Teaching and Learning blog

A Q&A with Heather Clarke, Associate Director of CRO, Pearson Online Learning Services  

Institutions are seeking more inquiries and enrollments from their online learning program websites. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) can help them achieve this goal. To explore how, we spoke with Heather Clarke, Associate Director of CRO, Pearson Online Learning Services. 

Q: What is CRO (sometimes called website optimization)? How does it relate to marketing online learning programs?

A: CRO is the scientific process of testing for improvements on site elements and a user’s movement towards a purchase decision, with the goal of improving on-site conversions.

I emphasize the word “scientific.” We use the scientific method to collect performance data and user feedback, to form hypotheses, and to test them. Based on data, we create a test variation that we hypothesize will improve performance. By testing with a control, or testing one change at a time, we can attribute any measurable shift in performance to our change.

CRO helps mitigate risks and save time and money. By testing and evaluating (vs. blindly implementing changes), we let learners — through their actions — tell us what works for them and what doesn't.

CRO is continuous. Sites are never 100% optimized. The digital landscape evolves every day. Learners' needs and environments evolve, too. To serve them well, we must keep a pulse on all these changes, and quickly evolve alongside them.

Q: Who should a university leader of an online learning program talk to about CRO, and what questions should they ask?

A: Talk to your marketing team — and first ask if they have a conversion rate optimization team monitoring day-to-day site performance. Then, you’ll want to know:

• What does my online learning audience look like? Who are we targeting?
• What is the data telling us? What pages get the most traffic and prospective students? Why/why not?
• What elements on the site get the most engagement?
• What content is the online learner looking for to decide? Do they need more or less of it? Are they finding it easily?
• Are the pages actionable? Are the calls-to-action (the next steps you want the visitor to take) clear?
• Does our content accurately reflect our online learning program and institution?

Q. How do I judge the conversion rates we’re achieving?

A: Good and bad conversion rates are relative, so there’s no definitive answer. We track baselines and trends to measure success. Our advice: establish a baseline for your site, and constantly strive to improve it.

Once you’ve determined your site’s typical performance (which can vary seasonally), dig into your data, learner behavior, and learner feedback. That's how you identify opportunities to improve.

Q: How can CRO improve performance?

A: CRO’s goal is to find variations of your site that provide a statistically significant improvement in conversion. When you’re regularly making the right content available in a friendlier format, site performance should improve incrementally. More interaction with your forms = more prospective students.

On-site performance is key, but that’s not all that matters. As you get the right decision-making content onto your pages, deliver more relevant information, and help visitors act on it, search engines notice. Your rankings improve. That helps you acquire more learners and decrease acquisition costs.

Q: What tips would you offer to improve conversions?

A: These 6 tips can help you improve significantly:

1. Listen to your site's visitors. Do this by drilling down into your data, tracking chat topics and search queries, and surveying/user testing your audience. People will tell you their pain points if you listen. Which leads to...
   
2. Implement the right tracking. The full story is more complicated than just clicks and conversion. To optimize your site’s layout, you need to know how people move through it. What interactive and non-interactive elements are they interacting with? Where in their journey do these interactions happen? In what order do they click on elements? How far do they scroll?
3. Simplify, don’t clutter. Focus again on your site’s goal and what learners are telling you. What information do they need before moving forward, and what is your call-to-action? Make it easy for them to get that information. Don’t overload their senses when your page loads.
   
4. Create experiences that reflect your knowledge of the learner's journey. You don’t have to do 1:1 personalization, but if you know someone has visited you before, they may need different information to move forward. If they've clicked from a specific campaign, what they see should relate to it. Mobile and desktop users are different, and may need different information. Beyond this, while it’s challenging to link on-site behavior with offsite data via a larger Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database, doing so can take your on-site targeting to the next level.
   
5. Don’t make people dig! Your most important content should be higher on the page. Check out your site’s “scroll depth”: how far down the page typical visitors scroll. Anything people need to make a decision should appear above that line. Similarly:
   
6. Content should be quickly digestible. What's the average time on site (or page) for site visitors? If your content takes longer than that to skim, you may lose people. They’re in a hurry — just like you.

CRO is constantly evolving. As Heather Clarke’s team tracks the changing web environment, they continually identify new ways to improve performance. In the meantime, the lessons offered here may well help improve your web page conversions.

COVID-19 has put online learning in the spotlight. As more students need to turn to virtual settings to stay on track with their education, institutions pivoted to provide their courses online.

