{"id":7973,"date":"2024-05-06T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/?p=7973"},"modified":"2024-05-06T12:28:50","modified_gmt":"2024-05-06T17:28:50","slug":"4-digital-learning-priorities-for-chief-academic-officers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/es\/blog\/4-digital-learning-priorities-for-chief-academic-officers\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Digital Learning Priorities for Chief Academic Officers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Responsibility for digital learning priorities is sometimes situated within universities as if it is only a procurement and resource management function. As a result, important program development, teaching, or instructional design issues can be neglected while decisions about learning technologies are left to the operations branch of the org chart.<\/p>\n

When the academic affairs division does have a director of digital learning, that role may be a few steps removed from reporting to the provost, says Laura Niesen de Abru\u00f1a, the representative for Every Learner Everywhere\u00ae from The Association of Chief Academic Officers<\/a> (ACAO), which she helped found and is a past president of. That hands-off approach means university provosts and chief academic officers (CAOs) often aren\u2019t giving enough attention to important strategic decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s too easy to delegate digital learning to an indirect report,\u201d says Niesen de Abru\u00f1a. \u201cIt’s easy for individuals not to know a lot about it and just feel they’re managing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niesen de Abru\u00f1a says she often sees institutions with this dynamic in her role at ACAO working with other provosts. \u201cIf I was there, I would want to spend a lot of time with the director of digital learning, but it would be getting into somebody else’s business, subverting their authority,\u201d she says. \u201cThat sort of structure is very common, particularly in big institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niesen de Abru\u00f1a recently started as Executive Vice President and Provost at Metropolitan State University in Denver, her fifth CAO role over the last twenty years. When Niesen de Abru\u00f1a was Provost at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, she had started a Center for Digital Learning. Later, she advocated for programming at ACAO that exposed the organization\u2019s members to more digital learning, eventually developing a grant-funded digital fellows program.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time, we were mostly interested in adaptive learning, and, of course, that broadened,\u201d she says. \u201cWorking with Every Learner, I continue to try to provide opportunities for chief academic officers to learn more about digital learning. And it’s been a real ride. We started this well before the pandemic. During the pandemic, we were very active, obviously. And post-pandemic is an interesting situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niesen de Abru\u00f1a feels provosts should be actively thinking about and directly influencing four significant unresolved challenges with digital learning.<\/p>\n

1. Resuming progress<\/h2>\n

Niesen de Abru\u00f1a believes that, while the total amount of digital learning increased dramatically during the Covid-19 lockdowns, it nevertheless stalled important progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe role of digital learning in higher education was really gathering some steam before the pandemic,\u201d she explains. \u201cWe need to make sure we’re looking at some of those opportunities again and going back to develop them.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, the emphasis has swung to remote learning, while the potential that digital learning has to support face-to-face courses has been neglected. \u201cWhen the pandemic hit, everybody turned to video chat and to putting things on their LMS,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat passes for digital learning now. Not to denigrate that, but we were working on what tools we can use in face-to-face courses that help students learn better. That’s still there as an issue we need to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related reading \u2014 Recentering Digital Learning Around Students and Their Needs<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

2. Critically examine asynchronous<\/h2>\n

Another effect of Covid-19 was that asynchronous teaching became much more common, and Niesen de Abru\u00f1a believes provosts need to think about swinging the pendulum back. \u201cI don’t think that is helpful to students at all,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf faculty aren’t managed, some of them are just using prefab stuff and not having much interaction with their students,\u201d she points out. \u201cTrying to get a handle on that is important. I\u2019ve been shocked that faculty don\u2019t want to fess up to that reality. Asynchronous presentation, I suppose, has its place, but I don’t know if it has its place at a university for degree-seeking students.\u201d<\/p>\n