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BYU–Idaho’s
Distinctive
Approach to
Learning Online
1
ROB EATON
Recently, an administrator at another university contacted me with a number of questions about our online efforts. One of his questions caught me a bit off guard: Had we thought about outsourcing the creation of our online courses to outside vendors who create online courses for a fee? From a purely financial perspective, his suggestion may be a perfectly reasonable, even prudent option. But given what we hope to accomplish with education online at BYU–Idaho, the proposition was akin to the notion of outsourcing the raising of our children.
Our colleague’s question was a reminder of an important fact that underlies everything we do with learning online here: our distinct mission at BYU–Idaho completely shapes our approach to education online. More specifically, BYU–Idaho’s mission profoundly influences our online efforts in at least six regards: (1) a philosophy about pricing that would baffle anyone motivated purely by
t K E Y N O T E
financial considerations, (2) an unconventional approach to disruptive innovation, (3) a uniquely collaborative way to develop curriculum, (4) oversight of instruction online in a way that couples campus expertise with a proactive, specialized instructor supervision, (5) significant opportunities for students to interact with teachers and each other online, and perhaps most importantly, (6) curriculum that invites and enables students to act and learn by faith.
A Baffling Approach to Pricing
Last year a few of us from BYU–Idaho visited a venerable private university in the United States with an award-winning online program. Our hosts graciously shared lessons they had learned over the years about creating high-quality learning online. Near the conclusion of our discussion, they asked a few questions about Pathway. When we told them how much we charged, one of them was genuinely baffled (since for their graduate programs, they charge roughly 10 times what we charge for Pathway in the United States).
“Aren’t BYU and BYU–Idaho already among the least-expensive private colleges in the country?” our colleague asked. “Why would you want to charge less than half your normal tuition for a program like this?” Without understanding the fundamentally different purpose for which we offer education online, this individual couldn’t be expected to understand why we charge so little. Whether generating a profit for shareholders (in the case of for-profit universities) or subsidizing campus operations (in the case of traditional universities), most universities offering courses online charge what the market will bear. Consequently, the cost-per-credit for undergraduate online courses ranges from $248 at Oregon State University, to
Our distinct mission at
BYU–Idaho completely
shapes our approach to
education online.
$425 at Arizona State University, to anywhere from $405 to $570 at the University of Phoenix (depending on the degree), to $688 at Grand Canyon University.
We do not begrudge other universities making an honest profit or using online revenue to subsidize their campus
operations.2 But at BYU–Idaho, our fundamental purpose
with learning online is to extend the opportunity for a Church-sponsored higher education to as many students as we can. Thus, for now, online-degree students at BYU– Idaho pay the same tuition rate as traditional students
At BYU–Idaho, our
fundamental purpose
with learning online is to
extend the opportunity
for a Church-sponsored
higher education to as
many students as we can.
(currently $149 a credit). As more students take our courses online and our costs drop, we hope to eventually lower that rate. And Pathway students pay only $65 a credit in the United States, $45 a credit in Mexico, and $20 a credit in Ghana.3 While this shouldn’t be a source of pride,
faculty who help create courses online can take satisfaction in the fact that they are personally playing an integral role in bringing the cost of obtaining a higher education within the financial reach of many more families around the world.
