For many online and professional continuing education units, the primary barrier to adopting artificial intelligence is not access to tools, it is uncertainty about where to begin and how to proceed without disrupting daily operations. Leaders are often balancing innovation with stability, making it difficult to introduce new approaches without clear structure. A focused, time-bound strategy can reduce that ambiguity. A 90-day adoption…
The “traditional” student is quickly becoming a relic of a bygone era. The future of enrollment is concentrated in new, non-traditional markets: adult learners seeking rapid re-skilling, dual-enrolled high school students, and the millions of Americans with “some college, no credential” who represent a significant scalable opportunity for growth. Universities know they must pivot decisively…
The spring semester is coming to a close with the normal host of routines. Yet, beneath those routines, something is unfolding in the labor market that will greet your new graduates who will face an incrementally tighter job market. I asked Claude Sonnet 4.6 Extended Thinking to research the tasks relevant to preparing our new…
Technologists, economists, and visionaries are warning us that in the next three to 18 months, we are going to experience rapid and pervasive disruption of our professional lives, workplace models, and distribution of income. Professional positions requiring college degrees will be lost, remade into highly-productive, cost-efficient, hybrid human-AI models where human contributions and compensation will…
The Benefits of Higher-Order Multiple-Choice Tests (Inside Higher Ed)
In an excellent column, Ray Schroeder, senior fellow for the Association of Leaders in Online and Professional Education, laments the tendency for many instructors to rely on text-specific test banks as source material for student assessment. Not only are these inquiries susceptible to cheating, he says, they assess lower-order, nonlocalized and therefore less relevant knowledge like…
UPCEA Announces New Leadership and Name for Chief Online Learning Officer Group
Council for Chief Online Learning Officers (C-COLO) is the body for senior leaders charged with driving online strategy at the unit or campus level WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 23, 2021) — UPCEA, the association for college and university leaders in professional, continuing, and online education, announced today that its body for chief online learning officers is…
Could a quantum leap someday aid ethical AI? (Pew Research Center)
As they considered the potential evolution of ethical AI design, the people responding to this canvassing were given the opportunity to speculate as to whether quantum computing (QC), which is still in its early days of development, might somehow be employed in the future in support of the development of ethical AI systems. […] Ray Schroeder, associate vice…
Is the Future of Higher Education a Subscription Model? (MarketScale)
Online learning was steadily growing pre-pandemic. Then it reached a considerable acceleration, but universities are taking a new look at their model to continue gaining new students and remaining solvent. The answer could be subscription-based learning. Discussing this topic and more, Voices of eLearning host JW Marshall spoke with Ray Schroeder, Associate Vice-Chancellor, University of…
The tagline for Convergence, Credential Innovation in Higher Education, raises two important questions: First, what kind of credentials are we talking about? Is the scope of credentials unlimited, blue sky, or confined to incremental changes on the margins of the status quo? And second, who is leading that innovation, and what do they need to…
We are pleased to share the foreword by UPCEA CEO Bob Hansen from the newly released Chief Online Learning Officers’ Guidebook: A Framework for Strategy and Practice in Higher Education. The guidebook, now available from Routledge in paperback, hardback, and eBook formats, provides a comprehensive framework for today’s online learning leaders. Learn more and purchase…
Online enrollment leaders don’t need another mandate to “use AI.” They need relief. Most teams are already stretched thin by demands to manage inquiry volume, follow-up expectations, data hygiene, and prospect responsiveness. They lack the capacity to take on yet another complex initiative, especially one that feels abstract or disruptive. AI mandates promise transformation when…
Discover how to explain AI SEO ROI to university leadership when attribution is imperfect, with insights and strategy from Search Influence. Across higher education, marketing teams are being asked to explain AI search visibility before institutions agree on how to measure it. Leadership discussions are moving quickly, while reporting frameworks remain centered on keyword rankings,…