of a mentor relationship for the first couple of semesters.