A Distinctive Approach to
Disruptive Innovation
Because many on this campus are much more familiar with Clayton Christensen’s seminal work on disruptive innovation than am I, it is with some reluctance that I offer my own truncated summary of his theory here. In a nutshell, we often see incremental improvements in products, services, and processes, but Christensen characterizes an innovation as disruptive if it creates a whole new type of product or service. Transistor radios, smart phones, and online newspapers would all fit the bill. There’s more to his theory, but Christensen’s research suggests that truly disruptive innovations rarely occur
COLLEGE
OR
PROGRAM
BACHELOR’S DEGREE (120 CREDITS) BYU-I Pathway Ghana
BYU-I Pathway Mexico BYU-I Pathway Domestic
BYU-I Pathway On-campus & Online Oregon State
Arizona State U. of Phoenix Grand Canyon
0
$10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $60,000 $70,000 $80,000
$2,400 $5,400
$7,800 $17,780
$29,760 $51,000
$82,560
$48,600 TO 68,400
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within existing organizations in an industry—and when they do, it is because that entity has carved out an entirely separate organization within itself in which the disruptive innovation can germinate. For example, companies like Borders or Blockbuster simply aren’t likely to be the breeding ground for the kinds of disruptive innovations pioneered by companies like Amazon.com or Netflix. Either the incumbent organization will dismiss the upstart ideas as impracticable, or it will fear them as a threat to their current model. Thus, from an organizational standpoint, Christensen would argue, incumbent players are almost genetically incapable of bringing genuinely disruptive innovation to fruition. For reasons I will explain below, I do not advocate a wholesale implementation of Christensen’s approach to disruptive innovation at BYU– Idaho. However, I must concede both the theory’s logical appeal and the strength of the empirical evidence behind it. To ignore it altogether would be as foolish as to implement it slavishly.
My predecessor here, Clark Gilbert, was a friend and colleague of Christensen’s at the Harvard Business School and an ardent follower of his theory. Not surprisingly, then, as he oversaw BYU–Idaho’s online initiative at its outset, Gilbert created a high degree of separation for the online team. He believed that to bring about innovation in higher education that wasn’t just incremental, but was disruptive, we could not simply charge administrators and
faculty responsible for the traditional model of education to oversee and implement the innovation. Even though I have helped move the online team toward more integration during my tenure in this role, I honestly doubt we could have succeeded in creating and teaching as many courses online and serving as many students as quickly as we have without that kind of insulation. I strongly suspect the
approach taken was the right approach at the right time.4
We seek to improve and
preserve our traditional
campus and bring even
more students here,
even as we simultaneously
use online learning to
reach thousands of
students who can never
come here.
As faculty and others on campus became convinced both that online was here to stay and that Pathway might actually be a very good thing, the need for the initial level of separation subsided and the door opened to greater levels of collaboration and integration. Indeed, because of the unique purposes served by BYU–Idaho’s online initiative, President Kim Clark, Academic Vice President Fenton Broadhead, and Clark Gilbert himself saw BYU–Idaho ultimately moving away from such a starkly segregated approach. President Clark believed that for BYU–Idaho to achieve the most critical goals of our online initiative, serving students online would have to become a critical function in which almost every part of the traditional campus—including, above all, BYU–Idaho faculty—wholeheartedly contributed. We simply could not extend a genuine BYU–Idaho experience to students if faculty or administrators saw our online efforts as the sole
province of some kind of separate subsidiary who simply had permission to use the BYU–Idaho brand and access to some of its resources.
How is our current approach to disruptive innovation distinctive? We recognize the wisdom in Christensen’s theory, so we still rely heavily on a centralized team to develop and oversee our online-learning courses and programs. However, rather than separating this team from the rest of campus, as Christensen’s research might suggest, we are now trying to strengthen its connections to campus generally and to the faculty specifically. We do so because we want to preserve a common BYU–Idaho experience for all our students and because we believe our faculty is this university’s most valuable asset. Furthermore, unlike truly disruptive innovations, the goal of our online efforts is not to displace traditional higher education. Instead, we seek to improve and preserve our traditional campus and
We are now trying
to strengthen its
connections to campus
generally and to the
faculty specifically.
bring even more students here, even as we simultaneously use online learning to reach thousands of students who can never come here.
As we undergo that conceptual evolution, we find ourselves in virtually unprecedented territory. Actually, one might argue that the territory in which we find ourselves now is unprecedented only if we succeed; plenty of organizations have tried and failed to produce disruptive innovations from within integrated organizations. To avoid a similar fate, even as our online initiative matures and we migrate toward greater integration, we have neither completely abandoned nor disregarded the wisdom of Christensen’s research. Mindful of the risks inherent in trying to innovate from within, we have retained significant organizational elements of what Clark Gilbert and the original online team created. However, we have
I am very grateful for being part of the Pathway Program. It has provided me many great spiritual experiences and has changed my life. It has been a great blessing not only for me, but also for my whole family. When I was accepted in this program, I made a commitment of living according to the Honor Code. I was already living according to the gospel principles, but this new commitment gave me power to change my life and be better. One of the most wonderful things I experienced during this time was to start running a business. After learning about self-reliance, my sister, who is also in this program, and I decided to create our own business. This project has been a great blessing. Now my sister and I are going to be able to pay our fees for the next semester. I know that my Heavenly Father loves me and that we are going to be able to achieve our goals because He is providing the means to do it. I have no doubt. I know I have the capacity to become the person He wants me to become.
