The State of the Student Body

00:00:00 Kevin Hogan This episode of Innovations and Education is brought to you by Renkus-Heinz. 00:00:06 Kevin Hogan Quality audio is crucial to create a productive and engaging learning environment for students, and professors should be able to focus on teaching, not troubleshooting complex technology. 00:00:20 Kevin Hogan At Renkus-Heinz, their hassle free loudspeakers consistently deliver crystal clear audio to every corner of the classroom, ensuring every student hears every word. 00:00:33 Kevin Hogan Elevate classroom engagement and learning outcomes with the Renkus-Heinz sound solution. 00:00:39 Kevin Hogan [email protected]. 00:00:45 Kevin Hogan OK. Hello and welcome to another episode of Innovations and Education. Ecampus News's podcast on the latest and Greatest in Higher Ed Tech this month. 00:00:55 Kevin Hogan I'm your host, Kevin Hogan, and I'm glad you found us. 00:00:58 Kevin Hogan This month we take a look at the kids. 00:01:00 Kevin Hogan This current crop of undergrads, the customers of higher education. 00:01:05 Kevin Hogan To do that, we're getting into the weeds with Mark McCormick. He's the senior director of research and insights at Educause and the newly released 2023 students and Technology report. 00:01:18 Kevin Hogan Flexibility, choice and equity in the student experience. 00:01:23 Kevin Hogan Here's a quote from the report that. 00:01:25 Kevin Hogan Neatly wraps up the topic. 00:01:28 Kevin Hogan What does it mean to be a student in 2023 on the fading tail end of a global pandemic and in the midst of lingering uncertainty about the world? 00:01:38 Kevin Hogan What do students still? 00:01:39 Kevin Hogan Need from a post secondary education? And where does technology serve as a fulcrum for better and for worse, both opening and closing. Students pass forward through their educational journeys. 00:01:54 Kevin Hogan The research team and Educause drew on data from the EDUCOM'S 2023 student survey, which represents 19151 students from across 10 US institutions, to explore some of these questions and offer insights to higher education leaders and decision makers as they consider. 00:02:14 Kevin Hogan What these questions might mean at their particular institutions and within their particular communities. 00:02:20 Kevin Hogan Mark does a great job pulling insights from the numbers that would be beneficial for any higher Ed professional. 00:02:27 Kevin Hogan I found more than a few surprises in our conversation. 00:02:30 Kevin Hogan Have a listen. 00:02:33 Kevin Hogan OK, mark. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time and anticipate some great insights. 00:02:39 Mark McCormack, Senior Director of Research and Insights at EDUCAUSE Delighted to be here. You have the distinction of being my very first podcast conversation, so ohh excited about this. 00:02:46 Kevin Hogan I'll take it easy on you don't. 00:02:47 Kevin Hogan Worry nothing. Nothing but softballs coming your way. Well, really. 00:02:54 Kevin Hogan But there are a lot. 00:02:55 Kevin Hogan Of interesting things that we have to discuss that as a result of the recent report, 2023 students in technology Educause always has great research coming out great data, great insights. I know that we here in E campus rely upon your academic scholarship and the. 00:03:16 Kevin Hogan She's in the space here and I said. 00:03:17 Thank you. 00:03:18 Kevin Hogan It it no other. 00:03:20 Kevin Hogan Aspects of this, other than how timely stuff can be as well as you're coming out. 00:03:25 Kevin Hogan And this this most. 00:03:25 Kevin Hogan Recent report really is kind of sitting at a spot that I really think is the change that's happening in higher education that. 00:03:34 Kevin Hogan I think we. 00:03:35 Kevin Hogan All kind of run our hands. 00:03:36 Kevin Hogan During the pandemic, when there was the rush to remote learning and these ideas of hybrid learning were something that were always kind of in the air, but they were really kind of ethereal. And then March 2020 comes and. 00:03:49 Kevin Hogan All of a sudden the great beta test of remote learning and hybrid learning, and multiple modalities, and that and the students having a it wasn't a choice. It was a forced choice in into going into these these new aspects talk a little bit about the report and how maybe what you've documented with this is a cultural shift that maybe we've been talking about. 00:04:10 Kevin Hogan For years. 00:04:11 Mark McCormack Yeah. And it's been really fascinating being in the position that we're in at educause and particularly in, in research over the last three years, we've done a number of surveys, whether it's our quick poll surveys, our student and faculty surveys and all along the way we've been able to track. 