Each year on April 22, Earth Day invites us to reflect on the beauty, complexity and fragility of our planet. It’s a time to appreciate the natural world, recognize the contributions of the environmental movement and think deeply about how we care for the planet, not just for today but for future generations.
One of the most meaningful ways we can honor that mission? Help students see and appreciate the Earth — including its landscapes, features, wonders and history — in new ways.
Virtual Field Trips in MindTap, an immersive feature for earth sciences courses, provide a unique opportunity for students to do just that.
Inspiring a deeper connection to our planet
Virtual Field Trips takes students on an unforgettable journey to some of the most iconic and geologically significant places across the United States. No travel required!
Through vivid imagery and animation, expert commentary and interactive moments of discovery, students can zoom in on rock formations in striking detail and study patterns shaped over millions of years, as if they were there in-person. Along the way, they can deepen their understanding of key earth science concepts.
Oh, the places they’ll go
From towering cliffs to ancient coral reefs, students visit awe-inspiring locations that highlight the planet’s beauty and study critical earth science topics. Field trips include:
Igneous Rocks at Yosemite National Park
Volcanoes at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Weathering and Erosion at Arches National Park
Sedimentary Rocks at Capitol Reef National Park
Fossilization at Petrified Forest National Park
Copper Mining at Bingham Canyon
Hydrothermal Activity at Yellowstone National Park
Deserts at Death Valley National Park
Geological Time at the Grand Canyon
Depositional Coasts on the US. East Coast
Erosional Coasts on the U.S West Coast
The Hazards of Living along an Erosional Coast
Coral Reef Communities
These locations are only the beginning, with more soon to come. And they aren’t just destinations, they’re reminders of the Earth’s complexity.
Watch this video to explore this feature for earth sciences courses:
Happy Earth Day
What started as a movement to raise awareness about environmental issues has grown into a global day of action. It’s a reminder that we’re all connected, and that taking care of our planet is something we can all do — together.
This Earth Day, let’s inspire students to explore the planet in ways that deepen their understanding and spark that sense of wonder. Thank you for teaching the next generation of explorers, scientists and stewards.
Discover how you can bring the Earth into your classroom.
Online learning in high school helps students explore career pathways
For more news on online learning, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub
We started working with an online education high school program about 10 years ago and have been expanding our use of online courses ever since. Serving about 1,100 students in grades 6-12, our school has built up its course offerings without having to add headcount. Along the way, we’ve also gained a reputation for having a wide selection of general and advanced courses for our growing student body.
More News from eSchool News
HVAC projects to improve indoor air quality. Tutoring programs for struggling students. Tuition support for young people who want to become teachers in their home communities.
Almost 3 in 5 K-12 educators (55 percent) have positive perceptions about GenAI, despite concerns and perceived risks in its adoption, according to updated data from Cengage Group’s “AI in Education” research series.
When it comes to visual creativity, AI tools let students design posters, presentations, and digital artwork effortlessly. Students can turn their ideas into professional-quality visuals, sparking creativity and innovation.
Ensuring that girls feel supported and empowered in STEM from an early age can lead to more balanced workplaces, economic growth, and groundbreaking discoveries.
In my work with middle school students, I’ve seen how critical that period of development is to students’ future success. One area of focus in a middle schooler’s development is vocabulary acquisition.
For students, the mid-year stretch is a chance to assess their learning, refine their decision-making skills, and build momentum for the opportunities ahead.
Middle school marks the transition from late childhood to early adolescence. Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson describes the transition as a shift from the Industry vs. Inferiority stage into the Identity vs. Role Confusion stage.
Art has a unique power in the ESL classroom–a magic that bridges cultures, ignites imagination, and breathes life into language. For English Language Learners (ELLs), it’s more than an expressive outlet.
In the year 2025, no one should have to be convinced that protecting data privacy matters. For education institutions, it’s really that simple of a priority–and that complicated.
Teachers are superheroes. Every day, they rise to the challenge, pouring their hearts into shaping the future. They stay late to grade papers and show up early to tutor struggling students.
Since launching the Student Assistant in beta last year, we’ve been working with thousands of faculty and students to train it and bring a personalized learning experience to more students. So, what’s next for this GenAI-powered tool?
We’re taking it to the next level. Starting this fall 2025, the Student Assistant will become available to over 1 million students with new capabilities, including integration throughout the learning experience, course offerings across 100+ products and our new AI-powered insights dashboard.
Let’s jump in.
A quick refresher: Let us reintroduce you to the Student Assistant
Leveraging intelligent language models and Cengage-trusted content, the Student Assistant guides students through the learning process within their specific products. Currently, embedded in our online learning platform, MindTap, it provides tailored feedback to help students reach their own solutions, without giving away the answers. We want to support students to not only understand what they’re learning, but apply course concepts with confidence. That’s why this tool was purposefully trained by students and instructors, to ensure academic integrity is at the forefront.
Personalized support across learning activities
We’ve told you how the Student Assistant personalizes learning. Soon, students can experience that level of comprehensive, personalized support throughout their entire learning experience. The Student Assistant is expanding across various learning activities and can support more difficult question types. Plus, its responses will link to actual textbook chapters, images, videos and other resources. This allows students to instantly connect with their course content and understand exactly what they’re learning.
