George Veletsianos, PhD

Understanding how many colleges and universities in North America use remote proctoring technologies matters to students, faculty, staff, and administrators, and it is important for practical, scholarly, and ethical reasons. Beyond rough estimates and statements on proctoring software sites, there’s little data on the prevalent of proctoring software. Royce Kimmons and I tried to estimate proctoring software penetration by programmatically searching 2,155 college and university websites in the U.S. (n = 1,923) and Canada (n = 232) to determine how widely these tools and services were being used. We found that nearly 63% of colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada use proctoring software, with U.S. institutions being much more likely to use them than Canadian institutions. We report our detailed results in EDUCAUSE review.

Coursera has filed for an IPO, and here’s the S-1 form. The form is worth a read, if nothing else to get a sense of how the company sees itself. A few quick thoughts:

• Coursera had 3 revenue streams in 2020:
  • consumer revenues ($192.9 million) – these are revenues directly from individuals (think a learner who bus a subscription)
  • enterprise revenues ($70.8 million) – these are from organisations (e.g., government) using coursera courses for training or universities using coursera courses for their students
  • degree revenues ($29.8 million) – these is the online program management (OPM) part of the company.
• What does 2020 signify for Coursera? Is it the peak, as the world turned to online/remote learning? Or is it the year where the enterprise and degree offerings became regular parts of other organizations’ offerings? S-1 is transparent on this: “The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted, and may continue to impact, our business, key metrics, and results of operations in volatile and unpredictable ways.”
• (Unsurprising to anyone, but worth mentioning that) Coursera is also a data company: “We leverage our large partner and customer base, our engaged learner community, and our focus on user-driven innovation to aggregate feedback on features and functionality and consistently improve our offerings and platform.”
• The ongoing partnership with Google is interesting from a job-search/matching perspective, though the S-1 doesn’t include explicit mention the new offerings launched on March 11, 2021.
• About half of Coursera’s revenue comes from the US, even though over 80% of learners come from outside the US.

Disclosure and disclaimer: I hold no stake or investments in education or educational technology companies/startups. The above is not financial advice, and if you’re considering investing in this space you should talk to a financial advisor.

Online learning is often framed in terms of flexibility, notably flexibility to participate in education from “anyplace” at “anytime.” Flexible designs are powerful – they allow enable access and enhance participation. But, such flexibility may not be afforded to everyone equally. Put differently, flexibility as a design feature or value may make courses more flexible, may accommodate schedules, but not everyone is able to equally take advantage of such flexibility. In other words: Some people are able to exercise more flexibility in their life than others, for a variety of factors, such as financial means, family support, etc etc. We have questioned the degree to which flexibility is equitable here and here, where we have argued that we need to stop assuming that flexible learning benefits everyone equally.

In a new paper, we provide some empirical support for these arguments. Here’s the abstract:

Flexible learning removes barriers relating to time, place, and pace. While time management skills have been identified as necessary for learners to take advantage of flexible learning, relatively little is known about the temporal dimensions of flexible learning and how gender might relate to temporal flexibility and its perceived benefits. To address this gap, we analyzed data from 380,000 students participating in two massive open online courses to create a model that predicts course completion likelihood from learner time management behaviors and gender. Results supported most a priori assumptions. Successful course completers logged in frequently, devoted longer amounts of time to each session, moved quickly through course materials, and completed coursework early. However, consistent study was associated with lower course completion likelihood, and women benefited more from reduced consistency. These findings suggest that temporal flexibility may especially benefit women.

Veletsianos, G., Kimmons, R. Larsen, R., & Rogers, J. (in press). Flexibility, Time, Gender, and Online Learning Completion. Distance Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1869523 or author’s copy.

In March 2020, just a few days before higher education institutions and k-12 in North America shuttered down, my colleagues Shandell Houlden and I published a short op-ed. There’s one point in that op-ed continues to continues require our attention. There’s a second point that did not make it into the published version for a number of reasons, but also requires our attention. March 2020 would have been a great time to address these two issues. February 2021 is still a good time, so I am posting them here

The need for skill and preparedness should serve as a reminder that institutions need to cultivate their in-house pedagogical and online learning expertise. The process of unbundling and outsourcing that many institutions have engaged in with respect to online learning in recent years–while enabling them to benefit from the expertise of others–leaves institutions vulnerable to third parties. When Phipps writes that a vendor “offered their platform for free to students in China for three weeks” we should heed Ayebi-Arthur’s recommendation, who in writing about educational technology responses to the 2011 earthquake in New Zealand, notes that such free gifts “set in motion long-term expectations that need to be managed.”

[Main points: Cultivate online learning expertise; short-term responses vs. long-term efforts/expectations/processes; be suspicious of “free” offers, as edtech has a history of bait-and-switch offers]

Notably, these lessons will apply beyond higher education. Many K-12 schools faced closures in 2009 in response to the H1N1pandemic, and this is newly becoming a possibility outside of China. The challenges faced here will also be somewhat different, as caregivers negotiate work and children, a struggle which many people are ill-prepared for.

[Main points: Inequities; some people have the resources, knowledge, skills, social-economic-cultural capital, and power to cope and manage and thrive while some do not; e.g., new NBER research [pdf] showing how women academics, especially mothers of young children have been disproportionately impacted] 

We ended with this: “In this increasingly unstable world, crises potentially impact our education systems as much as anything else in their way. This will be true whether the crisis is caused by the circulation of a new pathogen, or something else entirely: war, flooding, or wildfire, as are more common due to climate change. What we have before us is a stark reminder that we should approach the promises of technological solutionism with caution. Flexible and resilient educational systems require more than tools. They demand collaboration, preparation, expertise, resources, and use of lessons learned in the past.”