Learning Center

In a consumer-oriented society, each of us are bombarded daily with not-so-subtle requests being made of us. Commercials shout at us to contact companies for their services, billboards implore us to rent them with clever ways of articulating their visibility, and online embedded pixels provide ads that remind us of items we explored days and weeks before in hopes that we will reconsider purchasing them.

You and your staff have been working tirelessly to create great content that is relevant, fun, and shows how well your institution matches the needs of the prospective students you are trying to reach.

Though it’s tempting to view online programs as self-sustaining extensions of traditional campus offerings, in reality, their ongoing success requires just as much attention. Online programs and all the supportive and technological resources that go along with them need refinement and redesign from time to time. If your school’s online programs are struggling, or if you’d simply like to take a more active role in monitoring what’s working and what’s not, here’s a quick overview of common challenges and techniques to gauge program health.

Nearly all of us use a search engine as a regular part of our daily lives, but not everyone in marketing or at the helm of a business understands the fundamentals of SEO — how it works and why it matters. Simply put, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a technique that helps search engines find and properly rank your site in response to a user’s query. With hundreds of thousands of other sites generating millions of results, SEO considerations helps your site (and its content) get noticed and generate traffic.

Online and distance learning programs are becoming an integral part of the higher education landscape. More and more institutions are developing these programs to meet the needs of both traditional and non-traditional students and, in the process, are making relevant academic coursework available to a broader population. If your school is considering venturing into the online space, here are five steps help you get started and guide you along the way:

Recently there’s been a drastic increase in traditional, regionally accredited, non-profit institutions venturing into online higher education in order to diversify their tuition revenue. Many schools, especially those located in the Northeast and Midwest, are entering the online education space to compensate for the anticipated decline in high school graduates over the next several years. Others are doing so to respond to student demand for quality, convenience and advanced educational opportunities.

Persistence and student academic success has become one of the most important measures of institutional effectiveness in higher education. Consequently, colleges and universities across the country are making investments in technology, support staff and learning resources to help improve student success. Due to these additional investments and the high stakes nature of quality academic outcomes, institutions are also looking for ways in which they can ensure the effective performance of their student support professionals.

Many students begin their college quest with hopes and dreams of earning a degree and improving their situation at home, at work or life in general. Often, after students begin their college experience they are faced with obstacles and challenges that can seem insurmountable. For some students it just slows them down, for others it can stop them from achieving those hopes and dreams. Regardless of the type of institution: public or private, big or small, two-year or four-year, we often hear about and witness the same issues from our current and prospective clients regarding challenges students are having to overcome. This post identifies the top three challenges that students face.