More course options equal more opportunities for students
Spanning 100+ products, the Student Assistant will be available to over 1 million students, each with their own set of unique learning needs. We’ve expanded access across our best-selling products, including “Principles of Economics” by N. Gregory Mankiw, “Anatomy & Physiology” by Dr. Liz Co, “Precalculus”by James Stewart and more. With more product offerings and platforms available, we can reach a wider range of students from a variety of key disciplines.
Allows instructors to look beyond grades with AI-powered insights dashboard
Built on real-time interactions from the Student Assistant, our new AI-powered insights dashboardis a tool instructors can utilize to support and meet students right where they’re at in the learning process. Instructors can track students’ learning patterns and increase engagement with personalized, actionable insights on everything from study habits to learning challenges and concept gaps – all before it impacts their grades.
The future of learning is looking bright
Overall, this expansion will help us create better learning experiences for more students and allow instructors like you to meet their individual needs — so you can support them in their academic journeys and create futures full of opportunity.
Want to stay posted on updates about our fall 2025 expansion and learn more about the Student Assistant for your course?
Whether today’s educators are teaching in-person, online or somewhere in between, their dedication to students has remained stronger than ever, despite rapid changes within the space. And in recent years, we’ve seen advances in technology and an increased emphasis on flexible learning environments reshape the higher ed classroom, resulting in both blended and hybrid learning models becoming more common.
Let’s explore a few common models of blended and hybrid instruction and some course materials that tailor well to this type of learning experience.
Blended and hybrid learning: a breakdown
The definitions of both terms may vary. Typically blended instructionincludes teaching with a variety of technology tools, whilehybrid instruction includes both in-person and online course sessions. These terms can apply at many levels, from specific course components (for example, a blended activity) to the broadest program or institution level, where an institution has a program with both in-person and online components.
Common models
Some of the more common models of hybrid and blended instruction include:
Flipped: Students learn new content before class and practice it in the classroom. This approach allows for multimodal content presentation online, and gives students greater control of when, where and how they access course content.
Enriched virtual: Students set the pace of their own learning and complete most of their coursework online.
Rotation: Students rotate between multiple learning modalities, one of which is online. Other modalities may include in-person instruction, group projects, individual guidance and assignments. This approach allows for students to interact with content in a variety of ways, promoting engagement.
Flex: Students direct their learning according to what works best for them among different learning modalities with an emphasis on online learning. The instructor is available for face-to-face support as needed.
A la carte/Self blend: Students choose a supplementary online course to accompany other, in-person experiences.
Depending on the model and modality, students can receive immediate feedback through computer graded activities. They can also interact with classmates in a variety of ways, such as discussion forums, online (or in-person) class sessions, group projects and multi-person online recordings, such as those available through Bongo with MindTap.
Here are a few examples of titles across disciplines like world languages, marketing, art & humanities and health care, paired with our online learning platform, MindTap, that readily translate to blended or hybrid formats.
From its inception, “Atelier: An Introductory French Program,” 2e by Kim Jansma, Margaret Ann Kassen, and Laurence Denié-Higney was designed for hybrid or flipped courses. This program includes a course manual with grammar and vocabulary presentations, readings and many interactive activities that can be assigned in class. Before coming to class, instructors can assign Learn It activities (readings and new content presentations) and Practice It activities (low-stakes, auto graded comprehension and application) in MindTap. Students and instructors then have an opportunity to discuss new content and practice applying it in open-ended and creative ways within a synchronous, in-person or virtual class.
Apply It activities (open-ended expansion) can be assigned for follow-up homework, while Got It activities close out the MindTap Learning Path sequence at the end of each chapter section, so students can verify their understanding. Alternatively, these Got It activities can be assigned as review activities at the end of the module prior to formal assessments. Evaluation can be completed during course time or virtually via online tests that accompany the program and are available through Cognero.
Blended and hybrid approaches can also work in courses that were not initially designed for hybrid instruction. For example, with “Marketing,” 21e by William M. Pride and O. C. Ferrell, students can complete the reading and subsequent Learn It comprehension activities before class. They can complete Apply It activities either before class to prepare for an upcoming discussion or after class as extension activities. Students can also use Study It materials such as flashcards and practice quizzes for review and to identify areas for improvement before a test.
In addition, this title’s MindTap contains activities that allow students to personalize their learning online, promoting self-reflection and real-world application of course concepts. For example, Why Does It Matter to Me? is a chapter-opening question that situates upcoming concepts in context and prompts students to reflect on their own knowledge and experiences. Case Activities in each chapter has students apply key concepts from the chapter to a real-world scenario, including media and reflection questions. You Make the Decision are branching-style questions where students walk through a scenario and make important, but difficult decisions. At the end of the Learning Path are comprehensive assessments of marketing analytics and Excel activities. Students review and manipulate data in Microsoft Excel to see how resulting calculations affect business decisions. The robust content in MindTap for “Marketing,” 21e facilitates a variety of blended and hybrid learning approaches by providing students with unique, personalized and authentic materials at all stages of the learning process.
With a media-rich MindTap, “Cultures and Values: A Global View of the Humanities,” 10e by Lois Fichner-Rathus provides students with the authentic primary materials they are learning about in the readings. In their eBooks, students can zoom in on images to see details such as brush strokes and lighting. They can also access authentic texts of selected literary works, listen to chapter-specific curated playlists on Spotify and watch videos through edited YouTube chapter playlists. By allowing students to view and interact with primary course content directly, hybrid and blended learning brings the materials to life while supporting flexibility and learning on the go.