00:04:28 Mark McCormack This evolution of the the practice of hybrid High flex online learning there there's so many different labels that folks use to describe what's been happening, but of course you've seen it shift from. 00:04:44 Mark McCormack And the early early days of the pandemic, what we would call that emergency online teaching, it was maybe less focused on, you know what, what are the best practices and and you know we did, we didn't have the luxury of of taking that very slow intentional approach to designing these online learning programs. We just had to dive in and do it. So it's been interesting to track the shift. 00:05:04 Mark McCormack From that. 00:05:04 Mark McCormack At to what has become this very planful very intentional, very structured, organized approach to it. We've been able to track that shift over the last few years, not only in our student survey responses, but also in in the questions we asked. Are IT and technology leaders and professionals, and how they're approaching it. 00:05:23 Mark McCormack So for us, as as researchers and it's interesting too, because we've had to change the ways we asked about it years ago, it was a very binary question. Do you prefer face to face or online? 00:05:36 Mark McCormack Teaching or learning and what we know now is that it's a lot more complicated than that, and even the ways we've asked about it in our surveys have had to change. So that's been interesting to, to track and it's somewhat limited our ability to compare behaviors and attitudes from year to year. But with this most recent year with both our faculty and our student reports. 00:05:56 Mark McCormack What we really wanted to do was do a deeper dive into what's happening in hybrid learning in higher Ed right now. 00:06:03 Mark McCormack How are students feeling about it? How are they engaging in it and? 00:06:08 Mark McCormack What can all of that tell us about who our students are, what they need, and how institutions can possibly adapt? 00:06:15 Kevin Hogan One of the really interesting things I've found from looking at a baseline look at the results and you know you mentioned asking the students what do you prefer online versus in person and looking at some of the takeaways that you guys pull out. And again pulling from some of my personal anecdotal experience of my 3. 00:06:35 Kevin Hogan College age big Contestors who were suddenly forced into some home remote learning. 00:06:41 Kevin Hogan They didn't even, especially my oldest, was already in college and already had had some of these experiences. They don't even really kind of distinguish between the two and the way that, as an old fogey like myself is like, well, I'm online now, like we're having a conversation online and then that maybe I'll see you at 'cause next month in person. 00:07:01 Kevin Hogan I'm like, well, here we are in person versus online in their brains. That's that's not even necessarily a distinction, right. 00:07:08 Mark McCormack Right. Yeah then. 00:07:09 Mark McCormack In some ways, they're always online all the time. 00:07:12 Right. 00:07:12 Mark McCormack And that's part of the distinction that we've had to make. There's, I don't know, that there's really. 00:07:18 Mark McCormack Anything like a truly. 00:07:21 Mark McCormack Face to face course experience that is completely devoid of technology or some kind of online component. So that to ask students about. 00:07:31 Mark McCormack A purely face to face onsite course doesn't really make sense anymore. There's always going to be some component or components to each course that's going to be online that's going to be digital or technology enabled and so. 00:07:47 Mark McCormack Getting a little more nuanced in the ways we asked them. Well, when you engage in this type of activity specifically, is that something you like to do when you're in the room with the instructor and with the other students thinking about that synchronous style of engaging in that activity? Is this something that you'd rather do from the comfort of your own home on your own time? 00:08:08 Mark McCormack On your computer, so trying to get a little more nuanced in what we're looking at and helping institutions adapt in some of those same nuanced ways and understanding how to structure these course offerings and and their students learning experience. 