So how should your institution prepare beyond the moment to launch and grow online? Ask yourself the following questions about investment money and strategic opportunities.

How should you fund your online learning strategy?

As you prepare to launch your college’s online offerings, you’ll need to find a source of funding. Tuition streams will only gradually grow to contribute, so where can you acquire these funds? Institutions have several options:

1. Tap internal resources — If you have discretionary funds to use to establish online learning programs, this may be a great way to go. Much of the online program investment is needed upfront.
2. Leverage fundraising — Some institutions have received generous donations from forward-thinking alumni to expand favored online programs.
3. Borrow funds — Many institutions have pursued this path, but in today’s market securing financing may be more difficult than before.
4. Use partner investments — Investments from an outside educational provider like an online program management (OPM) company may fund your launch. They can work with you in multiple ways to help you meet your online goals.

Launching a meaningful online presence can require significant start-up capital and ongoing investments as you evolve and scale.

How to assess the market for your online learning programs?

Once you make the decision to launch online and find the money to do so, the next consideration becomes making sure there’s a viable market for your “product.”

46.9% of distance students now attend 5% of institutions.

You’ll want to be strategic in how you assess your opportunities and set up your programs. Here’s how:

1. Conduct market research — Professional market research can objectively assess student demand and shifting labor markets.
2. Evaluate your brand — Does your brand stand out in the market? You’ll want a solid understanding of your differentiators, strengths, reputation, culture, and ability to deliver.
3. Name and price your program — This attention to detail will help you establish yourself in the market and leap ahead of the competition.

To grow online you’ll want to identify niches, clarify and extend your differentiators, and invest more heavily in branding and outreach beyond traditional markets.

Explore our resources for more insights to help build your online program.

From test optional to online learning, the whole college search, application, and enrollment process has changed for applicants and schools in 2020.

In fact, by harnessing these changes, we may open doors for new ways that:

• colleges can assess applicants
• applicants can evaluate their choices
• adult learners can gain new job skills

Learn how from Joe Morgan by watching the video below.

There is no doubt that back-to-school plans have been hotly debated as the higher-education world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic. Institutions have whipsawed between resuming on-campus classes or opting for a virtual approach to learning. Students themselves are carefully considering where, when, and how to pursue their college degrees. There are no straightforward answers or “one size fits all” solutions. Despite all the uncertainties and hurdles that have impacted the education industry as a whole, Pearson partner Maryville University has experienced remarkable growth.

Congratulations to Maryville University for making The Chronicle of Higher Education’s fastest-growing colleges list again after record enrollments for the 16th consecutive year. Maryville anticipates this growth trend will continue into the Fall 2020. The proof is in the numbers. Maryville projects overall enrollment increases of 10 percent across traditional on-campus undergraduate students and online undergraduate and graduate students this year. Maryville is welcoming more than 925 new students to campus, including more than 750 incoming Freshmen students enrolled in on-campus classes this fall – representing a 7 percent increase in on campus enrollment. Online class enrollment has grown by more than 17 percent, with more than 7,200 students engaging with Maryville online.

“Students across the country choose Maryville because we offer market relevant, high quality, online programs that provide the flexibility they need to fit education into their busy lives,” said Katherine Louthan, dean of the School of Adult and Online Education. “We are one of the few universities committed to the continual innovation and evolution of the digital learning experience.”

Maryville has long embraced digital learning as the future of higher education and understands the vital role it will play as an element of our “new normal.” Maryville’s decades-long focus on developing robust online programs and providing support for its faculty to deliver high-quality curriculum across all learning environments enabled Maryville to quickly pivot between in-person and virtual learning in response to COVID-19. This flexible and active learning model makes Maryville’s program offerings especially appealing to students eager pursue higher education in the midst of their already busy lives.

Pearson Online Learning Services has partnered with Maryville University since 2012 and we share in their excitement! #SaintStrong

Read the full press release.

Two years ago, when COVID-19 drove many colleges and universities to offer online instruction, Kate McKinnon’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) skit seemed ruefully accurate to some: “You will now pay full price for your college experience at a University of Phoenix Online without the tech support!” Some students were indeed thrust into a version of remote teaching that, while developed with the best intentions, was more emergency triage than true online learning.

Fortunately, however, even as the pandemic accelerated the transition to online learning, a closer look revealed some very distinguished online programs that are comparable to traditional face-to-face programs, or even better. These online programs often delivered greater flexibility and accessibility, sometimes with clear evidence of superior outcomes.