While the previous examples have featured humanities and business courses, online learning is also common in workplace skills course such as medical coding and billing. Programs like “Understanding ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS: A Worktext – 2025” 10eby Mary Jo Bowie provide a variety of comprehension and application-based activities, real-life case studies and review materials. Plus, it includes the Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting for both ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS. As a result, students can complete readings, study using PowerPoints and flashcards and gain vital practice with coding in preparation for the certification exam. Students appreciate the flexibility and independence that blended and hybrid learning offers, while gaining valuable preparation for certification.
The takeaways
Many forms of blended and hybrid learning – from flipped classrooms to fully-online, self-led courses – are common in higher education today. By providing a variety of robust online content, courses can offer students flexibility, authenticity and personalized learning to boost engagement and prepare them for their studies and future careers.
Check out these resources that support different types of learning models:
The rapid advancements in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are reshaping education, offering innovative tools for content creation, adaptive learning, and instructional strategies. GenAI models, such as ChatGPT, assist educators by generating structured lesson plans, assessments, and multimedia content, reducing workload and enhancing efficiency. These tools also support adaptive learning by personalizing content to match students’ strengths and learning gaps, increasing engagement and knowledge retention.
However, the integration of GenAI presents ethical and legal concerns, including potential biases in AI-generated content, violation of the copyrights held by content creators and data privacy risks. Responsible use, complemented by human oversight, is essential to maintaining educational integrity. Successful applications of GenAI demonstrate its potential to expedite course development and create engaging digital learning experiences. Striking a balance between innovation and ethical considerations ensures AI enhances, rather than replaces, human-led teaching.
Content creation and lesson planning
GenAI streamlines lesson planning by allowing educators to input objectives and receive lesson plans tailored to learning goals. In fact, recent Cengage research cites lesson planning as a use-case for how teaching and learning can be supported by AI. While this functionality can save instructors valuable time and ensure their subject needs are met, it’s important to ensure that the use of copyrighted material falls within your license or other legal parameters.
Additionally, AI-generated assessments support MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, by facilitating adaptive and interactive course components, bridging the gap between large-scale online instruction and personalized learning. GenAI ensures lessons cater to diverse learning styles, enhancing accessibility and retention by integrating various formats, text, video and interactive activities.
Adaptive learning and personalization
AI can help assess and target students’ individual learning needs, enhancing student motivation and academic outcomes. Real-time feedback mechanisms allow learners to self-assess progress and focus on areas needing improvement, particularly beneficial in large-scale online courses. Additionally, GenAI can help personalize study materials, such as quizzes and practice tests, ensuring students learn at their own pace while maintaining engagement. When following copyright laws, these advancements help bridge gaps in traditional online learning, where standardized content may not meet diverse student needs.
The future of AI in online education
The use of AI in asynchronous learning is revolutionizing how educators develop content. With AI-driven tools, instructors can create high-quality, interactive, and accessible video lectures without the steep learning curve of traditional production methods. As technology continues to advance, AI will play an increasingly pivotal role in shaping the future of online education.
For educators looking to simplify their lecture creation process, adopting AI tools is a game-changer. Instructors can focus more on teaching and less on technical production, ultimately providing students with a more engaging and effective learning experience.
Ethical considerations and challenges
While GenAI enhances education, ethical matters must be addressed. AI systems often rely on extensive data collection, raising privacy concerns that necessitate stringent safeguards. Moreover, biases in training data can result in skewed educational content, underscoring the need for careful dataset curation.
Another challenge is the risk of over-reliance on AI-generated materials. While AI can assist in lesson planning and content development, human oversight remains critical to ensure contextual understanding and engagement. AI-based assessment tools, though efficient, may fail to interpret nuanced student responses accurately, necessitating human intervention to maintain fairness in evaluations.
Conclusion
Collaboration between educators, policymakers, and AI developers is crucial in establishing best practices that optimize AI’s benefits while mitigating risks. A balanced approach — leveraging AI’s efficiency while preserving human oversight — can foster an equitable, innovative, and effective learning environment.
You first met our game-changingGenAI-powered Student Assistantin August 2024, and we’ve been keeping you up to date on all of the exciting developments ever since. We’ve told you how it helps personalize your students’ learning experience on a whole new level with content that’s specific to your course textbook — but now we want to show you how.
Let’s dive in and explore some visual examples of student interactions that demonstrate its full capabilities.
Points students in the right direction
Do your students ever get stuck on how to begin working on a question or topic? Using the Student Assistant, students can ask for a solid jumping-off point to get the ball rolling in the right direction. They can also ask it to clarify points of confusion, so they can successfully progress through an assignment.
Promotes critical thinking and academic integrity
The Student Assistant guides students to help them identify the correct answer, without giving it away, promoting the development of critical thinking skills and putting emphasis on self-reliance. Students are also discouraged from simply guessing a correct answer and are asked to explain their logic behind a selection.
Simplifies complex topics
If students are struggling to comprehend what they’re learning, they can ask for topics to be elaborated on, rephrased or broken down. They can also ask for brief definitions of key terms.
