The Rise of the Chief Online Learning Officer

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0:00:13.3 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Today, we take a deep dive into the evolving role of the Chief Online Learning Officer to find out what it takes to succeed in this pivotal position and discover what the future holds for online learning. So give these folks a listen and enjoy.

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0:00:37.6 Jennifer Lerner: Hello, and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Jennifer Lerner, and I’m Senior Director of EAB’s Professional and Adult Education Advisory Services. My team conducts research on anything related to professional, adult, continuing, graduate, and online education from. I’m thrilled today to be joined by two guests from outside EAB, the authors of a new book called the Chief Online Learning Officer’s Guidebook. Before we dig into a discussion about the role of the Chief Online Learning Officer, or COLO, as we call them, let me have them introduce themselves. Jocelyn, can we start with you?

0:01:13.2 Jocelyn Widmer: Sure. Thanks for having us, Jennifer. I’m Jocelyn Widmer. I’m the Dean for Weapons Learning Transformation at Los Alamos National Laboratory and I’m responsible for classified learning management and really digging in deep on a learning strategy, the weapons program at Los Alamos.

0:01:32.8 Jennifer Lerner: Wonderful. Thank you. And Tom.

0:01:35.5 Thomas Cavanagh: I am Tom Cavanagh. I’m Vice Provost for Digital Learning at the University of Central Florida in Sunny Orlando.

0:01:43.9 Jennifer Lerner: Wonderful. Thank you. So it is great to have you both here. Let’s dive into talking about COLOs. I am a past COLO myself before coming to EAB, so I was really excited to see this book come out. Jocelyn, can you maybe start us out by telling us a bit about why you and Tom saw a need for this book?

0:02:04.6 Jocelyn Widmer: Yeah, it really started organically. This book started from a series of conversations, and Tom was one of those early conversations. So I was in my role as a COLO at a. At a large institution, large research, one institution. And we were kind of coming out of the. The throes of COVID and getting back into the student conferences and having the chance to meet face to face with various individuals, a lot of those who we had never really gotten a chance to meet face to face. And so I started having kind of informal conversations, coffee, dinner in the case of me and Tom, and found myself pretty routinely asking about seven of the same questions to what ended up being mostly COLOs. And these were… It was about trying to understand… So I was somewhat new to the role, but also trying to get a unit up off the ground during COVID and lots of leadership changes, and lots of boss changes for myself. So every time that happened, every time I got a new boss, and Tom says it very eloquently, he talks about you have to onboard your boss. So I was really doing some of that fact-finding for myself as I knew I was going to get kind of a new leadership regime. And the conversations kind of started to reveal some interesting trends and patterns, and insights. And that’s kind of when Tom comes into the picture. I was asked to present some of these insights to the COLO group of UPCEA. And that was convening, I think it kind of a new convening at that time, and Tom was chair of that committee. And I’ll kind of turn things over to Tom to finish the rest of the story.

0:03:56.4 Thomas Cavanagh: Yeah, well, I was just so impressed by all of the research that Jocelyn had done talking to was it like 100 plus different people? And she had compiled all of these learnings about the role in sort of this post COVID moment in the competencies that were required and how to just approach the job that I asked her to share with the rest of the COLOs on this committee. But then we realized this needs to be a little more broad, and so we asked her to share it at the SOLAR Roundtable as part of the UPCEA SOLAR conference. But I said to her, others need to see this. I think you should turn this into a book. I think you’ve got a book here. And she agreed and invited me to collaborate with her on it. So that’s where it came from. And it really is intended to help sitting COLOs understand the competencies associated with the job. And they’re based on the eight competencies that UPCEA uses to define PCO leadership, but also aspiring COLOs. So if you are looking at that as a potential next move in your career or an eventual move in your career, you can look at those competencies and see where you might have some gaps, where you might be strong, but also gaps so that you can develop your own personal professional development plan to fill those gaps and be able to go for one of those jobs at some point.

0:05:25.1 Thomas Cavanagh: And then it’s not bad if like I’ve got a copy here, I’ve got a brand new provost. Speaking of onboarding your new boss, I’m going to hand it him a copy of that book and say, this is what I do. This is a great way to understand my job. I don’t know if he’ll read it. I hope he does. But I think having people, maybe in the C-suite, in the President’s cabinet, maybe even on a board, really understand what this is as it becomes more strategic across institutional missions. I think it’s not a position you can take for granted anymore.