l o r e n a l u n a s a n t a m a r i a
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also tried to mindfully dismantle many of the barriers that initially separated the online team from the rest of
campus.5 While I continue to believe some centralized
control is necessary, I also believe we cannot succeed in extending a BYU–Idaho experience to the thousands of additional students if traditional faculty were nothing more than subject-matter consultants. More than anything else, we want our online courses and programs to be a genuine extension of BYU–Idaho—the product of the joint effort of our traditional campus family and the online team.
In two of the sections that follow, I will illustrate just how we are implementing this modified approach to disruptive innovation when it comes to online course creation and instruction.
A Collaborative Approach to
Creating Curriculum
Universities offering education online employ a wide variety of approaches to developing their curriculum. At one extreme, individual faculty members or technologists acting on their behalf simply make electronic versions of their face-to-face classes, with little or no input from instructional designers with expertise in learning online. At the other extreme, instructional designers completely
drive the process of creating courses, with minimal or no input from traditional faculty. While we have never been completely at this latter extreme, our initial approach was, frankly, driven more by our online team than by our campus faculty. Over the last couple of years we have been migrating toward a collaborative approach that falls between these two extremes, seeking to harness the advantages and mitigate the disadvantages of both.
Historically, curriculum development is almost too grandiose a phrase to describe the way many of us have created the courses we teach.6 Traditionally, individual
professors simply develop their own courses. Most of us know little or nothing about instructional design. Personally, for example, while I have always tried to be conscientious and creative in creating my syllabi and assignments, I have done so almost completely without reference to formal learning theories or instructional-design research.
We genuinely believe
our campus faculty
are some of the best
and most innovative
teachers in the country,
and they have learned
how to integrate
the gospel into their
curriculum in a way that
builds faith.
One key to the strength
of BYU–Idaho’s online
courses is to ensure we
are always connected to
our campus courses as the
source of our curriculum.
As universities move their curriculum online, some continue to follow this traditional approach, simply charging departments with creating and overseeing their own courses online. Some go a step beyond this and provide campus faculty with supplemental support from online instructional designers as needed, without providing any centralized standards or quality control. After visiting one such university, Sid Palmer, chair of
BYU–Idaho’s Biology Department, observed, “They haven’t paid the price yet.” He explained that while such an approach may increase the likelihood that faculty will support their university’s online offerings, it fails to take
advantage of the opportunity to reexamine and improve the way we help students learn. At the other extreme, some universities simply contract with traditional faculty or other practitioners in a field to serve as subject-matter experts, but the role of these experts is often primarily to make sure the content is correct.
In BYU–Idaho’s approach to developing and improving curriculum online, campus faculty, instructional-design experts, and designated online instructors known as online course leads ideally become joint stewards of our courses online as they are created. Traditional faculty members certainly have the final say on matters of content, but they bring more to the table than just content expertise. Online, we wish to do more than slap together basic curriculum cheaply; we wish to share innovative approaches to learning with our students who happen to be taking their courses online. We genuinely believe our campus faculty are some of the best and most innovative teachers in the country, and they have learned how to integrate the gospel into their curriculum in a way that builds faith. Consequently, tapping into the hearts and minds of BYU–Idaho’s great faculty is at the core of our strategy for creating great courses online. Moreover, were we to create completely separate courses online with the one-time help of subject-matter experts, we would not be able to benefit from ongoing innovation and improvement in our campus courses. One key to the strength of BYU–Idaho’s online courses, then, is to ensure we are always connected to our campus courses as the source of our curriculum.