Makes real-world connections
With the Student Assistant, students can ask for explanations of how topics they’re studying connect to real-world scenarios. It can generate discipline- and career-specific use-cases, helping students understand the relevancy of course content within the framework of their future careers.
Keeps students on track
Getting distracted during a task is something that can happen to the best of us, and students are no exception. If students ask to be shown external or entertaining web content, the Student Assistant will redirect and keep them focused on the assignment at hand. This tool will never provide or rely on external content.
Motivates and encourages
The Student Assistant lets students know that it’s okay to struggle through an assignment by encouraging them with a positive, motivational tone. With positive reassurance from the Student Assistant, students can complete assignments with confidence.
Reframes course content
When students aren’t making personal connections with course content, it can be easy for them to lose interest in the topic altogether. Students can ask for their course topics to be turned into an engaging story, helping them key into critical themes and ideas that they may have initially overlooked.
Can’t wait to begin using the Student Assistant in your courses?
We’re gearing up for more titles to feature the Student Assistant this fall. In the meantime, you can currently explore this tool’s capabilities, its current list of titles where it’s featured and AI at Cengage.
Emma Bittner considered getting a master’s degree in public health at a nearby university, but the in-person program cost tens of thousands of dollars more than she had hoped to spend.
So she checked out master’s degrees she could pursue remotely, on her laptop, which she was sure would be much cheaper.
The price for the same degree, online, was … just as much. Or more.
“I’m, like, what makes this worth it?” said Bittner, 25, who lives in Austin, Texas. “Why does it cost that much if I don’t get meetings face-to-face with the professor or have the experience in person?”
Among the surprising answers is that colleges and universities are charging more for online education to subsidize everything else they do, online managers say. Huge sums are also going into marketing and advertising for it, documents show.
Universities and colleges “see online higher education as an opportunity to make money and use it for whatever they want to make money for,” said Kevin Carey, vice president of education and work at the left-leaning think tank New America.
Bittner’s confusion about the price is widespread. Eighty percent of Americans think online learning after high school should cost less than in-person programs, according to a 2024 survey of 1,705 adults by New America.
After all, technology has reduced prices in many other industries. And online courses don’t require classrooms or other physical facilities and can theoretically be taught to a much larger number of students, creating economies of scale.
While consumers complained about remote learning during the pandemic, online enrollment has been rising faster than was projected before Covid hit.
Yet 83 percent of online programs in higher education cost students as much as or more than the in-person versions, an annual survey of campus chief online learning officers finds. About a quarter of universities and colleges even tack on an additional “distance learning fee,” that survey found.
In addition to using the income from their online divisions to help pay for the other things they do, universities say they have had to pay more than they anticipated on advising and support for online students, who get worse results, on average, than their in-person counterparts.
Bringing down the price of a degree “was certainly a key part of the appeal” when online higher education began, said Richard Garrett, co-director of that survey of online education managers and chief research officer at Eduventures, an arm of the higher education technology consulting company Encoura.
“Online was going to be disruptive. It was supposed to widen access. And it would reduce the price,” said Garrett. “But it hasn’t played out that way.”
Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.
Today, online instruction for in-state students at four-year public universities costs $341 a credit, the independent Education Data Initiative finds — more than the average $325 a credit for face-to-face tuition. That adds up to about $41,000 for a degree online, compared to about $39,000 in tuition for a degree obtained in person.
Two-thirds of private four-year universities and colleges with online programs charge more for them than for their face-to-face classes, according to the survey of online managers. The average tuition for online learning at private universities and colleges comes to $516 per credit.
And community colleges, which collectively enroll the largest number of students who learn entirely online, charge them the same as or more than their in-person counterparts in 100 percent of cases, the survey of online officers found (though Garrett said that’s likely because community college tuition overall is already comparatively low).
Social media is riddled with angry comments about this. A typical post: “Can someone please explain to me why taking a course online can cost a couple $1000 more than in person?”
Online education officers respond that online programs face steep startup costs and need expensive technology specialists and infrastructure. In a separate survey of faculty by the consulting firm Ithaka S+R, 80 percent said it took them as much time, or more, to plan and develop online courses as it did in-person ones because of the need to incorporate new kinds of technology.
Online programs also need to provide faculty who are available for office hours, online advisors and other resources exclusively to support online students, who tend to be less well prepared and get worse results than their in-person counterparts. For the same reasons, many online providers have put caps on enrollment, limiting those expected economies of scale.
“You still need advisers, you still need a writing center, a tutoring center, and now you have to provide those services for students who are at a distance,” said Dylan Barth, vice president of innovation and programs at the Online Learning Consortium, which represents online education providers.
Still, 60 percent of public and more than half of private universities are taking in more money from online education than they spend on it, the online managers’ survey found. About half said they put the money back into their institutions’ general operating budgets.
Such cross subsidies have long been a part of higher education’s financial strategy, under which students in classes or fields that cost less to teach generally subsidize their counterparts in courses or disciplines that cost more. English majors subsidize their engineering classmates, for example. Big first-year lecture classes subsidize small senior seminars. Graduate students often subsidize undergrads.
“Online education is another revenue stream from a different market,” said Duha Altindag, an associate professor of economics at Auburn University who has studied online programs.
Universities “are not trying to use technology to become more efficient. They’re just layering it on top of the existing model,” said New America’s Carey, who has been a critic of some online education models.