00:08:21 Kevin Hogan Well, that as I continue to further date myself, I think about writing about Lukes as well, kind of the original and technology innovation, said MIT probably 10 or 15 years ago and then that MOOC concepts again it was forced upon students anything from the results is saying that. 00:08:41 Kevin Hogan Idea of 1 to many. 00:08:43 Kevin Hogan Watch a lecture flipped classroom. 00:08:47 Kevin Hogan MOOC style is that something that has come and gone from your research and is something, as you said, you talked about being more nuanced, I guess the technology tools have now become more sophisticated where that really isn't something that's going to fly anymore. 00:09:01 Mark McCormack We didn't ask specifically about Moocs or or something like that, but I I do think in general for a lot of the students, I would even say in some cases, depending on the activity for the majority of students, their preferences and needs are in some of those same ways. Very you could say traditional, not very sophisticated or innovative beyond just they want to be in the room. 00:09:21 Mark McCormack Their instructor when when the instructors? 00:09:24 Mark McCormack Lecturing for example. Or if they're engaging in a group activity, the majority of them want to be in the same room with their peers when they're working on a group activity together. So I think in some ways their needs and preferences are very familiar to us. They're very traditional, very simple. I think what's maybe different or new is and we we've all experienced this over the last three years with the COVID pandemic. 00:09:47 Mark McCormack We've gotten this experience with flexible. 00:09:49 Mark McCormack Quality and we've learned, oh, you know, we we don't always have to do things. 00:09:56 Mark McCormack A certain way, or we don't always have to be in the same room for a meeting or for an activity. It is possible to do it from home or from the beach or wherever you are, and perhaps even more importantly, that flexibility that we've discovered benefits certain students and certain faculty and staff. 00:10:16 Mark McCormack And some really important ways. I think we've become more aware. 00:10:20 Mark McCormack Of some of the. 00:10:20 Mark McCormack Equity considerations surrounding that flexibility, that flexibility can. 00:10:26 Mark McCormack Allow some students to engage more effectively, maybe than than they had been previously. So there's there's a big section in the report focused on accessibility, and so we had a a series of questions for students who identified as as having some sort of disability or impairment, whether it's a learning disability or a sensory impairment. 00:10:47 Mark McCormack And we, we did see some pretty significant differences in how they prefer to engage in their courses and how that flexibility when it's available to them and when they. 00:10:58 Mark McCormack Have the choice in how they engage in their course activities, how that can positively impact their course experience. 00:11:06 Kevin Hogan It does seem like the idea of that flexibility. They had the expectation of that flexibility now too, and maybe as a result of the past several years. But the idea of student agency. 00:11:18 Kevin Hogan In terms of how they select to engage. So maybe while they prefer to be in that group. 00:11:24 Kevin Hogan Getting on that particular Thursday, they can't for whatever reason, but they don't necessarily want to lose out on what that experience is. So it's like, well, record it and give me the transcript and then I'll follow up with that and put it through. And if they don't have those options from, it seems from the report is that that's something that is is a frustration. 00:11:42 Mark McCormack That's exactly right. You may have a student. 00:11:44 Mark McCormack Who strongly prefers on site experiences. They want to be in the classroom with their instructor, with their peers, but knowing that they have that option, knowing that they have that flexibility because life happens, you get sick. Maybe you're you're caretaking for a parent or whatever it is to know that you have that option. That flexibility, I think, goes a long way. 00:12:05 Mark McCormack And helping students with their stress, their anxiety, their mental well-being, and I think the other thing we're seeing with this year's survey. 