As described earlier, however, our goal is to do more than simply replicate that curriculum in an electronic format. A second key to the strength of BYU–Idaho’s online courses is the expertise and experience that our online team brings to bear in everything from instructional design to assessment to graphic design. In addition, the online team brings the benefit not only of the training from each member’s area of expertise, but also the best of ideas they have encountered with campus faculty as they develop dozens of courses. The online team helps ensure that each course adheres to a core set of BYU–Idaho quality standards. Finally, the online team also takes the lead in capturing, synthesizing, and sharing evaluations of each online course in increasingly pro-active ways. Together
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with campus and online faculty in course-improvement councils, we are striving to create an environment in which we are constantly examining what works and what doesn’t. Collectively, the effort to scrutinize and improve each course online far exceeds anything to which at least I, personally, have ever subjected my own face-to-face courses.
In some cases, our joint design teams have struck a great balance and implemented the approach I have outlined here. In others, the relationship is still a work in progress. And in others, organizational inertia from our former approach has carried over more than we would like. We are grateful for the work of dedicated faculty in this process and for their patience, especially in our earlier phases of creating these courses. We apologize for those instances where we have fallen short of creating the
genuinely collaborative partnerships we want to have.7
When we do fall short, please let Alan Young or me know so that we can discuss the situation. In a few instances, we may find faculty frustrated because they are bumping up against University-wide standards approved by our Online Faculty Advisory Council to which we need to adhere (e.g., requiring three hours of work each week for each credit). But in other cases, we may find we have well-meaning designers pushing their ideas so hard that faculty feel like passengers rather than co-pilots. When that happens, we want to know so that we can provide clear course correction for our team in order to achieve the sort of full, creative partnership described here. When we do, we believe we will jointly create a sort of virtuous cycle
of pedagogical symbiosis as educators here participate in multiple modes of teaching and learning to bless all BYU– Idaho students.
A Distinctive Approach to
Online Instruction
As with course development, existing models presented two extreme options for overseeing remote online teachers: simply letting departments hire and oversee online
instructors, or separating online instructors completely from campus faculty. Our approach is evolving to one that allows campus faculty to play an important role in overseeing content, sharing course and departmental vision, and providing training in the discipline, while a centralized online team assumes most aspects of hiring, overseeing, and developing such faculty. In addition,
We anticipate seeing
more synergy between
our faculty on campus
and online.
with focused expertise in online teaching approaches and evaluative tools, the online team is playing an increasingly more proactive role in helping online faculty improve their teaching.
Currently, the online team recruits applicants to teach our courses online based on criteria established by departments. After an initial screening, they share promising candidates with department chairs and Foundations team leads, who review the candidates’ academic qualifications. Such campus leaders have the unqualified right to veto any applicant on the grounds that they are not qualified from a content standpoint to teach the course. Those who obtain campus approval then participate in a two-week online evaluation and training exercise that allows the online team to further screen candidates based on their performance in that course. Those who pass muster are then paid to complete additional training introducing instructors to BYU– Idaho and our approach. The online team also matches instructors with an ever-vacillating number of sections. Finally, the online team is doing more each semester to evaluate online faculty, provide coaching where needed, and determine whether to re-contract with faculty.
We have also discovered a greater need than originally anticipated to invite campus faculty to interact with their online counterparts. For example, some departments or teams may wish to help instructors online understand their unique approach to a subject. Others may want to give leave to a faculty member to review a course that has been taught online for a few semesters from a content perspective for quality-control purposes. Yet others may wish to find ways to occasionally include a few of the online faculty in relevant in-service training or other faculty meetings. And given the fact that many of our online adjuncts are academically well-prepared and currently working in pertinent fields, campus faculty may
occasionally extend the opportunity for such instructors to share their own expertise. Over time, we anticipate seeing more synergy between our faculty on campus and online, without unduly adding to the load of these instructors.
A BYU–Idaho Approach to
Interacting Online
Two considerations lead us to build interaction among students as well as between students and instructors into each of our courses online at BYU–Idaho. First, we subscribe to the pedagogical principle reflected in BYU–Idaho’s Learning Model: students often learn the most when given opportunities to articulate and share what they are learning with others. Second, BYU–Idaho is built on a Ricks College legacy of great teachers whose personal interactions with students have helped deepen students’ faith.