“Public officials are not stopping them,” he said. “They’re not coming and saying, ‘Hey, we’re seeing this new opportunity to save money. These online courses could be cheaper. Make them cheaper.’ This is just a continuation of the status quo.”
Another page that online managers have borrowed from higher education’s traditional pricing playbook is that consumers often equate high prices with high quality, especially at brand-name colleges and universities.
“Market success and reputation can support higher prices,” Garrett said. It’s not what online courses cost to provide that determines the price, in other words, but how much consumers are willing to pay.
With online programs competing for customers across the country, rather than for those within commuting distance of a campus or willing to relocate to one, universities and colleges are also putting huge amounts into marketing and advertising.
An example of this kind of spending was exposed in a review by the consulting firm EY of the University of Arizona Global Campus, or UAGC, which the university created by acquiring for-profit Ashford University in 2020. Obtained through a public-records request by New America, the report found that the university was paying out $11,521 in advertising and marketing for every online student it enrolled.
The online University of Maryland Global Campus committed to spending $500 million foradvertising to out-of-state students over six years, a state audit found.
“What if you took that money and translated it into lower tuition?” asked Carey.
The online University of Maryland Global Campus is spending $500 million to market and advertise to out-of-state students over six years.
While they’re paying the same as or more than their in-person counterparts, meanwhile, online students get generally poorer success rates.
Online instruction results in lower grades than face-to-face education, according to research by Altindag and colleagues at American University and the University of Southern Mississippi — though they also found that the gap is narrowing. Students online are more likely to have to withdraw from or repeat courses and less likely to graduate on time, these researchers found, which further increases the cost.
Another study, by University of Central Florida Institute of Higher Education Director Justin Ortagus, found that taking all of their courses online reduces the odds that community college students will ever graduate.
Lower-income students fare especially poorly online, that and other research shows; scholars say this is in part because many come from low-resourced public high schools or are balancing their classes with work or family responsibilities.
Students who learn entirely online at any level are less likely to have graduated within eight years than students in general, who have a 66 percent eight-year graduation rate, data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows.
Graduation rates are particularly low at for-profit universities, which enroll a quarter of the students who learn exclusively online. In the American InterContinental University System, for example, only 11 percent of students graduated within eight years after starting, federal data shows, and at the American Public University System, 44 percent. The figures are for the period ending in 2022, the most recent for which they have been widely submitted.
Several private, nonprofit universities and colleges also have comparatively lower eight-year graduation rates for students who are online only, the data shows, including Southern New Hampshire University (37 percent) and Western Governors University (52 percent).
If they do receive degrees, online-only students earn more than their entirely in-person counterparts for the first year after college, Eduventures finds — perhaps because they tend to be older than traditional-age students, researchers speculated. But that advantage disappears within four years, when in-person graduates overtake them.
For all the growth in online higher education, employers appear to remain reluctant to hire graduates of it, according to still other research conducted at the University of Louisville. That study found that applicants for jobs who listed an online as opposed to in-person degree were about half as likely to get a callback for the job.
How strongly consumers feel that online higher education should cost less than the in-person kind was evident in lawsuits brought against universities and colleges that continued to charge full tuition even after going remote during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet students keep signing on. For all the complaining about remote learning at the time, its momentum seems to have beenspeeded up by the pandemic, which was followed by a 12 percent increase in online enrollment above what had been projected before it hit, according to an analysis of federal data by education technology consultant Phil Hill.
Online students save on room and board costs they would face on residential campuses, and online higher education is typically more flexible than the in-person kind.
Sixty percent of campus online officers say that online sections of classes tend to fill first, and nearly half say online student numbers are outpacing in-person enrollment.
There have been some widely cited examples of online programs with dramatically lower tuition, such as a $7,000 online master’s degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology (compared to the estimated nearly $43,000 for the two-year in-person version), which has attracted thousands of students and a few copycat programs.
There are also early signs that prices for online higher education could fall. Competition is intensifying from national nonprofit providers such as Western Governors, which charges a comparatively low average $8,300per year, and Southern New Hampshire, whose undergraduate price per credit hour is a slightly lower-than-average (for online courses) $330.
Universities have started cutting their ties with for-profit middlemen, called online program managers, who take big cuts of up to 80 percent of revenues. Nearly 150 such deals were canceled or ended and not renewed in 2023, the most recent year for which the information is available, the market research firm Validated Insights reports.
Another thing that could lower prices: As more online programs go live, they no longer require high up-front investment — just periodic updating.
“It is possible to save money on downstream costs if you offer the same course over a number of years,” Ortagus said.
A student studies on her laptop. The number of college students who learn entirely online will this year surpass the number who take all their classes in person.
While that survey of online officers found a tiny decline in the proportion of universities charging more for online than in-person classes, however, the drop was statistically insignificant. And as their enrollments continue to plummet, institutions increasingly need the revenue from online programs.
Bittner, in Texas, ended up in an online master’s program in public health that was just being started by a private, nonprofit university, and was cheaper than the others she’d found.
Her day job is at the national nonprofit Young Invincibles, which pushes for reforms in higher education, health care and economic security for young Americans. And she still doesn’t understand the online pricing model.
