The Perceived Barriers to Online Learning Have Changed

Posted on By Martin Smith

There were many interesting points to be had from the 2022 American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) / Wiley survey titled “Online Learning at Public Universities: Views of AASCU Member Institutions as COVID-19 Transforms Higher Education”.

This was a repeat survey of 104 AASCU institutions to update their positions on online learning – past and post-Covid present.

Notable points in it for me were:

  • Universities must be strategic about investing in online learning infrastructure. That includes conducting market research to allocate funds toward programs with the highest potential for success.
  • Some senior leaders believe that many students would prefer a blended experience over returning to campus full time. Therefore, universities will also need to invest in personnel, specifically instructional designers, to develop the online and blended courses to the quality students will seek.
  • The important thing is for senior leaders to decide their institution’s vision of online learning and communicate it clearly throughout campus. Each campus needs to decide what works best for their students, faculty, and resources and align on a definition.
  • Online course development costs are a barrier, but the cost of developing online courses seems less burdensome once institutions begin enrolling more than 2,500 online learners.

Other perceived barriers have changed from 2013 as illustrated in the following graph taken from the report:

Graph of barriers that have altered since 2013 with low accceptance of online instruction by faculty being most changed
Changing Barriers to Online Learning. Source: AASCU/Wiley, Feb 2022

CAPDM is a university spin-out and exists to help universities be strategic about investing in online learning infrastructure. Our 25 year track-record of success with online learning is proven with 30+ substantial programmes including four leading online MBAs.   

Our institution-wide CourseworkerTM  course production platform has evolved as a highly efficient, open, long-term, course building and management solution.  It is available now to help your in-house course production teams to own, develop and maintain all your online courses and revenues. It is a strategic, asset-building infrastrucure option.

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Martin Smith is a Non-executive Director of CAPDM Ltd. A software engineer by trade, during the 1990s he was product development manager for Office Workstations Limited and GUIDE 3 – the first commercial hypertext product - long before the Web. Through CAPDM, Martin has been applying open-standards based single-source publishing technologies to higher education for 25+ years, and has influenced the development of some of the most successful online distance learning programs operating today. Martin was Managing Director of CAPDM from 1996 to 2022.