The Pulse of Higher Ed

By Vickie S. Cook, Ph.D.

The first two articles in this series explored how the updated UPCEA Hallmarks of Excellence in Digital Learning Enterprises reflect the evolution of digital learning from a specialized initiative into an institutional opportunity and responsibility, and how institutional intentionality creates the conditions that support learner success. Those ideas begin within the institution, but the work of a mature digital learning enterprise does not stop at the institutional boundary.

Institutions also have an opportunity to influence and learn from the communities, employers, policymakers, professional organizations, and other partners with whom they engage.

The External Advocacy Hallmark asks institutions to consider how effectively they represent the value of digital learning beyond their own campuses. External advocacy is more than promoting programs or communicating institutional accomplishments. It is an opportunity to build relationships, contribute expertise, understand emerging needs, and demonstrate how digital learning can extend the institution’s mission.

For leaders of digital learning enterprises, this creates a different kind of responsibility. The institution must not only develop effective practices internally. It must also be prepared to participate in the broader conversations shaping the future of higher education.

Moving Beyond Institutional Boundaries

Digital learning has changed who institutions can serve through expanded learner access, and the types of relationships institutions can develop with the communities around them.

Geography no longer defines an institution’s reach in the way it once did. An online learner may live across town, across the state, across the country, or internationally. Employers may look to institutions for educational partnerships that address rapidly changing workforce needs. Policymakers and regulators make decisions that affect how institutions serve learners across state and national boundaries. Professional associations and higher education organizations provide opportunities to learn from one another and influence emerging practices.  These relationships help determine the influence an institution can have beyond its own boundaries.

External advocacy begins with an institution understanding where it can contribute and where it needs to listen. Institutions have expertise to share, but external partners also provide perspectives that may not be visible from inside the university. Conversations with employers may reveal emerging skill needs. Engagement with community organizations can identify populations whose educational needs are not being met. Participation in professional organizations can expose institutions to new practices and provide opportunities to shape broader conversations about quality, access, regulation, and innovation. External advocacy, then, is not simply about telling the institution’s story. It is also about remaining connected to the environment in which the institution operates.

Building Relationships That Extend the Mission

The External Advocacy Hallmark encourages institutions to develop relationships with a broad range of external stakeholders, including policymakers, employers, professional associations, community organizations, alumni, and other higher education institutions.

The value of each of these relationships depends on their purpose. An employer partnership, for example, can become much more than a source of prospective learners. When institutions listen carefully to employers, they gain insight into changing workforce expectations, emerging competencies, and opportunities that exist for new credentials or programs. Employers, in turn, gain a stronger understanding of the institution’s educational mission and the value its learners bring to the workplace.

Relationships with policymakers and regulatory organizations serve a different purpose. Digital learning operates within an increasingly complex environment involving authorization, accreditation, accessibility, consumer protection, financial aid, and other regulatory considerations. Institutions that participate thoughtfully in these conversations can help policymakers better understand how decisions affect learners and institutions in practice.

Professional associations and higher education networks provide yet another opportunity. Sharing effective practices, contributing to research, participating in national conversations, and learning from peer institutions strengthen both the individual institution and the larger digital learning community. None of these activities is simply outreach. At their best, they create a two-way exchange between the institution and the world it serves.

Putting the Hallmark into Practice

External advocacy may look different depending on institutional mission, geography, learner population, and organizational priorities. A regional public university may emphasize relationships with employers and communities within its state. An institution serving a national population may be more deeply engaged with multistate regulatory issues, national employers, or professional associations. Other institutions may have international partnerships that expand both their reach and their responsibility. There is no single model. What matters is whether external engagement is intentional, sustained, and connected to institutional purpose.

Institutions might begin by considering several questions. Who are the external stakeholders most important to the success of our learners and programs? Where does our institution have expertise that could contribute to broader conversations? What are we learning from employers, alumni, community partners, and other institutions? Are those insights finding their way back into academic planning and institutional decision-making? These questions move external advocacy beyond visibility. They connect external advocacy to institutional learning. A strong digital learning enterprise should not only influence its external environment. It should also be influenced by what it learns there.

Measuring Progress

As with the other Hallmarks, External Advocacy includes Key Performance Indicators that help institutions move from aspiration to evidence.

The indicators provide an opportunity to examine whether external relationships are producing meaningful results. The Hallmark looks broadly at evidence of external engagement, quality and learner success, public awareness, diversified revenue streams, and leadership within the larger online education ecosystem. Evidence may take many forms, including sustained partnerships, participation in professional and policy conversations, positive external quality reviews, grant and collaborative funding, cross-sector initiatives, or recognition of the institution’s digital learning expertise.

The measures themselves are important, but the conversations behind them may be even more useful. Institutions can ask whether their external engagement is helping them better understand the needs of learners and employers. Institutions can examine whether external relationships are informing program development, institutional strategy, and learner support. They can also consider whether the institution is contributing knowledge and experience that strengthens digital learning beyond its own programs.

Used in this way, the Key Performance Indicators become more than measures of external activity. They provide benchmarks for understanding the institution’s influence, responsiveness, and contribution to the broader higher education community.

Leadership Reflection

If you mapped the people and organizations outside your institution that influence the success of your digital learning enterprise, who would be on that map? More importantly, where are you actively listening, contributing, and building relationships.  Are we able to demonstrate learner outcomes and institutional quality when we participate in external conversations? Where are important voices still missing? How might you connect?

External advocacy provides institutions with an opportunity to extend their impact while remaining responsive to the changing world around them. The upcoming Hallmarks webinar offers an opportunity to hear directly from contributing authors about the thinking that shaped this Hallmark and to continue the conversation about what meaningful external advocacy looks like across different institutions.

The Hallmarks describe what excellent digital learning enterprises look like. Leadership determines whether institutions become one.

Continue the Conversation …

To explore Hallmark 6 in greater depth:

• Download the UPCEA Hallmarks of Excellence in Digital Learning Enterprises.
• Review the Key Performance Indicators for Hallmark 6: External Advocacy and Leadership Beyond the Institution.
• Register for the upcoming Hallmarks webinar series:
  • September 9 at 1:00 PM Eastern: External Advocacy & Professionalism
  • September 22 at 1:00 PM Eastern: Technology & Digital Innovation

Vickie Cook is a nationally recognized higher education leader specializing in enrollment strategy, online and digital learning, organizational transformation, team development, and leadership growth. She currently serves as a Senior Fellow and Strategic Advisor for UPCEA, and is a Contributing Editor for the Hallmarks of Excellence in Digital Learning Enterprises.