“Emergency remote learning was a pandemic-driven solution. We now must shift to deploying true blended learning – enhancing traditional learning with online modalities – to deliver a compelling differentiator for student accessibility to higher education and their retention and ultimate success. Apogee’s research data, however, suggests that technology initiatives did not keep pace with pedagogical initiatives critical to a blended learning future,” said Teresa de Onis, vice president of marketing, Apogee.
“With the interactive report, higher ed leaders can now interact with strategic planning data from 491 institutions and compare their strategic plans to schools like theirs or to schools they aspire to be like. By benchmarking against their peers, we hope the site can support colleges to refine and strengthen strategic initiatives, especially around technology preparedness which is playing a vital role in ensuring higher ed emerges stronger in a post-pandemic world.”
The interactive report offers data for 16 higher-ed initiatives that users can filter by enrollment size, including student success, student engagement, retention, innovation/technology, online learning, accessibility, diversity, experiential learning, and more.
The data for these initiatives is presented in charts that show the average for all 491 institutions in the study, and then compares the different groups based on size and locale to see which groups are average, over-index, or under-index.
As an example, schools with fewer than 1,500 students in rural areas come in third on technology initiatives compared to schools of that size in cities and suburbs, and last on online learning initiatives, trailing the other locales by 5-25 points. A small school in a rural area may want to look at how their 2021 plan can better align technology and pedagogy and whether they are at a disadvantage currently.
For student engagement initiatives, the report reveals that schools with 1,500 to 4,999 students in suburbs and towns under-index the average for all institutions in the study. Only 63 percent of these schools have student engagement initiatives in their strategic plans compared to 75 percent average of all institutions in the study.
“[This report] reveals what the pandemic brought to light–higher education’s existing strategic plans fell short of meeting the technology needs required by our blended learning future. For our members who are working on technology preparedness plans for 2021 and beyond, the data herein can provide a blueprint for future success,” said Kristen Soares, president of the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities (AICCU), which comprises 85 independent, nonprofit institutions.
Material from a press release was used in this report.
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