“I’m so confused about it. Even in the program I’m in now, you don’t get the same access to stuff as an in-person student,” she said. “What are you putting into it that costs so much?”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Let’s face it: education is changing with technology. But hasn’t it always? Imagine the calligraphy teacher’s grimace at the typewriter. Math teachers and calculators, English teachers and spellcheck, history teachers and Google — instructors quickly adopted all of these tools for their own usage. The same opportunity arises with the explosion of artificial intelligence.
Personalizing asynchronous courses
Having been an online student and now leading online courses, I empathize with both sets of stakeholders. Online courses have grown with the availability of the internet and lowered home computer costs. The flexibility asynchronous courses offer is what makes them desirable. Neither party must be in a specific classroom at a particular time. This allows both to work a more convenient schedule.
The most obvious challenge for instructors is bringing value to the students in a format that lacks the personalization of the classroom setting. Emails and discussion boards don’t communicate with the same personal touch. Recording classroom lectures for a face-to-face class certainly has some merit. The online student gets to hear and watch lectures and discussions. Yet, this might not be a foreseeable solution for instructors without in-person and online sections of the same subject. Also, recorded lectures may give the online sections less time to consume the content than their in-person peers.
Recorded lecture: the challenges
Until recently, my modus operandi was recording lectures for online students. I did this in order to replicate what they would get in the classroom, albeit passively devoid of discussion. Unless these videos are reused for different semesters and classes, it still seems inefficient and strangely impersonal. The inefficiency comes from mistakes that I would have laughed off in a live course. However, they certainly became points of frustration when watching myself stumble through a word or phrase that rolled off the tongue effortlessly during the dry run. Sometimes, I didn’t realize my mic was not toggled on. This resulted in a very uneventful silent film. Or someone would interrupt. I don’t think I’ve scratched the surface of all the things that disrupted my attempts. So, I looked for alternative sources for help.
The power of AI avatars for lecture delivery
I spent some time dabbling with AI avatars and seeing the potential to adopt the technology. The avatars cross the personalization hurdle by offering lifelike renditions with mannerisms and voice. While the technology is not quite as precise as recorded video, it’s good and getting better. The students have given it positive reviews. It is undoubtedly better than some of the textbook videos I had the unfortunate task of watching in a couple of my online courses as a student.
Avatars also clear the hurdle of efficiency and frustration. Using an avatar, I no longer have to fret over interruptions or mistakes. The editing is all done in its script. I load what I want it to say, and the avatar says it. No “ums.” No coughs or sneezes to apologize for. No triple takes on the word, “anthropomorphic.” If I’m interrupted, I can save it and return to it later. This enables me to scale my efforts.
Using Google’s NotebookLM to create AI-generated podcasts
Depending on your social media algorithm, you were probably privy to people’s Spotify top stats or other creative memes of the phenomenon in early December 2024. Spotify created personal “Wrapped AI podcasts” based on AI’s interpretation of users’ listening habits throughout the year. From a marketing perspective, this is great cobranding for both Google and Spotify, but the instructor’s perspective is why I’m writing. I learned about NotebookLM at a recent conference. The real beauty is that, currently, it’s free with a Google account.
Evaluating anecdotal evidence from my courses again, the students enjoyed the podcast version of the content. Instructors can add content that they have created and own the rights to, like lecture notes, and two AI “podcasters” will discuss it.
Because it’s only audio content, students can listen to it anywhere they are with their phones. Some comments that I noted were, “Listening to it felt less like studying” and “It was easy to listen to driving in my car.” This adds another layer of content consumption for students.
Balancing AI and instructor presence
Though I offered two technologies to deliver content to students, I do so as supplements to recorded lectures and web meetings. Indeed, in this era of AI, it is easy to become enamored with or apprehensive of this technology. Our students live very digitalized lives. Versing yourself in emerging technologies while still interacting with online students in more “traditional” formats can help you keep up with the times. You can still lean on tried-and-true education delivery. I think the key is to be willing to try a new technology and ask the students what they think of it. So many educators are worried about replacement, but at this stage in technology, we need to use AI as enhancements. So many digital platforms are using it. Why not use it in online classes responsibly?
Written by Britton Legget, Assistant Professor of Marketing at McNeese State University and Cengage Faculty Partner.
Want to learn about Professor Leggett’s unique journey into his current role?
As we approach the five-year anniversary of the closure of UK university campuses for the Covid-19 pandemic, we thought it might be interesting and timely to reflect on the way that the sector adapted to educational delivery, and which innovations remain as part of our new normal.
One key aspect of educational delivery which has remained to varying extents across the sector is the move to online student meetings. This includes meetings for academic personal tutorials, dissertation supervisions and other one-to-one meetings between students and staff. The Covid-19 lockdowns necessitated the use of online meetings as the only available option during this time. However, even post-lockdown, students and staff have continued to request online meetings, for reasons such as flexibility, privacy and sustainability.
To explore this further, we conducted a small mixed-methods study with students from Leeds University Business School to consider their preferences for online or in-person meetings, utilising a faculty-wide survey for breadth and short semi-structured interviews for depth.
We designed a questionnaire including questions on demographic (eg gender, home/international, whether they have caring responsibilities) and situational questions regarding their preference for face-to-face only, hybrid, or online meetings. We also included some questions around the ‘Big Five’ personality traits, to better understand factors that influence preferences. We then distributed this online questionnaire, using the Qualtrics questionnaire software.