Duquesne University School of Nursing delivers several of those high quality online programs. In partnership with Pearson, the university is applying best practices in teaching and learning and is continually updating those practices to reflect the latest best practices in online learning. Duquesne was the first online nursing program in the United States, offering its online PhD program in 1997, and has since made the conscious decision to offer all graduate nursing programs online.

Online education expands access to those who would otherwise be unable to further their education. At Duquesne, many students are working nurses, often juggling shift work, family responsibilities, and caregiving. COVID’s demands made it nearly impossible for students to access on-campus programs in many parts of the country, Even now, with most on-campus programs reopened, some healthcare professionals face greater challenges in managing work/life balance, and/or time associated with school related travel, that make it harder to attend classes on campus.

Duquesne’s PhD graduates are deans, faculty, and Chief Nursing Officers — most of whom would not have been able to follow their dreams and earn their doctorates in a traditional, on-campus program. This was my own experience. I graduated from Duquesne with my PhD in 2002, transferring after I broke my ankle and was unable to complete my coursework on my personal timeline.

I found the faculty to be knowledgeable, supportive, skilled teachers with their own bodies of research and much to offer students. I attended a doctoral immersion residency and achieved all the other milestones of doctoral students. After graduation, I continued to work and succeed in academe. I achieved tenure and promotion to full professor at a university with very high research activity, always feeling well prepared and comparable in knowledge and productivity to my faculty colleagues. I became a leader of the nursing programs I studied in, and I recently assumed wider leadership responsibilities for research throughout the university.

Along the way, I have learned that outstanding online learning involves much more than providing technology infrastructure for remote teaching. It requires purposefully designed, and often increased, interactions with students. Professors hold one-on-one virtual office hours and many check-ins outside of regular hours. Clinical disciplines benefit from real-time virtual patient rounds, clinical case studies, and recitations. In addition, those who are new to teaching online may need to evolve how they approach assessment, technology, and time management. Duquesne and other high-quality online programs utilize research-based strategies like these to help train faculty to effectively prepare for teaching in a virtual environment.

The pandemic was not the first event to influence public perceptions that quality changes when we move from a lecture hall to a virtual classroom. Over a decade ago, the introduction of large, often free, online courses created an image of an impersonal, dehumanized experience that lacked the support students need to succeed. In addition, the early surge of several for-profit universities created a negative impression that was hard to overcome. However, those early impressions are far removed from the quality and student success we have seen at Duquesne.

Universities with quality, successful programs consider the development of students and the discovery of knowledge as integral to their mission, and that does not change if education is offered online. In many instances, due to the use of various technologies, virtual simulations, virtual proctors, and other exam security measures, online learning is no less costly than face-to-face programs but far more convenient. The same highly qualified faculty teach in our virtual classrooms.

Now that many institutions’ abrupt, disruptive transition to remote teaching is receding into history, it is my hope that thoughtfully planned, quality online programs become even more universal. These programs offer our society much that it urgently needs, and likely can’t get any other way.

This spring, thousands of institutions rushed to deliver instruction online at scale. Many were new to online learning, and no two institutions or instructors approached it exactly the same way. But most recognized that it’ll play an important role going forward, and most saw room for improvement. In this blog post, we’ll share five key considerations for your institution to deliver richer, more successful online learning experiences.

1. Develop more compelling online courses and curricula

Translating your faculty’s expertise online requires new techniques and mindsets. Instructional design must be integrated with user experience engineering, technology, visual design, writing, accessibility, web development, quality assurance, project management, and more.

2. Focus on helping faculty succeed

Support faculty all the way to success, with course development help and training that reflects their needs and respects their expertise. The right course development experts can help faculty optimize their own content and course structures for online learning environments, integrate more engaging media and learning modalities, and foreground real-world relevance. The right training ensures that technology serves faculty instead of the other way around.

3. Improve student support to improve outcomes

Online students require seamless support from first contact through graduation. This requires institutions to break down silos, collaborate creatively, and sometimes change culture. Consider: how do students tell you if they’re encountering serious life challenges? How do you respond? Can programs and faculty work more closely with tutors to anticipate student needs? Can each student turn to a specific individual for timely, relevant help that orchestrates all your resources?

