What does Big Ten online education look like? A working group convened by BTAA leaders established common online program, course, and student definitions and data collection processes in the summer of 2019. Join us to learn about our definitions and discuss the stories that we found in the data.
Campus leaders in the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Affinity Group for Online Education meet regularly to share ideas and discuss common issues in the online education space. Their work culminates in the summer each year with a face-to-face meeting. Discussing online education across institutions can be challenging, as different universities define and measure online classes, students, and program in very different ways over varying units of time. In order to really dig into how BTAA institutions are similar or different from each other with respect to online education, the BTAA leaders convened a “data coordination working group” in the Spring of 2019. The working group, with representatives from five BTAA institutions, was charged with (1) reviewing existing data collection processes and results from prior BTAA meetings, (2) reviewing existing institutional definitions and data reporting procedures at a variety of institutions, (3) reviewing data collected in the public reporting sphere such as IPEDS, where definitions may already be available, and (4) establishing a way to easily collect consistent data on a variety of online education measures, to provide clarity and benefit discussions and decision-making within the BTAA.
The data coordination working group’s efforts resulted in a set of common definitions, a common data collection spreadsheet for gathering quantitative measures, and a short survey to collect qualitative information from BTAA institutions. These definitions and data collection tools were reviewed by BTAA members, and data collection will be conducted during June 2019. The goal is to have all member institutions submit data by July 1, 2019, so that the group can prepare and present a summary of baseline data for the summer BTAA Online Affinity Group meeting in late July, 2019.
This presentation will provide an overview of the process we used, the definitions we established, and the data collection procedures we created. We will then share summaries of the data we collected, providing a picture of what the online education landscape looks like among member institutions of the Big Ten Academic Alliance.