Based on our findings, 15% of respondents preferred face-to-face only, 31% online only, with the remaining 54% preferring to have the option of either face-to-face or online.
We also found that international students had a stronger preference for online meetings compared to non-international students. Whilst we had a relatively small sample of students on the Plus Programme (our institutional programme targeted to under-represented students); they had a stronger preference for in-person meetings. In terms of the Big Five traits, this student sample was highest on agreeableness and conscientiousness, and lowest on extroversion.
In addition to the questionnaire, we ran seven one-to-one interviews with students from a mix of second year, the year in industry and final year, who had all experienced a mix of both online and face-to-face meetings throughout their studies.
In reviewing the data, we identified five core themes of student preferences around meeting modes:
Connection and communication: Participants felt that the type of meeting affected connection and communication, with in-person meetings feeling more authentic.
Privacy/space: Participants felt that the type of meeting was influenced by factors including their access to private space, either at home or on campus.
Confidence: Some participants felt that the type of meeting could affect how confident they would feel in interactions with staff, with online meetings in their own environment feeling more comfortable than in spaces on campus.
Time: Participants discussed the amount of time that they had for each type of meeting, with online meetings deemed to be more efficient, due to the absence of travel time.
Flexibility: Participants demonstrated a strong preference for flexibility, in that they value having a choice over how to meet, rather than a meeting mode being imposed upon them.
Through cross-examination of the core themes, we also identified something akin to a meta-theme, that is a ‘theme which acquire[s] meaning through the systematic co-occurrence of two or more other themes’ (Armborst, 2017 p1). We termed this meta-theme ‘The Disconnect’, as across each of the core themes there seemed to be a disconnect between student expectations of APT and what is typically provided, which ties in with existing literature (Calabrese et al, 2022).
For example, one participant suggested that:
It’s different when they’re in their office like popping there and asking a question for the lecture or even like the tutorials rather than having to e-mail or like go on a call [which] feels more formal.
Whilst this comment seems to lean more towards other types of academic teaching (eg module leadership, lecture delivery or seminar facilitation), it can also translate to availability of staff more broadly. The comment suggests that students might expect staff to be available to them, on site, as and when they are needed. Yet in reality, it is unlikely that outside of set office hours academic staff will be available to answer ad hoc questions given their other commitments and particularly given the increased proportion of staff regularly working from home since the pandemic. This perspective also seems to contradict the perception that staff are much more available now than ever before, due to the prevalence of communications administered via email and online chat and meeting tools such as MS Teams. Staff may feel that they are more available as online communication methods increase in availability and use, but if students do not want ‘formal’ online options or prefer ad hoc on-site provision, then there may be a disconnect between student expectations and delivery, with all stakeholders feeling short-changed by the reality.
Another disconnect between expectations and reality became apparent when another participant commented:
[…] online it was more rushed because you have the 30 minutes and you see the time going down and in the Zoom you will see like you have 4 minutes left to talk and then you’re rushing it over to finish it.
Whilst this clearly relates to the core theme of time, it also seemed to be correlated with participant understanding of staff roles. It is difficult to understand how the time limitation for online and in-person meetings is different when the meetings are of the same duration, except that in the case of in-person meetings the student may be less aware of timings, due to not having the time physically visible on the screen in front of them. This might be reflected in the student-staff dynamic, where managing online meetings might be seen to be a joint and equal endeavour, with the responsibility for managing in-person meetings being skewed towards the staff member. Whilst it can be argued that staff should take responsibility for managing the meeting, in a time of increased narratives around student-led tutoring, it may be worth exploring the possible knock-on effects of students passively allowing the meeting to happen, rather than actively owning the meeting.
Final thoughts
A limitation of this study was the low response rate. At the point of dissemination, there were approximately 2,000 students in our faculty. However, we received just 198 survey responses (9.9%), and only seven people took part in the interviews, despite repeated calls for participants and generous incentives. Although this was a smaller sample than we had hoped for, we are confident that our study makes a timely and relevant contribution to discussions around delivery of APT, both within our faculty and beyond.
As a starting point, future research could seek to generate responses from a broader pool of participants, through both a quantitative survey and qualitative methods. Based on our findings, there may also be scope for further research exploring student expectations of staff roles, and how these match to institutional offerings across the sector. Ultimately, universities need to do more to investigate and understand student preferences for educational delivery, balancing this alongside pedagogical justifications and staff circumstances.
Stacey Mottershaw is an Associate Professor (Teaching and Scholarship) at Leeds University Business School and an EdD candidate at the University of Sheffield. Her research predominantly seeks to understand the needs of marginalised groups in higher education, with a particular focus on equitable and socially just career development.
Dr Anna Viragos is an Associate Professor in Organizational Psychology at Leeds University Business School, and a Chartered Psychologist of the BPS. Her research focuses on a variety of topics such as stress and wellbeing, creativity, and job design.
How can online learning programmes help tackle systemic global injustices with creative pedagogies? How can universities build effective educational environments and pedagogies to support critical thinking and vigorously challenge contemporary forms of racism, colonialism and inequity?
