Colleges With Online Programs Got a Jumpstart in Reacting to Pandemic

In the past few weeks, colleges and universities nationwide have been shutting down traditional face-to-face classes and moving students online en masse in response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

While higher education has increasingly embraced online education over the past decade, the sudden pivot to remote education has been a steep learning curve for many institutions and their faculty members. Turning a course virtual on a dime—and, more important, doing it well—is nearly impossible for professors accustomed to lecturing in front of undergraduates.

“Online is not only where students are moving but it’s a needed insurance policy for schools."

Schools with existing online programs have had an advantage in making the switch compared to the vast majority of institutions that pride themselves on in-person education, even well-known ones such as Harvard and Amherst. That’s because the move to online education in recent years hasn’t come from top-ranked schools, but rather regional public universities and many privates. Now the knowledge gained from building online courses is paying off at an anxious time in higher education.

“Our conversion was somewhat easier because we had the experience of offering dozens of online programs,” said Thilla Sivakumaran, Arkansas State University’s executive director of global strategies and outreach.

Arkansas State, which is the second largest university in the state, moved 9,000 campus-based students online this week to join the 5,000 students they already have in virtual courses. Even for Arkansas State, with experience offering more than 35 undergraduate and graduate online degrees, the sudden shift was like a fire drill. Faculty members had to be trained on technology and pedagogical approaches—and quickly.

“We thought we would have a two-day trial period but that got wiped away by the rapid spread of the virus,” Sivakumaran said.

Academic Partnerships, the company that already assists Arkansas State and dozens of other nonprofit universities build their online programs, stepped in to provide much-needed help, Sivakumaran said. Among other things, the company provided 150 Zoom licenses and led webinars for faculty training. “They were an extra set of hands providing expertise when we really needed it,” Sivakumaran said.

Meanwhile, at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, half of its 14,000 students are already online, said Brenda Nichols, the university’s acting provost. “We’ve been moving more toward online pieces for every course on our campus and adding technology,” Nichols added.

In part, that’s because Lamar has been following the market. More time-pressed and place-bound students want to earn degrees online. Nationwide, enrollment in online courses has grown for 14 straight years, although overall enrollment in higher education has actually fallen.

Lamar officials also wanted to beef up their online offerings to better prepare for an interruption in the semester much like the one that’s happening across the country right now. Over the last fifteen years, Lamar lost several weeks of classes when Hurricanes Ike and Rita came ashore. Lamar views its investment in online education as a necessity for business continuity.

“We wanted to ensure that we wouldn’t be put in a position of losing so much instructional time to something out of our control,” Nichols said.   

As a result, the university pursued a strategic goal to building online degrees over the last decade. Today, it has more than fifty degree programs online along with the expertise that came from developing them with an outside partner. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the lack of digital readiness at many universities. Nichols said after the current crisis subsides she expects many other institutions to place bigger bets on online education.

“Online is not only where students are moving but it’s a needed insurance policy for schools,” Nichols said.