0:06:01.1 Jennifer Lerner: Thank you both. I think what’s really challenging often about the COLO role is that it can feel very isolating. You’re typically one person at your institution who’s a COLO. Many other folks at your institution maybe don’t understand online learning all that much, whether it’s your boss or your peers in other administrative roles. And so I think that’s part of the power of the book too, that you’re bringing together all those voices to reduce some of that isolation. You can have this network within the book of other folks and other voices at all types of institutions taking on this kind of role. So you are both COLOs yourselves, and you talked to lots of other folks in the writing of this book, new and experienced. What would you say has changed the most in the role of the COLO over the past maybe 15 years?

0:06:53.3 Thomas Cavanagh: Wow, what a great question. And I will echo what you said about the importance of the network. That does show up in the book. We talk about that and how important it is because you’re right. We’ve got 13 deans on my campus. I’m the only vice provost for digital learning, right? So nobody else sort of really understands what I’m going through unless I talk to somebody at another school who’s got the same job. And the cultivation of those networks, I think, is really important, not just for professional development but also kind of have a sounding board that’s sort of safe and personal sanity maybe sometimes. What’s changed in the last 15 years in the role, I think, is mirrored by the changes in online learning in the last 15 years. Go back 15 years ago. How strategic was online learning at most schools? Probably not a lot. There were a few. I think I’m fortunate to be at one where it was, but not everybody was. And over that decade and a half, I think that’s changed a lot. And in fact, if you are a school and you don’t have an answer for why or why not you’re doing online learning, that is intentional and thoughtful and tied to the mission, it’s almost malpractice. I’m not saying everybody has to do it.

0:08:20.4 Thomas Cavanagh: There might be reasons why an institution doesn’t want it. You’re a service academy or a seminary or a sculpture school or something, right? But I think you have to have an intentional reason why. It can’t just be that we didn’t think of it or we didn’t think it was important. The post-COVID generation of students are showing up on your campus expecting digital service, digital learning. And who better to deal with that than the person responsible for online learning at your institution? And it’s no longer, I think, just like a half-time assignment of somebody in the library who’s responsible for it or somebody in IT who kind of runs the server or whatever. This is a for-reals, legit leadership position on campus that is responsible for a large portfolio. More than 60% of the credit hours at my 70,000 student institution passed through my shop. That’s a lot, right? And that’s a lot of pressure. And it becomes strategic when every one of those credit hours has a dollar sign associated with it. So I think institutions have to recognize that. And I think that’s the biggest role, the elevation of the importance and the recognition that it’s strategic now. It’s not just some sort of tactical or maybe like extension appendage to an institution. It’s core now.

0:09:36.8 Jennifer Lerner: Yeah, I think that that piece about it being core is so key. I often talk about how when I started as a COLO, I was sort of operating off in a corner. No one really cared what I was doing. I was just the weird person in the corner innovating on this online thing that no one really understood. Now you’re central to the institution. Now you are central to the institution’s finances, as you said. And that changes the nature of the job entirely, really. Jocelyn, if I could flip that question a little bit for you. You talk to all these COLOs. What do you think has stayed the same about the role over the past 15 years?

0:10:18.1 Jocelyn Widmer: I think, first and foremost, it’s the focus on learners and how we serve those learners who have, as Tom mentioned, certain expectations. Online education, I had somebody tell me this when I was interviewing for actually for a COLO role. It’s probably been seven or so years now. And she framed it so perfectly. She said the online learning is a choice. And at that point, kind of everybody associated with it from the faculty side, that was a choice to teach online. Things have changed for sure. But learners make an intentional choice around the modality in which they study in a lot of ways. I think some of those lines have become blurred over the last couple of years. But I think that focus on learners is certainly key. The other piece that online learning does that I think we don’t amplify enough at the institutional level is the ability for it to serve at large scales and really address that access mission. I’ve always been at land-grant universities, so the access mission is something that’s integral to the narrative of the brand and the research enterprise and the academic enterprise. And online education is just such a seamless connection to that access mission.