00:12:15 Mark McCormack As students are distinguishing between what they themselves prefer personally, whether it's just for convenience or just. 00:12:25 Mark McCormack Style. Hey, I I really like to be in the classroom. They're distinguishing between that and what they see as an ethical imperative to offer choice and options. So we had just the I, I think the slight majority of students in general prefer certain course activities to be on site. 00:12:43 Mark McCormack But the vast majority of students also expressed a desire for the instructors to make choices available to all students. So there's that. 00:12:51 Mark McCormack I know what works for me, but I also know that that may not. 00:12:54 Mark McCormack Work for other students and. 00:12:57 Mark McCormack And I I support that and I think that that our course design and the ways we engage in learning should support that as well. 00:13:04 Kevin Hogan And you mentioned the guy talking about students with disabilities and impairments and how they're significantly less satisfied with their technology supports and experiences and maybe? 00:13:17 Kevin Hogan Again, I I continue to cap things in pre pandemic versus post pandemic that maybe that was something where they just before they were given these additional tools and say wow, I'm actually much more effective participating in class work. What it involves me participating remotely versus in person. If someone maybe has social anxieties and. 00:13:36 Kevin Hogan In terms of in person conversations that they can participate here, what about those learning modality preferences there? Is that something that they're the tools have been there and they just haven't been used? Are they now using new technologies, talk a little bit more about it? It seems like that's a really interesting aspect of the results. I think even just. 00:13:56 Kevin Hogan Asking students that question to begin with is an advancement. 00:14:03 Mark McCormack My sense of that based on this year's survey data and what we've seen in some of the previous years, is that a lot of those tools, a lot of those technologies have have been available, but maybe they've been confined in a certain program or in smaller pockets of the institution. 00:14:19 Mark McCormack I think what's different now right is that that we're we're seeing more systematic institution wide implementation of some of these tools and and technologies and so there's. 00:14:30 Mark McCormack A really big push or desire now for more faculty development and training and the use of these tools where whereas in previous years some faculty may have had the luxury of. 00:14:41 Mark McCormack You know, but. 00:14:42 Mark McCormack I'm going to teach in the modality that I'm comfortable in. 00:14:44 Kevin Hogan Right, that's the way I've done it for, for. 00:14:46 Kevin Hogan 30 years and. 00:14:47 Mark McCormack That's yeah. Yeah, exactly. Or hey, I'm a really forward, you know, technology focused instructor and I'm going to dive all into online because that's what I want. And so you'll see in some of our previous data, we've asked a lot about previous use of these modalities or previous engagement. 00:15:04 Mark McCormack In these modalities was really predictive of current and intended future use. So you you, you do what you're comfortable with. I think at at least for some institutions, faculty may not have. 00:15:16 Mark McCormack Quite that, that same luxury now. And they're they're having to adapt to some of these new tools and technologies in ways that maybe they didn't have to previously. 00:15:26 Mark McCormack And that the the good news is and and this is tying into our faculty report, I know we're we're talking about the student report primarily, but one of the encouraging things that we found in our faculty report. 00:15:36 Mark McCormack Is that the faculty really are motivated by what their students need and what's going to be best. 00:15:41 Mark McCormack For their students, even in those modalities that they're not really comfortable with, or that they feel a little resistant to if they know that it's going to benefit their students and that it's a value to their students, then that's what they want to do. 00:15:54 Mark McCormack Then I think it's just a matter of. 00:15:56 Mark McCormack Equipping those faculty and making sure they understand the most effective way to use those tools and technologies. So I think that's going to be a big area of growth and development for institutions is not just bringing faculty along in terms of support and buy in, but bringing them along in terms of capabilities and the training and tools that they need. 00:16:16 Kevin Hogan What would you say were your biggest surprises coming out from the results? I mean some of the key findings seem to me like, well that this, this kind of seems obvious that the students living off campus, they might learn more towards online activities versus that that kid who's at the door, who wants to get out of that dorm room and get into a classroom. But were there any any sort of? 00:16:35 Kevin Hogan Things coming out of it where it's like, wow, that was. 00:16:37 Kevin Hogan Kind of unusual or interesting. 