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Research Report

Online Course Prioritization Guide

10 strategies for promoting enrollment growth and student success

This guide is designed to help institutional leaders prioritize scarce resources devoted to online and hybrid course development toward the most promising available opportunities.

Institutions of all shapes and sizes are investing significant sums to expand their portfolio of online and hybrid courses without specific institutional priorities in mind, often resulting in a mix of arbitrary, subscale offerings. This creates an unsustainably expensive disconnect between the institution’s online portfolio (largely steered by unit-level interests and capacity) and its overarching interest in using technology to increase access, improve student success, and grow revenue.

In this study, we detail five online or hybrid curricular strategies that improve student success and expand access, plus five strategies that help to grow revenue through new enrollment. The strategies are organized in descending order by potential impact, with the largest opportunities for either success gains or enrollment revenue profiled first in each section.

Improving student success and expanding access

  • “”

    Online course consortia

  • “”

    Bottleneck course redesign

  • “”

    Withdrawal redirect courses

By targeting specific curricular “gaps,” institutions can improve retention, reduce time-to-degree, regain or expand their share of currently enrolled student credit hours, or even attract new students to existing programs.

Growing revenue through new enrollments

  • “”

    Summer course recapture

  • “”

    Military portal programs

  • “”

    Online dual-credit course

10 practices for enrollment growth

Bottleneck course redesign

High-enrollment, lower-division undergraduate courses are typically the most difficult challenge within the “iron triangle” of cost, access, and quality in higher education.

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Remedial ramp-up courses

Offer introductory prerequisites in an online or hybrid format to incoming freshman during the summer, allowing interested students to hit the ground running upon their arrival in the fall.

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Online course consortia

Most institutions have difficulty matching instructional supply perfectly with student demand term after term.

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Withdrawal redirect courses

Offer accelerated online courses for students who drop or withdraw early in a term.

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Online orientation modules

Students enrolled in courses with a significant online component are often unprepared for the technical requirements and proficiencies expected of them.

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Online 2+2 pathways

Develop fully-articulated online transfer programs with partner community colleges and leverage joint advising networks to ensure effective student transitions.

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Summer course recapture

By identifying and analyzing the courses most commonly transferred in from other providers after an intersession period, institutions can regain lost enrollment share and prevent further credit leakage over time.

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Online dual credit courses

Given the need to reach qualified high school students earlier, many colleges and universities have developed dual credit courses, typically taught by approved high school instructors or by institutional faculty.

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Military portal programs

A recent survey found that ~44% of over 400,000 GI Bill benefit users already had a bachelor’s degree, demonstrating a large potential market for veterans actively interested in higher education and able to pursue advanced studies.

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Open course trials

In the search for a business model to accompany Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) development, progressive institutions are experimenting with variations on the MOOC model to drive prospects to existing online programs.

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