0:11:45.1 Jocelyn Widmer: I think we saw that in ways that we were really surprised by during a large swath of the C-suite was surprised by how quickly we could make our bricks and mortar institutions accessible via online and digital learning. And so I think that’s something that has been scaled and amplified because of COVID. And this role, this COLO role certainly has helped in that front. I should say, so Bob Hansen, the CEO of UPCEA, wrote the foreword and I would be interested if he were the other person in the digital room right now, his take on this. So he wrote his foreword and framed it the decade of the COLO. And we had lots of back-and-forth conversations on where our time horizons would start and stop on that one. But I think he ultimately landed that we’re amidst the decade of the COLO. So to Tom’s response and then my response about what’s staying the same or what endures, we’ve seen a lot of that maturation happen over this last decade. And the foreword written by Bob is a really wonderful summation of that.

0:13:00.5 Jennifer Lerner: Yeah, I love the focus on access. I think that is so key to online learning and really sometimes a challenge for some of our institutions, although access is part of the mission, sometimes not for quite the same group of students as online learning is meant to serve or does well at serving. And that can be a source of conflict, I think, as well as we grow. Let me ask about similarities and differences in another way. So you talked, again, to a wide range of COLOs in writing the book. What would you say are the things that most shape a COLO’s ability to get things done at their institution? And what are the factors that maybe affect that? Is it different by type of institution? Is it different by how long the institution has been functioning in the online learning space? What are the real key factors there?

0:13:54.0 Thomas Cavanagh: Well, you’re getting right at the heart of it, Jennifer. That is a really interesting question, and I’ll give my opinion. Curious to hear what Jocelyn thinks. But let me kind of frame it by saying that in the book we draw almost a parallel between the COLO and the CIO. And the ascendancy of the CIO role as a title and a function as a senior leadership position on a campus, if you looked back 30, 35 years ago, not every school would have had a CIO. But they do now, and it’s unthinkable to not have it. So we’ve sort of posited that the COLO is on a similar sort of trajectory, maybe without the same unanimity of title. But function and role, yes. So the CIO role, I used to report to a CIO, and it was interesting because I would get these surveys about, do you want to be the next CIO? And my answer was, I do not, thank you. But the competencies associated with success in being a CIO almost never had anything to do with network infrastructure and understanding the DAS and knowing what the technical stuff. That helped, and you really should know.

0:15:13.6 Thomas Cavanagh: But what was like the ingredient for success were sort of core leadership competencies. And I think the same is true for the COLO. And if you look at the eight competencies that UPCEA lays out for PCO leaders that serve as sort of the center core of our book, I think all but one are fairly generic sort of leadership kinds of competencies. And I think that makes sense, because I’m thinking about my own experience at a couple of institutions. And oftentimes, you have authority or you have responsibility without authority, and you have to get things done through other people. So it’s your ability to kind of forge working relationships and build coalitions where everybody sort of wins, align kind of a vision where we’re all kind of seeing the same objective and working towards it from our different perspectives, working with colleagues across campus who have different sorts of incentives, sometimes where you feel like there’s a zero-sum game for budget and resources and you’re competing and you’re trying to convince people to invest in you. All of that is not necessarily COLO unique, but I think are essential for the success of a COLO.

0:16:33.6 Thomas Cavanagh: Now, of course, add in all the technical stuff. You really should understand, you know, you need to know what the letters LMS stand for, right? And you really should know a little bit about instructional design and some technology and the state of the EdTech world. And nowadays, you better know what AI is doing on your campus and things like that. But I think the core of it, are those leadership competencies and being able to forge those relationships.

0:16:57.8 Jennifer Lerner: Yeah. Jocelyn, what do you think are the most important factors shaping your ability as a COLO to do things at your institution?

0:17:06.1 Jocelyn Widmer: Well, we navigate this quite a bit throughout the book. So I’m going to ground my response a little bit in the book and then also personal experience opinion. So we’ve got, I think it’s chapter one, where we lay out career trajectories and kind of the difference between stepping into a COLO role from a faculty perspective versus staff perspective, which, we all know COLOs that have had both career trajectories or maybe even outside of academia. So that’s something that we kind of put out there in the book at the onset, because I think whatever role you step into, faculty or staff, into that COLO role really will impact at least the onset of your experience and your ability to affect change. I myself came up through an academic trajectory, but didn’t have that academic credential at the institution. I was a COLO, and it was a hard stop with faculty senate. And you never felt like you had the ability to affect change on that academic side because you weren’t among peers. So that’s something, as I interviewed for COLO roles kind of the next time around, had really interesting conversations with provosts about that, and actually the provost who had hired me, she was at another institution.

