Teaching and Learning blog

Have you been hearing the term “burnout” a lot lately? What is it? What are the signs? How is it different from just plain old exhaustion?

Psychology Today defines burnout as "a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress."

Recognize the signs

If you are experiencing most of these symptoms you may be experiencing burnout.

• Having trouble getting yourself to work or getting started on work or a lack of motivation.
• Noticing your job performance has slipped. Burnout can happen slowly so compare your performance to that of previous years vs. weeks or months.
• Experiencing changes in your relationships with those around you either by having more conflicts or being more withdrawn.
• Spending a lot of time thinking about work when you’re not working. If you can’t turn your brain off during family time or when you should be sleeping, it could be a sign you’re in burnout mode. ¹
• Finding it harder to concentrate. Is it more difficult to plan a lecture or answer a complicated student question? ²

You’re not the only one

If you checked off most of the items above and are feeling burnt out, know you’re not alone. 52% of employees say they are experiencing burnout and 75% have experienced it at some point in their career. ³

Kevin R. McClure, associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, shared this about his experience with burnout: “I hit a physical and emotional wall. I was tired — tired in a way a nap couldn’t fix. At the end of a particularly long day, I remember a Zoom meeting in which a colleague suggested that we find a way to recognize our graduating master’s students. My immediate response was: ‘Do we have to?’ It was uncharacteristic enough for another colleague to say they were worried about me.” ⁴

The pandemic seems to have only increased the number of people experiencing burnout. A survey conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that 70% of the faculty members they spoke with currently felt stressed, while back in 2019 only 32% said the same thing. Plus more than half those surveyed were seriously thinking about retiring or changing careers. ⁵

There is hope — Coping with burnout

Burnout, if not addressed, can lead to serious impacts on your physical and mental health. McClure (with the help of his colleague) recognized the signs and was able to do something about it and you can too.

Try some of these techniques to get back to your old self.

• Don’t view burnout as failure
• Prioritize mental health (enough sleep, good nutrition, exercise, socializing in a safe way)
• Take time to do activities that take your mind off of work (reading, cooking, running)
• Find ways to express all your emotions about the situation and keep a close support system (human or animal)⁵

When it comes to burnout, it’s important to remember you’re not alone — most people experience it during the course of their career. There are many ways to overcome it, you just have to recognize the signs.

Watch Dr. Rachel Hopman-Droste's recorded webinar to learn more about managing burnout in the classroom

Giving faculty tools to be better online instructors is essential to delivering successful courses, programs, and learner experiences.

Develop online courses that work for students and faculty

The best online courses are co-created with learning experts who know how to communicate the faculty member’s message most powerfully. These experts help instructors from concept to delivery and have provided these tips to help you think through your online presence.

Create an effective online course

Your faculty are experts in their disciplines, with strong networks in their fields, and a deep commitment to students. But they may not feel comfortable with teaching online or structuring their course content. That’s where higher ed leaders can make a positive impact. You can provide experts and training to take courses designed for an in-person classroom and adapt them for the virtual world.

Administrators can ensure that faculty receive specialized guidance on structuring and organizing course content for online spaces and environments to make it as engaging and informative as possible. They can connect faculty with resources and tools to review courses before they go live with students. They can help standardize instructional design across courses so students are immediately comfortable when they start a new course.

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.

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

No matter their major, university, or year in school, most students can agree on one thing: buying textbooks is one of the more frustrating experiences that college has to offer. But the recent unexpected shift to online learning and digital course materials is making this less of an obstacle. Four students from across the nation shared their experiences with their textbooks and course materials — and told us why access to digital has changed the way they view studying.

One of the most common complaints students have about their course materials is the actual process of acquiring them. Sarah F., a political science student at the University of Missouri, dreaded having to visit the bookstore at the beginning of each term.

“The only way you can avoid the bookstore is ordering your books online, but there’s a waiting period, so sometimes you don’t even get your books in time for those first couple of homework assignments. I hate having to organize all of that — it’s probably one of the worst things I have to do in college.”

The recent shift to online learning has already led to a shift in course materials in most cases. As faculty look forward with uncertainty, they know that comprehensive, flexible, and cost-effective solutions are key to a successful course, no matter the future of their course delivery. The College Board estimates that a year’s worth of textbooks and supplies can cost the average student a staggering $1,240.¹ Zach D., a marketing student at the University of Iowa, has found that, while the cost of textbooks can be frustrating, there’s something even worse — the cost of books that go unused.

“I spent $200 on this book and will only get $20 at the end of the semester for it, when I didn’t even need it in the first place.”

In his experience, the digital course materials he’s been assigned have actually been utilized in class and have helped him keep up on his own time, while physical materials have often gone untouched.

For all four students, digital course materials have been more affordable than physical materials (Zach estimates they’ve saved him several hundred dollars this year alone.) And they all agreed that digital materials were more useful to them.

Rachel H., a business administration major at the University of Colorado Boulder, has discovered a whole host of game-changing benefits to using digital materials. “It saves time in the first place because you get your book on the very first day and can start studying right away, instead of waiting to get the book in the mail. And if you’re trying to search a textbook for something, you can literally do it with your keyboard. Also, a lot of the Inclusive Access that I have has additional online study materials in it, like flashcards and practice tests. It’s extra studying my professor doesn’t give me, but is still a part of the textbook, so I can go in and study in different ways that they provide…it’s definitely had a positive impact on my grades.”

Digital materials also help students by allowing them to learn when, where, and how it works best for them, especially during these unprecedented times. Jesus H., a business management student at California State University Fresno, found that, because of their flexible nature, the digital materials he had access to sometimes contributed even more to his success than attending lectures did.

