The Shifting Sands in Federal, State, and Accreditation Policies

Russell Poulin

Director, Policy & Analysis
WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET)

Innovations and serving non-traditional student populations have become popular subjects for policymakers in recent years. Congress is considering a Higher Education Act update, governors and state legislators are promoting and regulating digitally-based education, and accreditors are adjusting to review academic innovations. What are we to do as the ground shifts beneath our feet? This session includes updates on this changing landscape and will provide time for your questions…and opinions, if answers are not possible.

Forecasting the Future: Utilizing Predictive Analytics to Identify Trends and Patterns of Online Learners that Support Their Overall Success

Diane Recinos

Senior Vice President, Student Success
Berkeley College

The competitiveness of higher education today is forcing colleges to become more reliant on predictive analytics when making decisions. Identifying trends and behavioral patterns in online learning is an opportunity to understand the resources and support that will be required to assist students in a meaningful deliberate way. There are many advantages to using predictive analytics; however, there are also challenges. Avoid big data pitfalls and learn how you can use predictive analytics at your institution.

Cyber-Scary or Cyber-Secure: One institutions Journey into the Biometric Authentication of Online Students

Devon Cancilla

Vice Provost for Online Learning
University of Missouri at Kansas City

Whether it is an individual student paying for term papers or criminal organizations enrolling fake students to collect financial aid, academic and financial fraud in online programs is suspected to be a multi-million dollar business. To ensure the integrity of its online programs and to meet evolving federal guidelines, UMKC has undertaken a journey into the use and development of technologies, policies, procedures and practices to identify and prevent online fraud.

Not only is this the right thing to do but, as published in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFRs), it is a requirement that “…. institutions that offer distance education or correspondence education have processes in place through which the institution establishes that the student who registers in a distance education or correspondence education course or program is the same student who participates in and completes the course or program and receives the academic credit.” In addition, online courses must also provide opportunities for “regular and substantive interactions” between faculty and students. In other words, there must be active engagement within the course. Finally, accreditation standards stipulate that the “institution assures the integrity of its online learning offerings” and that “training of for faculty members engage in online learning includes consideration of issues of academic integrity, including ways to reduce cheating.”

But in an online course, how does an institution really know a student is who they say they are? For that matter, how does the institution know the instructor is who they say they are? Are surrogates participating in the course to demonstrate engagement? What does an institution do if it detects fraudulent activities and what are the rights of students and faculty?

This presentation will describe UMKC’s experience with tackling these types of questions. Starting with the evaluation and implementation of biometric tools for identifying students in online courses, the talk also describes our explorations with the use of learning analytics to provide evidence of regular and substantive interactions. Tying this all together was the need to develop new policies and practices associated with authentication and engagement. Key among our discoveries was that data is part of a story and that story has many possible outcomes.

Education in 2028

Facilitators:

Liz Ciabocchi

Vice Provost for Digital Learning
St. John’s University

OLC Board of Directors

Panelists:

Russell Poulin

WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET)

Diane Recinos

Berkeley College

Devon Cancilla

University of Missouri at Kansas City

Significant changes are coming to online education. From balancing the need for educational innovation against regulatory realities, to using data driven approaches to better understand and manage change, to a new model of the university built around competency-based assessments, these are just a few of the factors driving change. The day’s final session brings together the thoughts and conclusions generated from the OLC Collaborate – New York discussions to formulate a regional response to the changing educational environment. Topics gathered by OLC facilitators and session archivists during breakout sessions along with those posted online by participants during the day will be used to guide this interactive final session. Led by Liz Ciabocchi from the OLC Board of Directors, each of the day’s keynote speakers will have the opportunity to address the collectively generated questions and topics and place them in the context of the broader changes occurring in higher education. The OLC Collaborate –New York response will become the second contribution to a national discussion as the OLC Collaborate sessions continue across the country.