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Recently, I wrote about my takeaways from the most recent Noodle Advisory Board meeting. At the meeting, Noodle’s CEO and co-founder, John Katzman, kept talking about institutional agility. John was using the word “agile” in a way that I found both different and fascinating. I asked John if he’d expand on his ideas on university agility, and he graciously agreed.
Q: You often use the word “agile.” What exactly do you mean by this?
A: Over the past decade, most universities have created separate online and campus-based operations. One team markets the online programs and another markets residential ones, for example. The same is often true of tech infrastructure, student support, learning design and other key services. This is not just inefficient (for instance, the marketing teams sometimes bid against each other for keywords); it creates a worse experience for students and faculties.
Other organizations have solved this. Home Depot doesn’t care if you buy a hammer online or in a store. Its operations are agile and integrated, from merchandising to marketing to returns. It’s just trying to serve you efficiently and responsively.
Agile—and I would welcome a more descriptive word—isn’t about hybrid learning, then. It’s about a flexible, responsive and efficient infrastructure that meets student and faculty needs, regardless of modality.
Q: Why now? What's changed that a university needs to think about their infrastructure differently?
A: It depends upon a university’s goals. If online efforts are largely nondegree, or if you believe they are an entirely new thing—inexpensive, asynchronous degree programs for adult learners that have significantly different goals and metrics—then they could, and possibly should, be siloed.
But for degree programs with the same standards, faculties and goals as their on-campus siblings, this change is overdue, all the more so after COVID. Students and professors want greater flexibility, and schools need to become more resilient and efficient.
Q: What does this look like in practice?
A: Like most challenges and opportunities in higher ed, agility is most quickly achieved through a combination of strategy, program and learning design, marketing and recruiting, and technology.
First, it’s about setting clear goals for the student and faculty experience. Which classes should be offered in which modalities? Most online students live within 50 miles of campus. How do we encourage them to spend time there and interact with faculty and other students?
Second, it’s about enrollment and economics. How many students do we want? How many can be on campus at a time?
Third, it’s about learning and program design. How do we combine online and on-campus programs? What should be taught asynchronous and what should be synchronous, whether in a physical or virtual classroom? Many business schools have five separate M.B.A. programs—do students, prospective students and employers find that helpful?
Fourth, it’s about marketing and recruiting. What is the job market in our region? What is the demand for this program? What is the competitive landscape for our degree and nondegree programs, and how is it shifting?
And finally, it’s about capacity and resources. What are our disciplinary strengths and aspirations? How do these fit with our other priorities? What operations do we do well here, and which should we outsource or partner on? When and how do we collaborate with other universities to improve outcomes while lowering cost?
These can’t be handled in sequence; the right solution will look at the problem through all of those lenses and then execute using a series of benchmarks to make sure things stay on track. That’s why we think a good partner has to have significant strategic and operational strength in each of those areas.