0:18:23.1 Jocelyn Widmer: I was able to talk through that with her, and she had certainly changed her mind. The other piece that we explore in the book is the first 90 days. So that’s a chapter, I believe it’s chapter two. So we have a lot of COLOs who come, either ascend into the role from being from within the institution, or are new to the role. The role is new in the institution. The person is new in the institution, or, many, many combinations. And so we try to give at least acknowledgment to all of those situations and some of the challenges and opportunities. There’s no really one perfect way, I think, to come into this role and be successful. There’s certainly ways not to come into it, I would say, and the things that you’ve got to overcome. But it’s been really… It was interesting to be at SOLAR a couple of weeks ago and kind of have conversations with COLOs. Some of them now who contributed to the book, especially that first 90 days chapter, had been in their role maybe about a year now.

0:19:36.3 Jocelyn Widmer: And so many of our contributors came up to me, I don’t know, Tom, if you had some of the same conversations, but the word that was echoed over and over again was how validating the book was. And to Tom’s point, it’s a very isolating role. And so being successful at these institutions may kind of take different ingredients, but it absolutely is about the relationships. And it is about understanding the institution. And as somebody who has moved institutions, I personally think there’s value in coming in from the outside, but that’s not always valued on the inside. So we try to give kind of everybody who was coming in and had aspirations to come into these roles at different points of inflection, and kind of just a taste of what it might be like and what success was going to take. And to Tom’s earlier point, kind of where those individuals might need to at least have awareness or fill in competency and skills gaps to be able to be successful.

0:20:41.5 Jennifer Lerner: Yeah, I think this question of your just general reception at the institution, and in particular how it relates to both where you came from and where you report into at the institution, is so interesting. Tom, you mentioned you reported to a CIO. I did as well when I was a COLO, and it was such a point of contention, that feeling, as you were saying, Jocelyn, of, well, you’re not an academic because all of us who are academics report to the provost, right? And so you can’t have any say on the academic parts of this. You’re here to handle the LMS and the EdTech and guide us on that, but not the academic content. So we often get asked that at EAB. We’re creating the COLO role from scratch, or we’re creating a new online unit. What should the reporting line be? And there’s certainly no right answer to that, but in what I have observed, it is often easier when that role reports up through the academic structure that that leader is set up to have more productive conversations with the academic side of the house.

0:21:47.0 Thomas Cavanagh: There may not be a right answer, but I have opinions, right? Yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, at some point, our provost here at my institution said, I don’t think you should continue to report to the CIO. I think this should be a vice provost role, and I think you should report to me as the provost. It was sort of that inflection moment that a lot of schools are going through where they recognize that this is not a utility. This is a core part of our strategic academic enterprise, and it needs to be leveraged and treated as such. And I do think that the positioning of the reporting line makes a difference in that, one, it can be very effective because I have direct access to the provost. That’s helpful, right? I can have those conversations and ask for things or tell them about things. But also, it signifies to the campus, to both of your points, about where this fits in the vision of the university. And I’ll reference the book. One of our contributors is John O’Brien, the CEO of EDUCAUSE. And we had originally put John in the… Or asked him, to write his contribution for the CIO because it seems to make sense.

0:23:04.3 Thomas Cavanagh: And he came back to us and said, can I switch? I want to write the chapter about having a seat at the table. And that is something that he said has been a particular area of emphasis that he’s worked on in his time at EDUCAUSE to ensure that the CIOs have a seat at that table. And I think that is another sort of secret of success, and it has something to do with reporting lines. What is the COLO’s seat at the table? Are they in the room where it happens? We reference Hamilton in the book. And are they able to have a voice when those things… Are they on the provost council? Are they on the dean’s council? Are they on the cabinet? In some cases, some of our contributors are on the president’s cabinet. That seems to be more an exception. But there’s a few examples of it in the book. And so I think all of that’s really important in trying to set up this position and the institution for success.

