Zoom Is Not a Strategy: To Survive, Colleges Must Find a Way to Engage Students Online

Patrick Mullane/Executive Director, Harvard Business School Online

Dr. Scott Moore/Extension Engine/Former Professor at the University of Michigan and Dean at Babson College.

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As the COVID-19 pandemic roiled the world of higher education in March, institutions rushed to put technology and processes in place to finish the spring term online. While many schools successfully spun up online solutions, most efforts were stop-gap. As with any system put in place under duress, the solutions created are not sustainable at a larger scale. 

Incremental changes are now being made for remote learning for this fall but it’s clear that online is here to stay. Colleges and universities must accept that Zoom lectures are not the answer and be prepared to invest time and money to recreate the whole student experience online.

Thinking holistically about the student experience

In his 1993 book, Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition, Vincent Tinto notes that a student’s success in a traditional residential university is not just related to the content and quality of the instruction they receive. Rather, it’s a combination of formal and informal activities across academic and social systems. Formal academic activities include classroom work. Informal activities include out-of-class interactions between students, faculty, and staff. Formal social activities include extracurriculars, while informal ones include peer-group interactions in a dorm room or cafeteria. 

Tinto’s thesis states that both formal and informal activities are integral to a student’s success. That integration is natural on campus. Students interact with other students, administrators, and faculty regularly. But imagine a world where a residential student cannot speak with their classmates before or during class, meet with faculty when they need help, or hang out with their friends on the weekends. Will that student thrive and be satisfied? Of course not. Then why would they be happy with similarly limited experience online?

Both formal and informal activities are integral to a student's success

Most online higher education endeavors have focused only on classroom work. Now, integrating informal activities into an online structure is paramount to a university’s mission, not to mention its very survival. The path to success, then, is found in honoring Tinto’s findings by embarking on a transformational digital journey with strong leadership, expert course design, an investment in mobile access and in tools for social interaction, and a robust set of digitally enabled support services. 

Leadership commitment – “go big or go home”

Leadership must be fully committed–emotionally, strategically, and financially–to online transformation. The effort is going to take many years, so the board, president, and deans need to be aligned and supportive of the initiative. And their unified support must be public; otherwise, bureaucracies will thwart change. The commitment cannot be only verbal and symbolic. Money will have to be spent, and the bill won’t be small. That’s not to say everything has to be done at once. Experiments should be run to help point the way. Expect some failure, even embrace it to encourage more experimentation. There is risk, to be sure, but bold leaders, with consistent, vocal, and financial support of a new paradigm, will see favorable outcomes. 

Courses designed for a new medium – “Filming a play does not make it a movie”

We have established that the total student experience must be addressed in an online context, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that the learning—the instruction—is integral. And let’s be honest: a 50-minute lecture by a faculty member, with or without slides, is boring in-person. It’s excruciating online.

Those doing synchronous teaching should heed well the practice of skilled instructional designers who make asynchronous content. In a world where a course has no live faculty interaction, variety helps keep students engaged. At HBS Online, designers follow a “three-minute” rule—a student should not do any one activity for more than three minutes. This has driven industry-leading completion rates and exceptionally high satisfaction rates.

Those doing synchronous teaching should heed well the practice of skilled instructional designers who make asynchronous content.

While courses should be made for the medium, sometimes the medium (technology) must be adapted to the teaching (pedagogy). Doing this not only drives impactful learning but helps a university differentiate its offerings. 

The ArtCenter College of Design has used the Critique Method to teach art and design in-person on its Pasadena, California campus for many years. As the name of the method implies, it requires faculty and student interaction when evaluating a design to make it better. In consultation with Extension Engine, and using a multi-year process that included significant investment and iteration, prototyping, and the use of focus groups, they have bridged the gap between the physical and digital worlds by creating something they call the Crit Tool. This tool made online teaching as compelling as their residential experience, which has enabled them to ride out the pandemic and keep their students fully engaged.

Finally, the best “in residence” faculty member, left to their own devices, will not make a good online course. Instructional design is not a skill that should be left out of online course-creation. Most schools do not have that skill set, so part of an institution’s budget must include hiring the instructional design skill. 

A commitment to tools for social interaction – “Social animals need social solutions”

The students' experience depends on interaction with each other in and out of the classroom. Schools need to find ways to facilitate this and make it feel natural if they are going to offer online education for any period of time. 

Recently, the University of Notre Dame created a “digital lounge” for its first online degree program to make it easier for students to interact both within a course and while “wandering the halls.” Its leadership realized that this networking, a form of non-academic relationship-building, is invaluable for its students. Similarly, HBS Online uses closed Facebook groups to allow its participants to interact “outside the classroom.”

The social side of a college experience can also be embedded inside of the course itself. At HBS Online, students can interact with each other through a peer help tool while going through course material, allowing them to effectively crowdsource answers to questions they might have about a concept. This feature has been critical to scaling asynchronous learning by freeing the delivery of a program from live faculty or TA support. It also helps drive satisfaction among those who get a thrill out of helping a fellow participant learn. 

A robust set of digitally enabled support services – “Don’t let out-of-sight be out-of-mind”

For online education to work, students need to get the same support services they expect on campus. This includes out-of-class time with faculty members but also time with counselors, academic advisors, and other student services. 

The University of Pennsylvania has been working for several years on a system to provide online student services. Likewise, in June 2020, the University of Michigan announced it was creating such a system to support hybrid learning. These schools understand what Tinto discovered and are acting on that understanding. But their efforts are going to have to evolve and be adopted by many more schools. Students are going to come to expect that their entire academic experience can float seamlessly between the in-person and the virtual.

COVID gave a push, run with it

For years, most traditional institutions have dabbled in online without fully committing to it. Higher education institutions now have an opportunity to distinguish themselves as leaders by making all aspects of education more accessible through online innovation. Indeed, well-orchestrated online education will enhance the on-campus student experience once things return to “normal.” Students will benefit from easier access to faculty and services, connections to alumni and local businesses, and interaction with fellow students in a mode and place that suits them. Done well, such work will blunt concerns about the value of a four-year degree. But the clock is ticking.