00:16:40 Mark McCormack So I'd say the first thing that really struck me or or stood out to me and the data was the. 00:16:45 Mark McCormack Power of choice. 00:16:46 Mark McCormack And that variable we have there where we ask students, are your instructors giving you the choice of how you engage in these different course activities, which modality you're engaging in with these activities and just how that variable, that single variable correlates? 00:17:01 Mark McCormack So positively and so powerfully with some of the other measures of their satisfaction with their course experiences and some of the other hybrid course related measure. 00:17:12 Mark McCormack So that's something that came out pretty loud and clear from our survey that I think is going to be worth further exploring and discussing with our faculty and our IT and technology leaders and thinking about how they can structure some of that choice and allow for some of that choice within the confines of what they're able to do and what's possible and what's feasible for the institution. 00:17:32 Mark McCormack So that's the first thing, the second thing. 00:17:35 Mark McCormack I would say, and this is it's very obvious and and and you alluded to this, but it's still it really stood out to me and struck me the the importance of the Internet. 00:17:45 Mark McCormack And I'm sure you're you're thinking. Well, duh. And everyone listening is thinking of, of course, the Internet matters. 00:17:51 Mark McCormack But it, especially as we look at what's happening around higher red right now, people are talking about the enrollment Cliff, declining enrollments declines in the perceived value of a college degree. And I think the role of the student as a consumer in the education marketplace is going to become. 00:18:11 Mark McCormack Even more important, moving forward than it is today. 00:18:16 Mark McCormack So when when you look at something like Internet quality? 00:18:20 Mark McCormack And and you think about the fact that in a a number of other studies that have been done, Internet is at the top of the list or near the top of the list of. 00:18:29 Mark McCormack The amenities that students need and want when they're looking at housing options. 00:18:34 Mark McCormack So when you consider that. 00:18:35 Mark McCormack Also watching her right. 00:18:38 Mark McCormack Absolutely. And when you consider the the increasingly diverse options that students have available to them in terms. 00:18:45 Mark McCormack Of where they're logging into to do their learning, and even the types of programs or places or organizations they're going to for their learning. 00:18:55 Mark McCormack The the importance of understanding those obvious quote UN quote needs that students have as consumers, as human beings, who as we were saying earlier, are always online, even when they're not. 00:19:11 Mark McCormack So it was an obvious finding, but it it felt like we needed to really surface that and emphasize that point for institutions. Hey, this is an amenity that. 00:19:21 Mark McCormack Is only going to increase in significance for the students and what we heard in the survey again, and we've heard this the last several years, there are important areas of student life where they are really dissatisfied with the quality of Internet and their ability to access and get online. That's not an. 00:19:40 Kevin Hogan Important. Yeah, now this generation of college students continues to fascinate me, and it it actually encouraged me because they're so self aware about their own learning journeys. And you talk about being consumers. They're painfully aware of the costs and the. 00:20:00 Kevin Hogan Yeah. The the potential debt that they're putting themselves in, the investment that they're putting into what they want to do, and again and you're right, I mean, they're living online and unless you have solid-state always on. 00:20:15 Kevin Hogan They're not going to. 00:20:16 Mark McCormack Stand for it, right? We could probably be a little kind of laugh at it a little bit or be a little cheeky about it, but a student who's paying 10s of thousands of dollars to. 00:20:24 Mark McCormack Get their degree and. 00:20:27 Mark McCormack They can't get online to play Grand Theft Auto every night, and their dorm room. 00:20:32 Mark McCormack There's they're doing that equation in their in. 00:20:35 Mark McCormack Their mind. Yeah, yeah. 00:20:38 Kevin Hogan I'm. I'm going where the band was. 00:20:39 Kevin Hogan Better. Yeah, right. 