Episode 54: Creating Flexible Learning Environments with Kyle Shea, Executive Vice President of Partnership Development at All Campus

On the Illuminate Higher Education podcast, we talk a lot about four-year colleges, community colleges, and certificate programs. There's not only a lot of competition but a lot of different variables that a student and their parents have to juggle through. For example, when parents make a decision on where their kid(s) will spend their next four years, is it going to be at work? Is it going to be at a four-year immersive education? Is it going to be a four-year online education, or a combination of options? Kyle Shea, executive vice president of partnership development at All Campus, believes universities should be flexible enough to accommodate all of these options.

There are two parts to this competition. The first part is the student's perspective, where they need to focus on their career goals. The second part is that of the administrator of these institutions. Because there's a lot of competition for enrollment between online programs and certificate programs, a typical chancellor or president of a university will need to be aware of what's out there so that they can negotiate the different options available to students.

There have been a lot of shifts over the last few years, especially during the pandemic, with people thinking about certain certificates or micro-credentials that are more bite-sized opportunities to pursue their career goals. Oftentimes, these certificates and micro-credentials require a shorter amount of time than a traditional master's program. So university administrators need to look at the data and then configure those opportunities with programs that actually align with students and the outcomes they're looking for.

A four-year degree can have a lot of added value for someone going on campus. There's a lot of value that students can get out of it and a lot of personal growth that happens in the process. But not everyone has that experience or can actually opt for that traditional experience of going on campus. As a result, there is a lot more flexibility that universities are looking at to accommodate the individual needs of potential students. For example, some students benefit from taking some of their programs online if they have to work part-time or full-time when they're going to college. For that reason, more and more universities are looking at how to create that flexibility, whether it's a response to the pandemic or adjusting to the new age of education. 

Ironically, the saving grace for education is that institutions had to move all their programs online so that students were able to learn from home because of the pandemic. Online learning is most likely never going to go away now, but that sudden shift also opened up a big chasm for institutions that were traditionally 100% immersive and in-person. Are institutions prepared for this shift?

The answer is yes and no. Universities have had a crash course for about 18 to 20 months on adapting to hybrid learning or fully online learning. The good thing about this crash course that everyone had to jump into is that they quickly understood what didn't work. There's enough data to be able to look at a lot of these practical experiences to say, "how can we make this better?" A lot of universities are now realizing that more integration into learning management systems allows students to take some components that were previously on campus 100% of the time and adjust to a hybrid or fully online setup. For example, students can now re-watch a lecture to go back to certain points and understand the information better. Students that might have not been able to make class one day can also go back and re-watch a recording. Universities are going to have to continue to adopt a hybrid model that provides some flexibility, although not every university is going to be fully prepared.

Many universities have learned the hard way that they need to create a good online program. There are still bottlenecks for many universities which don’t have the full resources to build out a great online program that follows the best practices that have been solidified over the last couple of years. That's where companies like All Campus can come in as an online program manager to help support those universities in their growth initiatives for either a flexible learning program or a fully online learning program. That traditional one-size-fits-all model is completely dead now. Flexibility is the key. There's no doubt about it. Interoperability between institutions to allow students to get whatever education they want, from whomever they want, is on its way to being the norm.

The impact that All Campus can have is what drives Kyle on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis. All Campus helps thousands of individuals achieve their education goals, which ties back to their career goals. That might be something that could just be a personal achievement, but many of the programs that All Campus focuses on have career-driven outcomes tied into the program.

Five to ten years from now, there will be an even bigger emergence in the upskilling and reskilling space, at more of the professional level. But also, there will be greater opportunities for any type of learner, even with a high school student that could take a free online MOOC from one of the many platforms that are out there already. We constantly have to evolve, even when thinking about how we're working today. So many individuals are now working and learning from Zoom. So in the future, we'll be hearing more often things like, "how do you present better on Zoom?" Overall, you'll be able to look at the direction that universities need to think about taking, such as how they can do more and more for their students to find the right programs for them.

Connect with Kyle Shea: https://www.linkedin.com/company/harnessinc/

Learn more about All Campus at https://www.allcampus.com/

Subscribe and listen to our podcast at IlluminateHigherEducation.com

-

This episode is brought to you by N2N’s Illuminate App, The iPaaS for Higher Education.

About N2N Services

Founded in 2010, N2N is committed to serving educational institutions and helping them figure out how to serve their students, faculty, and staff using the most innovative technologies and solutions available in the marketplace. Over the last decade, N2N has served over 300 academic institutions and enabled their student success journeys.

N2N Services Inc. is a leader in enterprise application integration and strategic advisory services for higher education, At N2N, we are committed to providing the highest quality solutions and collaboratively building student-centric solutions.

Learn more at https://illuminateapp.com/web/higher-education/

Subscribe and listen to more episodes atIlluminateHigherEducation.com