“For an accounting class I took, I learned a lot through MyLab™ Accounting. It prepared me a lot for my exams, and I passed because of the digital materials. It was convenient, it allowed me to save time, and I could study anywhere. It was very beneficial, and because of that I’m now trying to stay with classes I know will be using digital materials instead of print books.”

Through the Covid-19 lockdown and institutional shift to distance learning, technology is what has kept us together. As almost every aspect of students’ lives becomes digitized, it’s no wonder that pairing technology and education works so well for them. The benefits of digital products and course materials were clear even before the recent disruption to education, and have become even more apparent with the widespread shift to online and HyFlex learning models.

A study by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation even found that when students take courses that engage digitally and in-person, content mastery can occur twice as quickly, and pass rates for at-risk students can increase by 33%.² Sarah is certain that she’s enjoyed those benefits throughout her college experience, thanks to digital course materials.

“I’m kind of able to be successful either way, but it’s about making it easier for me to be successful. It’s about putting everything in one place and keeping me organized — letting me search through and study the materials I need to, and giving me assignments that I can complete online that are more interactive than they would be otherwise. The culmination of all those things make it easier for me to succeed. Students can still succeed when they’re using paper materials, but I think having the digital materials gives us even more advantages and helps us be just that much more successful.”

During this historic time, faculty around the country in all disciplines are adopting digital solutions to support delivery of their courses and help improve affordability and student success.

Sources
¹ “Average estimated undergraduate budgets by sector, 2019-20,” College Board
² “Student Success: Digital Learning,” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

In April, Inside Higher Ed and Hanover Research surveyed 187 presidents at colleges and universities to see how their priorities have evolved after one month into their COVID-19 response. A similar survey was conducted in March.

Top concerns

In the survey, presidents were asked about their level of concern with potential short-term and long-term issues at their institution in regard to COVID-19. Below are the top 5 issues about which they were very or somewhat concerned.

Top 5 short-term issues

1. Mental health of students (91%)
2. Disproportionate impact on students from low-income backgrounds (87%)
3. Accelerated rates of student attrition (84%)
4. Short-term unbudgeted financial costs (86%)
5. Mental health of students (87%)

Top 5 long-term issues

1. Decline in overall future student enrollment (90%)
2. Inequitable impact on underrepresented students (90%)
3. Overall financial stability (88%)
4. Ability to afford to employ staff & faculty (81%)
5. Decline in alumni/donor giving rates (56%)

Challenges with remote learning

The survey found that over the course of a month, presidents were having fewer challenges at their institutions ensuring academics standards remained high, having technology support available, and training faculty less familiar with digital delivery.

You can download a copy of the report, Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis, Part II: A New Survey of College and University Presidents, here.

Additionally, the editors of Inside Higher Ed held a webcast discussion about the survey’s results. You can view the recording here.

Thick skin in junior english class

Matthew Ventura, Ph.D., recalls a high school English teacher who taught him a hard but important lesson.

“Mr. Davidson was really tough,” he says. “He felt no shame ripping apart our essays.”

“Despite the criticism, he spent so much time giving us detailed feedback,” Matthew says. “It really affected me.”

“Not only did I become a better writer,” he says, “I realized that a Mr. Davidson-like level of feedback can help improve critical thinking skills like few other things.”

Important skills, better teaching

Matthew went on to study and develop new ways to teach and assess 21st century skills like critical thinking.

An early collaboration, the Physics Playground, was a digital game that walked students through complex physics concepts with outcomes and processes that mimicked real-world experiences.

It was a breakthrough.

“These kinds of natural, playful simulations,” Matthew says, “help students strategize their way through tough subjects—and provide an opportunity for teachers to provide feedback based on where each student is in the learning process.”

“Imagine a class of 400 students,” he says. “How can a teacher be like Mr. Davidson and provide such granular, one-on-one feedback to everybody?”

Innovative digital platforms, he says, provide a trifecta of benefits:

They teach effectively. They lead to one-on-one feedback for students. And they’re scalable.

The need for problem-solvers

“It was an opportunity to explore some basic questions about critical thinking,” Matthew says. “What do we mean by ‘critical thinking? How can we improve it?”

It’s part of a conversation, he says, that’s been batted around by academics for decades.

“More and more employers want to hire good problem-solvers,” Matthew says.

Good problem-solvers, he says, can spot opportunities for innovation thanks to critical thinking skills—”so these questions were important to try to answer,” he says.

Critical thinking in specific disciplines

“Skills for Today” reviews the history of definitions around critical thinking. It summarizes leading research on the various methods of teaching and assessing critical thinking.

The paper also takes the discussion about critical thinking in a new direction.

“There is so much talk about broad critical thinking skills,” he says. “What we want to start exploring is: How can we improve critical thinking in particular disciplines?”

A speech class might employ new critical thinking teaching methods in debate exercises, he says.

An IT course might show students how to find bugs in computer code.

A business or economics class might guide students to weigh issue pros and cons in order to make tough decisions.

“We want to provide an actionable framework for educators in this new approach,” Matthew says, “so we can reach more learners and prepare them for tomorrow’s workforce.”

Next-generation teaching tools

Matthew emphasizes that critical thinking skills are skills—and that they are only improved with practice.

He hopes his paper can be a part of making this practice more effective.

“We hope this research helps us develop new learning tools that benefit learners,” he says, “and, at the same time, guides teachers to bring new teaching approaches into their classrooms.”