Frankly, an interactive approach to courses online today is more the rule than the exception. However, for those who have not had much personal exposure to online learning recently or who are more familiar with other models, it is important to note that the online-learning courses we create at BYU–Idaho are fundamentally different than the distance learning of the past, where students rarely interacted with other students or instructors and could sometimes cram all the work of the course into a few days before a single deadline. BYU–Idaho learning online is certainly not your father’s correspondence course, and it probably isn’t even your son’s high school online course.8
Students often learn the most when given
opportunities to articulate and share what they
are learning with others. BYU–Idaho is built on
a Ricks College legacy of great teachers whose
personal interactions with students have helped
deepen students’ faith.
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Acting and Learning by Faith
After writing the initial draft of this article, I was impelled to add this final section for two reasons. First, Alan Young called to my attention something that I did not know: our courses online are distinct in the degree to which we provide students with opportunities to act rather than to be acted upon. Second, after interviewing several Pathway students in Puebla, Mexico, in depth, I was struck by a common thread in their interviews that took me rather pleasantly by surprise. Student after student talked about
what Pathway had taught them about learning by faith with the help of the Spirit. They were amazed at how they could obtain divine assistance in studying even subjects like math.
These students helped me realize that perhaps the most important way in which our approach to learning online is distinct is that we believe, as President Clark has taught, that learning is a sacred act. And we believe that sacred act is most likely to take place when students are given ample opportunity to act and, in the process, to exercise their faith in the Lord and seek divine assistance in the process of learning. Our curriculum will always reflect those distinct assumptions.
Notes
1 At Alan Young’s suggestion, whenever possible I prefer to invert the traditional phrase “online learning” to emphasize the fact that for us at BYU–Idaho the princi-pal focus is on the activity of learning, not on the online medium.
2 Indeed, at some point in the future BYU–Idaho may choose to use some portion of the revenue generated by students online to subsidize a portion of campus opera-tions.
3 Note that the overall savings for Pathway and online-degree students who live at home are substantially greater than the tuition savings alone, since roughly two-thirds of the costs of a BYU–Idaho student’s college education consists of room and board.
4 I also note that our current online efforts are indebted in every way not only to Clark’s theoretical wisdom, but also to his remarkable leadership, organizational acumen, fierce dedication to quality, and general chutzpah in having the audacity to even attempt such a monumental task, much less pull it off successfully.
5 One could certainly argue that a higher degree of separation was required initially to provide an environment in which this disruptive innovation could gain traction. 6 For me, personally, the development of the International Foundations course in which I participated was a marked exception to this general rule.
7 For a document detailing the relative roles and responsibilities of campus faculty, the online team, and online instructors in course design as well as other processes, see Page 10.
Pathway has been a wonderful opportunity for me to continue working on the degree I started many years ago. What makes it work for me is that I can fit it into my ongoing responsibilities as a wife, mother, employee, and Church worker. By completing assignments online and meeting once a week at the Institute building, it has the flexibility I needed to return to school. An additional benefit has been the gospel perspective in higher education that I did not have when I attended our local community college. I encourage others to participate in the Pathway program if they are looking for a flexible, economical way to complete their college education.
d e l i g h t c l a r k
Relative Roles and
Responsibilities: A Collaborative
Approach to Learning Online
The Academic Development team, with the approval of the Academic Online Advisory Council (which consists of 16 faculty
members), created the following document to help clarify the role of each player in the process of creating online learning at BYU-- Idaho.
BYU–Idaho’s approach to creating and teaching courses online is designed to harness the subject-matter expertise of its on-campus faculty, the instructional design and operational know-how of its online team, and the
dedication and instructional skills of its remote instructors. Having so many parties involved in such a creative process can be challenging, but the synergy of these three critical ingredients allows BYU–Idaho to create a high-quality learning experience online for a growing number of students.
