The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) has declared November 11-15, 2013 National Distance Learning Week.

As we all prepare our campuses for a week of ceremonies and festive activities…does anyone else see the irony in celebrating distance learning week in a physical location…or is it just me?

For those of us that have been actively engaged in online education for the better part of our careers, this weeklong promotion designed to bring awareness and recognition to quality distance education conjures up some mixed feelings.

While it is nice to see this segment of higher education get the accolades it certainly deserves, it is also a little sad that after almost two decades of success in the higher education market place, we needed to designate a specific week in its honor?  I feel the same way about National Grandparent’s Day.

Do we really need a special day, or week in this case, to recognize something so good? I started thinking about some other things happening in higher ed that could benefit from having their own specially designated weeks for recognition.  How about these:

• National Private College Disappearance Week – for those colleges that have been resisting distance education for years and are now starting to disappear.

• “You Can’t Deliver that Class Online” Week – for those faculty members that continue to assert their classes could not possibly be delivered online.

• National “Save Our Institution” Week – for college administrators who think putting a syllabus online or contracting with a third-party vendor to deliver their courses will save their failing institutions.

• Faculty Against Technology Week – you can figure this out by the name, but unfortunately, it was cancelled this year due to poor response.  Evidently, none of the faculty read their email or saw the post on social media. Paper surveys will be mailed to them next week to solicit consensus on a unified position statement about why technology is bad in education.

• Department of Education is Here for You Week – unfortunately the development of the portal to engage with the DOE was awarded to the same Canadian firm developing the ObamaCare website…enough said.

So party on people, virtually of course. Let’s raise of glass of symbolism over substance and give three big cheers to tradition.

Be sure to share and comment…  Mark

The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) has declared November 11-15, 2013 National Distance Learning Week. As we all prepare our campuses for a week of ceremonies and festive activities…does anyone else see the irony in celebrating distance learning week in a physical location…or is it just me?

For those of us that have been actively engaged in online education for the better part of our careers, this weeklong promotion designed to bring awareness and recognition to quality distance education conjures up some mixed feelings. While it is nice to see this segment of higher education get the accolades it certainly deserves, it is also a little sad that after almost two decades of success in the higher education market place, we needed to designate a specific week in its honor?  I feel the same way about National Grandparent’s Day.  Do we really need a special day, or week in this case, to recognize something so good?

I started thinking about some other things happening in higher ed that could benefit from having their own specially designated weeks for recognition.  How about these:

• National Private College Disappearance Week – for those colleges that have been resisting distance education for years and are now starting to disappear.

• “You Can’t Deliver that Class Online” Week – for those faculty members that continue to assert their classes could not possibly be delivered online.

• National “Save Our Institution” Week – for college administrators who think putting a syllabus online or contracting with a third-party vendor to deliver their courses will save their failing institutions.

• Faculty Against Technology Week – you can figure this out by the name, but unfortunately, it was cancelled this year due to poor response.  Evidently, none of the faculty read their email or saw the post on social media. Paper surveys will be mailed to them next week to solicit consensus on a unified position statement about why technology is bad in education.

• Department of Education is Here for You Week – unfortunately the development of the portal to engage with the DOE was awarded to the same Canadian firm developing the ObamaCare website…enough said.

So party on people, virtually of course. Let’s raise of glass of symbolism over substance and give three big cheers to tradition.

Be sure to share and comment… 

Mark

Last week I received a phone call from Maranda, a stay-at-home mom who has been working on her PhD and is ready to re-enter the higher education admissions game after taking ten years off to care for her children. Maranda was my Director of Admissions for the now defunct Mountain State University, and what a story we could write about the rise and fall of a wildly innovative organization. Recruiting and enrollment management were two things MSU did with precision and Maranda was the best Director of Admissions I have ever had the pleasure of working beside.

Maranda explained that the timing is right and she is ready to get back in the enrollment management game; she is nearing end of her PhD program and her husband is considering relocating his practice. She wanted to know if I could find her an unpaid internship in an admissions office so she could get back up to speed with the new practices and policies for higher ed recruiting that emerged while she was home being a Mom.

I thought for a while about what has changed in higher education recruiting. Sure, the way schools use social media has certainly changed, and there have been some changes in student information system vendors, but other than those, I really don’t think we have made wholesale systematic changes in how we market, recruit and enroll students. So I started thinking, what could the new enrollment management function look like if we did things differently?

When trying to answer these types questions, I have a tendency to suggest an innovative solution that is EXACTLY the opposite of what is currently being done. What would happen, for example, if instead of admissions officers and selection committees choosing the incoming freshman class, we let the applicants themselves determine who will be in their class? Let them decide whom they ultimately want to be associated with as alumni. This would give those applicants who really want to attend one particular institution an opportunity to use crowdsourcing and Facebook-style tactics to improve their chances of getting accepted, an especially useful tactic for those students who, on paper, may not appear to be a perfect candidates, but whose uniqueness could ultimately enrich the campus. Now this cannot be the sole criterion, but it definitely could be a significant factor in the selection equation.  Of course, there are many details to work out, but it certainly is a conversation starter.

As for Maranda, I have found her an internship with one of the colleges in our consortium. The skills, tactics and approaches she used ten years ago are still relevant because we were so efficient and good at recruiting back then, now she is well ahead of the game today. Don’t tell her though, because they need her help… and for free to boot.

What are your thoughts about how to truly change the way we recruit and enroll students?  Post and share!