One Big Thing Missing From Higher Education Openings (hint- it’s not related to Covid protocols.)
Where is a good marketing manager when you need one? I kept asking myself this question as higher education institutions were pushing to open up campuses this fall. All of the focus was on Covid protocols to allow for an in-person experience — wear a face mask on campus at all times; no face-to-face classes over 50 students; classroom seating 6 feet apart; single dorm rooms; and pre-packaged boxed meals. The push for on-campus classes has been well-documented and is primarily driven by finances. I kept waiting for the story connecting a re-imagined and improved online experience to a new, awesome, college experience. I’m still waiting…
The time, money, and energy appears to have been spent on protocols and promoting the value and importance of face-to-face instruction. Don’t get me wrong, I have a college student and I can’t wait for him to get out of the house and back on campus. He wants to go back just as badly because parties at home aren’t as good as parties at school (even though I helped him build a beer pong table this summer!) I get there is more to the college experience than the classes. However, I think we can all agree the “experience” is going to be quite different this fall. All the more reason why I don’t understand why schools didn’t use this opportunity to really distinguish themselves on the remote front. Inadvertently (or maybe intentionally) the message being delivered was “we know online isn’t as good.” Why not take this time to make online great and distinguish your school from the pack?
Imagine if your school said, “hey, we know the bulk of our courses will be online this fall and we are going to create an incredible experience for everyone.” I wouldn’t hesitate to pay the full tuition cost if I heard a school say we are going blow out the online experience by doing the following (I’m brainstorming here:)
- Funnel money into professional development for teachers to teach online.
- Move beyond the talking head video to flip the classroom and provide a more personalized experience based on your student’s needs.
- Experiment with augmented reality/virtual reality and provide equipment free to students for select classes.
- Partner with employers to provide online mentors, specialist lectures, and real-world virtual project competitions.
- Build online communities for other services around health, wellbeing, tutoring, and check-ins.
- Build courses around competencies so students can work at their own pace.
- Connect students virtually to other students around interests, skills, courses, etc. Maybe even sponsor virtual parties/get togethers where people can get to know each other, compete for prizes, or do virtual volunteer work as a community of students.
I’m sure there are schools who are working to improve the online experience this fall and there are certainly online schools who make a living delivering innovative, effective online learning- like WGU and SNHU to name a couple. But you don’t hear much about what most schools are doing to improve the online experience. The message is “we know online isn’t as good but pay us the full tuition price because we have to keep our campus running” versus “pay us full tuition because we are going to create a great online experience.” In the end, preparing to open up schools and improving online learning are not mutually exclusive, which adds to my disappointment in not seeing schools publicize any work they are doing on the online front. That says to me they weren’t making the effort and/or they need a better marketing group.
I hope schools haven’t trapped themselves in a corner for the future. When everything moved online in the spring I thought this would usher in a whole new market for great online learning. Now I wonder if people will use the rushed, minimally supported online experience as validation that online isn’t effective. I know online may not be the preferred or best experience for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be great. Any good marketing manager could have told a compelling, competitive story around online learning if schools were so inclined. In business we say “don’t waste a good crisis.” Well, schools appear to have wasted this one. What a missed opportunity.