These are some of the questions I have reflected on over the past almost 14 years of teaching at the University of Edinburgh. In 2011, I embarked with colleagues at the School of Social and Political Science to develop our school’s first fully online distance learning MSc postgraduate programmes, partnering with an interdisciplinary team spanning the three Colleges of the University to co-create and co-teach the MSc in Global Challenges. Addressing global development, health and environmental inequalities, with case studies spanning an array of countries, this programme had students from all over the world. The insights and trajectories of our students have been deeply inspirational – many of our students have gone on to do PhDs, work with United Nations organisations, embassies, non-governmental and humanitarian organisations and work in other kinds of practitioner and research careers. In this blog I reflect on the philosophy of the teaching and learning approach we have nurtured – and associated critical conversations about pedagogy.
We had support from a Principal’s Teaching Award (PTAS) to explore student learning experiences and reflect on our teaching practices, and in 2016 we published an article: ‘Decolonising online development studies? Emancipatory aspirations and critical reflections–a case study’. At the time, it was one of the few critical pedagogy studies to think through ‘international development’ teaching and the risks of replicating colonial logics in online learning modalities (and how to try to counter these). It proposed a critical framework for analysis that took into account barriers to social inclusivity – including the politics of language – that shaped participation dynamics in the programme. It also considered debates regarding critical development course content, rethinking possibilities for bridging counter-hegemonic development scholarship with practice-oriented approaches in a range of social contexts. Our analysis unpacked tensions in tackling intertwined institutional and pedagogic dilemmas for an agenda towards decolonising online development studies, positioning decolonisation as a necessarily unsettling and contested process that calls for greater self-reflexivity.
Some years ago online learning initiatives were treated with suspicion as a technology craze that could not truly build effective communities of critical learners. This is no longer the case, generally speaking. Our online students have carved out sophisticated learning paths while interacting with ambitious courses – sometimes in live discussions and sometimes in asynchronous discussions that built incredible communities of practice. But there are important online learning-specific pedagogic points to keep in mind, as course instructors craft and adapt approaches to support individual and group learning.
One is the risk of re-entrenching problematic dynamics of imperial knowledge production, even when intentions are to do exactly the opposite. There is a need to ensure that online learning platforms grapple with colonial legacies and tendencies – including biases that are easily replicable in virtual technology platforms. It is increasingly recognised that ‘decolonising’ is not simply a matter of ‘bringing in’ authors from Global South countries in reading lists. It is also a matter of ensuring that the underpinning pedagogies, assignments, and learning strategies themselves tackle systemic biases that have often shaped the field of ‘international development’ – and doing so from the outset. This may mean inviting students into at-times uncomfortable conversations about ways of understanding histories of dispossession, or ways of thinking about and governing societies; and ensuring that early course activities trouble assumptions – including about what ‘development’ is/means to different people and whose values are prioritised or overlooked. Some students might not normally read the writings of those who fought during liberation wars against colonialism, for example, but might find such readings different and transformative. There are a range of other possibilities, too, from changing the way that case studies are framed – for example, starting with stories of heavily oppressed peoples instead of starting with the technocratic logics of United Nations and government reports.
Despite global talk of ‘decolonisation,’ there has been a tendency for globally renowned development academics from wealthy countries to dominate reading lists. We have tried in our courses to challenge this – and ensure that activity-focused coursework and online case studies challenge hegemonic assumptions in mainstream policy literature and development discourse. Some of the reflections on our pedagogy were also discussed in a wider influential review article by Shahjahan et al (2022) entitled ‘”Decolonizing” curriculum and pedagogy: A comparative review across disciplines and global higher education contexts’, which notes that ‘decolonization’ has been very differently treated by different educators. Our pedagogy work has also been part of a wider conversation in the scholarly literature on how “precautions need to be taken when incorporating non-Western knowledges into Western universities to avoid mishearing, misrepresenting, exploiting, and decontextualizing them” (Lau and Mendes, 2024; see also Spiegel et al, 2024).
Relatedly, there is a need to be cautious of ideas about “transfer of knowledge” and instead to embrace values built on reciprocal sharing of knowledge in educational practices (see also Parmentier, 2023). Furthermore, attempts at decolonising development education requires attention to the link between learning strategy and wider institutional practices, including heeding inequities in admissions processes and language barriers in higher education. Our work in developing new online learning pedagogies is just part of the story; we have also been interacting closely with university admissions offices on strengthening approaches to make admissions more inclusive. This has included greater recognition of practitioner qualifications and also, significantly, some modifications in how English language testing requirements were addressed in some of the countries affected. This was especially important in contexts where applicants had demonstrable English language proof, from institutional and/or university experiences, but lived far from test centres and could not afford testing.
Our article ‘Decolonising Online Development Studies?’ had a question mark in the title, alluding to the ambiguity of interpretation and the uncertainties that may play out over time. It was cited in other PTAS-awarded studies led by other staff members at UoE, supporting further analysis of specific techniques for building online learning communities (see Wood et al, 2021) How these ideas are to be taken forward is an ethically important conversation that relates to the very core of what education seeks to do, requiring ongoing attention to the interplay of values, philosophies, curricula and teaching techniques.
Dr Sam Spiegel is the director of the Global Challenges MSc programme at the University of Edinburgh, where he serves as the Deputy Director of Research for Knowledge Exchange and Impact at the School of Social and Political Science. He is also a senior lecturer at the Centre of African Studies and has published extensively with colleagues in Zimbabwe and in other regions of the world on migration, displacement, borders, critical pedagogy and social change.
