Interesting Reads This Week

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Toward the end of last year, I gave a presentation on the future of online learning at the Coalition for Networked Information. CNI has posted a video of the presentation, which may be of interest.

But enough of this new-fangled video technology. What did I read this week, and was anything interesting?

Much of what I read kept coming back to the same theme: institutions continue to design systems around their own assumptions, even as students, their behaviors, and labor markets are changing underneath them.

Personalization isn’t what it used to be

A new report from UPCEA and Collegis offers a useful illustration of a broader problem in online student support. Much of what it describes will be familiar: the reasons students find online learning challenging, and why so many stop out.

But the report also contains two striking findings.

The first is the truly depressing fact that 48% of the institutional leaders surveyed did not know their own institution’s retention rate. This is a small sample, but it is still unacceptable. Metrics are imperfect, but not having even this basic level of insight speaks volumes about how seriously institutions are taking online learning and student success, and nothing in those volumes is good.

The second finding points to an increasingly familiar theme in student success: the disconnect between what institutions think is effective and what students say they actually need.

I like the oversight-versus-autonomy framing, but I think it is worth digging into a bit more. If you look closely at the categories, the pattern is telling. Students consistently favor technological tools that provide clear, timely information. Institutions, by contrast, almost always favor people reaching out and having conversations.

What this suggests to me is a misunderstanding about the nature of personalization.

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