0:24:02.2 Jocelyn Widmer: Yeah, and just one more piece on this that certainly comes up throughout the book and comes up in subsequent conversations that UPCEA has hosted among COLOs is that it continues to evolve. So it’s so important that COLOs can be flexible in that reporting line in their role because you get the house stacked and every position filled, and then one card falls and the whole regime changes. And so I know we have contributors in the book who reported under a president and then switched under a provost when a president comes in, and realizes, they have too many direct reports. I mean, that’s like the most common thing that happens. And there’s kind of this hot potato of these positions that aren’t those super core positions to what the leader knows or has experience with from a past institution. So while there is certainly an ideal state, I think it’s really important to acknowledge that we have a lot of flexibility. We may have a COLO who’s reached an ideal state, and then a couple of years later, it all shifts and they’ve got to make the best of it. And so that was something that I had quite a bit of experience and just shifting bosses so much, and it was always about trying to find the positive in your reporting regime.

0:25:25.5 Jennifer Lerner: Yeah, absolutely. And all of these comments really lead right into the next thing I wanted to ask about, which is, one obvious audience for this book is COLOs who are looking to learn from their peers, get guidance on the best ways to do their jobs. But I think another audience to consider, and Tom, you already alluded to this with handing this to your new leader, is leadership at the institution who might need to better understand online learning, what they might be looking for in a COLO, just understanding even the struggles that their COLO might be grappling with. So I wonder, Jocelyn, do you have thoughts on what you think leadership most typically needs to understand about the COLO role?

0:26:09.6 Jocelyn Widmer: Sure. So we, I mean, we already kind of tongue in cheek talked about onboarding of bosses. That’s a really important piece of the COLO role, if in fact that position above them changes. I mean, I think first and foremost is the complexity of the role and is the touch points, the multiple touch points that the COLO has that maybe a vice provost for student success has, you draw these kind of Venn diagrams of all of these positions and you just don’t have the broad swath in the other roles. This was actually something I started to do just kind of off to the side as I was having these conversations. And it actually was where I started to align the UPCEA competencies when I kind of sketched out these Venn diagrams, kind of multiple iterations and realized that the COLO role, it’s expansive of the academic affairs side, the operations side. I mean, there isn’t anybody who has a better, that should have a better relationship with the CIO on the academic side than the COLO. And you start thinking about the registrar and all of the enrollment management and how important the COLO is to all of those core AVP, vice provost type roles.

0:27:29.8 Jocelyn Widmer: So definitely complexity. The other piece that I think we’re going to start to see, this is my guess is, as we have financial constraints at institutions, there’s… The first thing that goes is travel and professional development. And we’ve said it already in this conversation, and it’s so clear in the book, how important that professional network is and the investment in that professional network that supervisor and bosses, leadership of Higher Ed institutions that understand that this is something that takes a constant investment in at the COLO level. And there’s been a lot of conversations around, what are COLOs doing for professional development? We look after our staff. And these networks and the investments that it takes to sustain them, to be involved at the leadership level among these professional organizations, and the expectations the professional organizations have once you become involved is not inconsequential. So that’s another piece that I can’t amplify enough, because I think it’s going to be… It’s just an easy thing to cut in terms of budgets.

0:28:43.5 Jennifer Lerner: Absolutely.

0:28:46.2 Thomas Cavanagh: I’ll add one thing, and it’s mostly just from talking to Jocelyn, because at a various point, you were transitioning from the institution you were at, and you ended up where you are now. But I know you had done a series of interviews. And based on what, if I recall you describing, some of the job descriptions for these COLO roles were a little unrealistic. Like they were looking for the unicorn, right, to come in and might not be setting the or having the proper expectations for what this person who would come in and do this job could do effectively, especially given the context of the school. So fortunately, I don’t think I’m in that situation at the moment, but I think it’s out there. And if you are building a job description to search for a position, maybe working with a search firm, even some of these positions are high enough that you do get contacted by search firms for them, that you want to make sure you’re accurately portraying what it is with all the opportunities and challenges associated with it, but not like just, oh, well, this will be the solution to our AI strategy, and this will be our solution, like our information technology policy. And like, you throw all this stuff in the basket just because you don’t know where else to put it is probably not the best solution.

