Four ways chief online learning officers can move innovation forward

Deb Adair is the CEO of Quality Matters, a nonprofit focused on quality assurance in online and blended learning.

Chief online learning officers were the unsung heroes of the pandemic. As higher education and the rest of the world shut down, these deans, directors and vice provosts — COLOs go by a variety of titles — led institutional efforts to convert traditional in-person learning to a virtual experience practically overnight. 

As COVID’s fears have receded and higher education has returned to what passes for normal these days, COLOs and online learning are assuming even more prominent roles on their campuses. As of fall 2023, 54% of all American college students were taking at least one online course. Roughly half of those learners were attending college entirely online.

In our most recent Changing Landscape of Online Education report, a majority of chief online learning officers reported a surge in demand for virtual instruction among graduate students, adult undergraduates and traditional-age students. A year earlier, nearly half of COLOs said enrollment growth in their online degree programs had outpaced enrollment in traditional on-campus programs.

As online education and education technology continue to improve, demand will increase for online learning — given its flexibility, affordability and convenience for a significant number of learners who are adults, parents and full-time workers. Online learning is no longer a nice-to-have option for remote students that complements the traditional on-campus academic program. It has evolved into a foundational piece of every postsecondary institution. 

COLOs are charged with leading the digital education enterprise by directly managing online learning activity and bridging the divide between online education and other sectors of the institution. They must communicate up and down the administrative chain to secure resources and ensure online learning becomes fully integrated into the institution. 

Not only must COLOs be digital learning experts, they also must demonstrate the leadership necessary to gain the confidence of senior decision-makers at their institutions. And as the nation’s appetite for online learning continues to grow, institutions and those leading these efforts must continue to innovate to ensure that online education evolves to keep pace with the changing needs of the institution, the workforce and students.

Here are four ways COLOs can move innovation forward on their campuses: 

Build their expertise. COLOs that possess the most current information about developments and trends in the online learning space can provide informed advice to senior leadership. By becoming experts in the field, they can understand the knowledge required — or locate colleagues and others with relevant expertise — in any given situation. 

Expertise enables COLOs to build data-informed arguments to advocate for the resources necessary — and the innovation required — to support and develop high-quality digital learning at their institution. 

Today, that required expertise includes artificial intelligence. As strategic leaders, COLOs support academic excellence with technological innovation and can partner with chief technology officers to integrate AI into teaching and learning. 

Make the case for digital learning’s strategic value. As on-campus digital learning experts, COLOs should ensure that online education is aligned to strategic plans and institutional goals. That requires them to create implementation plans that pull operational levers to support target strategies.  

These levers include: how online operations are staffed; how policies are applied and support resources deployed; how processes are developed for faculty training and developing and designing courses and programs; how communications are adapted for key stakeholders; and how data collection and evaluation protocols are refined.

COLOs should position the digital enterprise not just as a fail-safe for future pandemics or as a marketing tool to compete for students in a crowded educational marketplace. The online education operation can be a platform that fosters “futures literacy,” which involves anticipating and appreciating innovation that allows an organization to imagine and address multiple possible futures.

Ensure that student supports include online students. Colleges aim to center their academic and support services on their students. Yet fully online students — off campus and practically invisible to faculty, administrators and other students — are too often ignored. As the primary campus advocate for online students, COLOs should ensure that these learners are included in outreach, programming and support from all units throughout an institution.

COLOs can create profiles of an institution’s online students to identify their academic and personal support needs and determine how they can be met. The data collected and analyzed to build these profiles should be appropriate for online students, who often have different needs than their in-person counterparts. This data can also support continuous improvement efforts that will yield further innovations.

One common sense action, supported by research, is to ask students about their motivations for taking online courses. Research has shown that the reasons students enroll in online courses, such as having limited time, are often the same reasons that cause them to withdraw. 

Students who select online courses because of time constraints benefit from more academic support, behavioral nudges, flexibility built into course design, and other supports that help them self-regulate and manage competing time demands.

Champion quality. Perhaps more than anything else, COLOs are responsible for building the institutional capacity for well-designed courses, well-prepared instructors and fully supported students. COLOs can create a culture of quality and continuous improvement by communicating pathways, setting expectations and rewarding achievement. They should showcase quality approaches to both internal and external stakeholders to build support both for current efforts and future innovations that can improve the digital education enterprise.

It’s not enough for COLOs to adopt and disseminate quality standards for online education and manage the day-to-day operations of the digital learning enterprise.

As experts in the field and advocates for online learners, COLOs must build and sustain online education throughout an institution. By moving innovation forward in everything they do and ensuring that online learning is a strategic imperative, COLOs can prepare their institution to weather the storms ahead.