00:20:44 Kevin Hogan Yeah, I knew the toughest part of this conversation would be the end if we could go on there. There's so much data in here and there's so many different multifaceted ways that our listeners and our, our, our readers can really kind of gain out of this, but. 00:20:56 Kevin Hogan Talk about where you see the horizon in two or three years. I mean, we're talking about this current generation of codes in four years. There's going to be probably even more of a demanding audience coming into to this crowd. But you know, kind of extrapolate from. 00:21:11 Kevin Hogan What you got out of this and where you see the state of play of learning? 00:21:16 Kevin Hogan Modalities in the next two or three. 00:21:19 Mark McCormack I mentioned before this idea of the the looming enrollment Cliff and and and at the same time we know that institutions have an opportunity to serve more and more what you might call non traditional students and so. 00:21:35 Mark McCormack Institutions may be growing into spaces like lifelong learning or. 00:21:40 Mark McCormack Credentialing, micro credentialing for adult learners at different stages of their career and so that there are these. 00:21:47 Mark McCormack Other avenues of education that I think are going to increasingly open up to institutions. 00:21:53 Mark McCormack And part of what we try to. 00:21:54 Mark McCormack Emphasize in this report. 00:21:56 Mark McCormack Is that those new audiences for institutions? There are some locational implications for those new audiences. 00:22:05 Mark McCormack You're you're looking at. 00:22:07 Mark McCormack Single parents, students who are who are married and have a. 00:22:12 Mark McCormack These differences between different student populations in terms of how they like to or want to or need to engage in learning. 00:22:21 Mark McCormack Those differences are are only going to become more important over the next few years as institutions learn how to adapt to these different audiences, right? I think different audiences will bring with them different technology needs, different modality needs. And So what we've learned over the last few years is that. 00:22:41 Mark McCormack We can be flexible when we need to. 00:22:44 Mark McCormack And I think what institutions are going to continue to realize over the next few years is that need for flexibility is not. 00:22:52 Mark McCormack Going to go. 00:22:53 Mark McCormack Away and so. 00:22:54 Mark McCormack We're we're out of emergency response and now we need to think about long term. 00:22:59 Mark McCormack How to adapt? 00:22:59 Mark McCormack To these things. 00:23:01 Mark McCormack How to express these things through institutional policies? 00:23:06 Mark McCormack Staffing how your institution is organized. 00:23:11 Mark McCormack I I think this demand for flexibility is is a long term thing that institutions. 00:23:15 Mark McCormack Are going to have to adapt to. 00:23:17 Kevin Hogan And ultimately, maybe it's just a perverse benefit that came out of the, you know, the shift in the the pandemic pivots that institutions had to make just to, as you said, come out of survival mode. Now we use those tools and they become standard state. So Mark, thanks again for your, for your time. We could talk about this stuff in person. 00:23:38 Kevin Hogan At edgy cause in Chicago this month. 00:23:41 Kevin Hogan We can try some different modalities. 00:23:42 Kevin Hogan In terms of having our conversation. 00:23:47 I love that term. That sounds great. Yeah, and. 00:23:50 Kevin Hogan Look forward to, you know, digging in even deeper to your work and once again appreciate the work that you do at Edge cause because it it's a benefit for not only the institutions themselves, but ultimately the students. So great talking. 00:24:01 Mark McCormack To you? Well, thank you, Kevin. That's why we're here. That, that's what what we hope to do. So I I appreciate that, Kevin. 00:24:08 Kevin Hogan And that's a wrap for this month's edition of Innovations and Education. I hope you enjoyed it and hope you subscribe for future episodes. 00:24:17 Kevin Hogan This episode of Innovations and Education is brought to you by Renkus-Heinz. 00:24:23 Kevin Hogan Quality audio is crucial to create a productive and engaging learning environment for students. 00:24:30 Kevin Hogan And professors should be able to focus on teaching, not troubleshooting, complex technology. 00:24:37 Kevin Hogan At Renkus-Heinz, their hassle free loud speakers consistently deliver crystal clear audio to every corner of the classroom, ensuring every student hears every word. 00:24:51 Kevin Hogan Elevate classroom engagement and learning outcomes with the Renkus-Heinz sound solution. 00:24:56 Kevin Hogan [email protected].