0:30:09.7 Jocelyn Widmer: Yeah, that was something, I mean, as I was writing my parts, was thinking a lot about those interviews and those conversations with search firms and then also search committees and provosts and at times presidents, and the expectations were really unrealistic, much of the time. And so this book very much is, was intended to be a resource for those institutions who have yet to step into a place where they’ve got a COLO role. And so we hope this book will inform the position, the strategy, and kind of how that person ultimately brings all this to life if it doesn’t already exist. And there’s a lot of movement from centralized to decentralized or the other way. And that’s something that we wanted to… We did shine the light on in the book.

0:31:05.0 Jennifer Lerner: Well, we are already coming up on the end of our time, which is unbelievable. I would love to talk about centralized versus decentralized models, maybe another time. So But let’s end with a little future prognosticating, if we could, from each of you about where you see the world of online learning headed and what that means for how the COLO role is going to continue to evolve. Maybe we could start with you, Jocelyn.

0:31:29.2 Jocelyn Widmer: Yeah, I mean, now that I’m on the employer side, I think the relationships and connections and all of the infrastructure that’s needed to connect, just the tangible example, the comprehensive learner record, all of those types of systems and the data that those systems house and move between is, I think we need all the biggest and brightest minds on that continuity for our learners from Higher Ed into the workforce and then probably back into Higher Ed at many points throughout their professional career. And then also, I mean, the personalization, Tom and I, we don’t have time for us to wax poetic about some of our differences of opinions, on where AI is taking Higher Ed. But for sure, the personalization, I would guess we would both agree on that front. And particularly, as we have so much gen AI happening, it just calls into question, how and what are we learning? How are we learning? Where are we learning from? And what ways are we doing it? And I think it’s all headed in a direction that favors the learner.

0:32:43.9 Jennifer Lerner: What do you think, Tom? Future prognostication?

0:32:46.6 Thomas Cavanagh: Yeah, so if I sort of look near midterm kind of future, I don’t think any of us are safe doing long-term future prediction. I think definitely personalization, Jocelyn mentioned that. But if you look at sort of the broader Higher Ed trends that are happening, things like the enrollment cliff, the decline in the high school graduates, but a huge growth in the some credits, no degree population, adult learners, you look at the expansion of AI on campus, the post-COVID generation, all of these things, the COLO sits right in the middle of and has really the perspective to help guide the institution on a strategy to address all of those things. One brief example, we talk about this in the book, and it’s something I’ve thought a lot about employer partnerships. I think that we could be approaching a time where people will leave high school and go right into the workforce, but choose an employer that offers tuition benefits, much like they go into the military for tuition assistance or the GI Bill so that they can get their education paid for. Go work for Amazon or Starbucks or someplace, and you make your choice on where you’re going to go work and then get your degree as opposed to getting your degree and then choosing where you’re going to go work.

0:34:26.5 Thomas Cavanagh: I could see an evolution like that easily happening, especially with large employers and workforce competition. The COLO is the one that can help formulate that strategy, forge those partnerships, and really be a solution provider for these employers as we go forward. That’s just one example. Any of those areas, I think you could point to the COLO’s role in it.

0:34:51.2 Jennifer Lerner: Absolutely. Well, this has been a pleasure. If folks want to pick up a copy of Jocelyn and Tom’s book, The Chief Online Learning Officer’s Guidebook, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes to help you find it. If you’re interested in digging further into the question of the future of online learning and how institutions are growing online enrollment or struggling to do so in today’s competitive landscape, we’d also love to have you join us at one of our fall executive roundtables here at EAB where we’ll be debuting some new research on this topic. So we’ll put the link for more information for those events in the show notes as well. Tom and Jocelyn, thank you both so much for being here and sharing a bit of what we can learn from your book.

0:35:36.5 Thomas Cavanagh: Thank you, Jennifer, for having us, and also thanks to EAB for allowing us to use one of your images and a little bit of your reference in our book.

0:35:44.1 Jennifer Lerner: It was our pleasure.

0:35:45.3 Jocelyn Widmer: Jennifer, thank you so much for having us.

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