On this week's episode of Quicksilver: The eLearning Alchemist, Daniel Litwin, the Voice of B2B, fills in for Clint Clarkson to do a quick analysis of how schools around the globe are implementing elearning solutions during the coronavirus pandemic. It's clearly a time of crisis for the world, and as more large buildings and businesses close their doors, the demand for online learning and retaining structure in our education system has become a top priority.
Before we get into the response from educators, how set-up were institutions for a large scale transition to online learning?
A survey of chief online officers, released by Quality Matters & Eduventures this week, sheds some light on that. Conducted in spring of 2019, the survey showed 70% of respondents didn't have any training for students on how to study online. Though some regional private schools fared better when breaking down the data, closer to 50% do have that online studying training, regional public schools were the ones least supported.
Educators were slightly better prepared, the survey found. Six in 10 online learning administrators say their campuses require professors to train before teaching online.
The survey also showed that most college professors produce their own online courses without additional instructional design infrastructure. One of the authors, Ronald Legon, executive director emeritus of Quality Matters, said it best. Quote, "I don’t think there’s a pipeline that could respond," Legon said. "That's a real problem if you're trying to do this at scale."