4. Choose resources with a track record of success

For each online learning function, whether internal or external, expect a track record of success. Have they met their commitments? Have they built the types of programs you want? Can they do it at scale? Do they understand how technologies and students are changing? Are they agile and collaborative? Will they act as agents of change, recommend and execute on innovations, and help you deliver on your institution’s online strategy?

5. To sustain enrollments, get the marketing right, too

You need to get your marketing strategy right, and yesterday’s strategy may not be right anymore. Today, you’re competing with gap years and dropping out indefinitely, not just other institutions. You have to rethink how you demonstrate your value to students — and that may require objective, outside assistance.

We can help

Our white paper offers more insights in all five areas. And we’re available to discuss your unique online learning challenges. See how we can help you and your students succeed — no matter what comes next.

Get the white paper

Getting the partnership right

We’ve partnered with Wake Forest University for years. For example, we support its nationally respected online graduate program in counseling. It’s been a success for everyone — especially students, who are achieving strong academic and career outcomes.

So, when Wake Forest’s School of Medicine sought to deliver two new, purpose-built degree programs, it was natural for them to talk to us. However, Wake Forest’s School of Medicine has distinct capabilities and priorities.

Its entrepreneurial leaders asked us: How can we customize a partnership that reflects our internal resources and capabilities? How can we use our ability to provide funding to help launch these online programs?

We offer multiple models for delivering our best-in-class services. Together, we built an innovative, co-investment agreement that gets the risk/reward balance right for both parties.

The final contract promotes shared interests and alignment (like traditional revenue share agreements) but Wake Forest’s upfront contributions allow us to share the financial risk. That way, we created a shorter contract commitment that will allow us to make changes, if the market changes quickly.

Meanwhile, Wake Forest benefits from the same comprehensive online program management services that are already working well for the University — from our strong national marketing expertise to one-on-one student coaching and support through graduation.

Innovative curriculum to transform healthcare

Launching this fall, these online programs are a perfect example of an institution that’s found an unmet opportunity to use its strengths and positively impact the lives of students and society. Let’s look at each one:

• Wake Forest’s Master of Science in Clinical Research Management will empower professionals throughout the clinical research field to move research and development forward, advance health and save lives. Through an engaging, supportive and interdisciplinary online program environment, participants will learn how to select and apply relevant scientific knowledge, critically analyze research designs, help construct/lead clinical trials and improve patient care.
• Wake Forest’s Master of Science in Healthcare Leadership will prepare a new generation to transform healthcare for the better. Graduates will be exceptionally qualified to lead their organization and improve patient outcomes. They’ll be ready to address everything from strategy to culture; change management to innovation.

Online education is about helping more people thrive. That’s what Wake Forest is doing — and we’re excited to partner with them.

To learn more about our customizable models, world-class expertise, and the resources we offer, contact us.

Learn more about Wake Forest’s new online master’s programs in Clinical Research Management and Healthcare Leadership, and the other biomedical graduate programs offered by the Wake Forest University Graduate School of Arts and Science.

Today, online programs make sense, but given growing competition, few institutions have the resources to launch or scale them alone. Take Duquesne University, for example.

When Dr. Mary Ellen Glasgow arrived as dean of Duquesne University’s School of Nursing, its online programs were already delivering world-class instruction — however, online enrollments had leveled off.

This is where Duquesne saw opportunity.

“We’d been really good at running a solid small-to-moderate-sized online program,” Glasgow said. “But today, success is about more than just a good program: institutions have to sell it, market it, and provide strong student support. Trying to do all that on their own can distract them from educating students. We needed an infusion of fiscal and human capital to attract candidates throughout the US.”

As part of its due diligence, the university’s leadership found that institutions that work with Online Program Management (OPM) partners average better performance than those that keep programs in-house, and in 2016, we formed a partnership.

If your institution is considering a deeper online commitment, Glasgow has some practical advice:

• Clearly explain a potential partnership to stakeholders. Share what it will mean, what will not change, and how you’ll safeguard academic quality.
• Prepare carefully. Help students and faculty prepare, and make sure students understand the workload upfront.
• Identify potential “cracks” in your system. Look for places where small communication issues can become big problems as you scale.
• Focus on quality improvement. Optimize assignments, improve consistency between courses, and ensure that student support is always available.

The problems are solvable and the rewards are high.

“We all know it’s a challenging time in higher education. So, being at a school that’s growing, where people are being offered good jobs and finding new opportunities, is most gratifying,” said Glasgow.

Learn more about Duquesne and our partnership.