Three Relevant Readings on Online Education and OPMs

Today let’s broaden our view and explore some useful articles and research reports relating to online education.

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On to the update.

Research Report on Online Students

Education Dynamics is an OPM that carries on the research work into online students long performed by Learning House, an OPM provider acquired by Wiley in 2019. Carol Aslanian has produced very useful reports that give direct insights into student perceptions. I described the history in “After the Breakup: Comparing 10 years of the Online College Students survey.” The survey in question came from a national panel (i.e., not based on Education Dynamics programs).

This year’s report is heavy in marketing and recruiting information - the digital media consumption patterns of online students, sources of information that were useful in selecting a program, etc. There are also sections on fields of study and operations, and one section on program delivery preferences continues to be of interest to me.

On the one hand, the majority of students (58%) prefer asynchronous delivery of courses, which makes sense given that most students have jobs, often full-time jobs. On the other hand, note that 42% of students prefer synchronous sessions or at least a combination of synchronous and asynchronous.

This finding aligns with data from the Wiley 2022, which found that almost one out of three students would prefer some amount of synchronous sessions in their coursework. But the Education Dynamics report shows this number now at 42%. In my post on the Wiley report:

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