For this collaborative approach to succeed, it’s important for everyone who contributes to understand their role— and to respect the expertise and experience of others. This document provides a high-level explanation of relative roles and responsibilities. More detailed explanations of these roles at several critical touch points will be set forth separately in other documents entitled Creating Courses, Improving Courses, Hiring Remote Instructors, and Supporting and Supervising Remote Instructors.
Campus Faculty
Department chairsi and faculty are the chief stewards of
content. Among other things, they do the following:
• Help decide which courses get created online. • Collaborate with the online team in creating great
courses, helping improve them over time, and keeping them synchronized with what’s being taught on campus.
• They do this through councils that include online instructors and curriculum designers. Council members listen to each other’s ideas with open minds and debate proposals respectfully and rigorously.
• On matters of content such as deciding on the critical learning outcomes for the course, faculty members have the final say.
• In other words, no substantive changes to the content of a course should ever be made without approval of the responsible on-campus faculty. (The person who plays this role is called the Course Lead.)
• Screen online instructor applicants to make sure they have sufficient expertise and appropriate credentials to teach courses in the discipline.
• No online instructor should ever be hired without a department chair or Foundations team lead approving their hire.
• Help provide, as needed, content and discipline-specific training to online instructors.
• Provide critical input to the online team if any content-related concerns arise about an instructor’s performance. • Look for opportunities to reach out to online instructors
in their discipline or course and invite them to participate, where possible, in content-specific discussions and training, without undermining instructors’ reporting relationship to the online team.
The Online Team
Having a centralized team oversee the creation and administration of courses online at BYU–Idaho has two distinct advantages: expertise and scalability. Curriculum designers with advanced degrees in instructional design
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provide critical expertise in creating courses, and specialists in online instruction train remote instructors how to achieve the best results when teaching online. In addition, by handling the logistical details of reviewing thousands of applications, hiring hundreds of applicants, and offering hundreds of sections, the online team makes it possible to offer courses online to thousands of students without overwhelming department chairs.
The roles and responsibilities of the online team include the following:
• With input from department chairs, the Online Academic Advisory Committeeii, and Deans’ Council,
the online team decides which courses and degrees get created online.
• The online team establishes design standards for creating courses online, such as implementing the Learning Model and requiring rigorous but reasonable amounts of meaningful student work.
• The online team collaborates with designated faculty in creating great courses based on these standards to achieve learning outcomes chosen by faculty. While faculty members bring knowledge in the content to the process, curriculum developers bring instructional design expertise.
• The online team recruits, screens, and hires online instructors, with approval from department chairs about the academic suitability of applicants to teach particular courses.
• The online team trains remote instructors, oversees the quality of online instruction, and takes remedial steps, when necessary. Online instructors report to the online team.
• If any issues arise concerning an instructor’s mastery of the content, the online team confers with the department chair or course lead.
• In consultation with department chairs and under the leadership of the Scheduling Council and the Academic Vice President, the online team decides on the appropriate number of sections to offer of each course online.
• Through the Online Support Center, the online team provides support to students taking courses online. • The online team responds to all student complaints stemming from online courses, conferring with the Course Lead if any issues arise regarding content.
Online Instructors
BYU–Idaho hires remote instructors with master’s or doctorate degrees in relevant disciplines to teach the courses created jointly by BYU–Idaho faculty and the online team. Freed from the need to create courses or generate significant amounts of content themselves, these instructors—many of whom are working in the fields about which they teach—focus on providing customized feedback and instruction to students. Their responsibilities include the following:
• Helping students navigate through and understand the provided curriculum.
• Deepening students’ understanding by providing them specific feedback, probing questions, and occasionally pointing them to additional material to address specific concerns.
• Building and facilitating a community of learners that support and build each other in testimony and academic learning.
• Connecting students with appropriate resources on campus, such as Academic Support.
• Submitting “fixes” to Course Development to rectify minor technical mistakes in courses.
• Providing substantive feedback and suggestions on how the course can be improved to the online instructor designated to share such ideas with the Course Lead as part of a Course Improvement Council. (The person playing this role is called the online course lead.)
Notes
i To keep things simple, we use “department chairs” as shorthand for department
chairs and Foundations or other course team leads.
ii This committee consists primarily of on-campus faculty and academic leaders, but
