“I Don’t Think the System Will Ever be the Same”: Distance Education Leaders’ Predictions and Recommendations for the Use of Online Learning in Community Colleges Post-COVID

ABSTRACT

While the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the short-term use of online courses, colleges’ experiences with COVID-era online course delivery may also affect the way that they offer and approach online courses going forward. We draw on interviews with 35 distance education leaders from the California Community Colleges system to provide insights into how the use of online education may change in the system going forward. Leaders predicted that post-pandemic, colleges would increase their online course offerings, and that many instructional innovations to online courses from the pandemic—such as the use of synchronous courses—would persist. We discuss implications for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• Online learning
• distance education
• COVID-19
• diffusion of innovation

During the last twenty years, online course-taking expanded rapidly in postsecondary institutions, particularly in broad-access institutions: During the 2016–17 academic year, 39% of students at nonselective institutions were enrolled in online courses (Xu & Xu, 2019). However, the COVID-19 pandemic spurred an explosive expansion of remote instruction on an emergency basis as colleges nationwide shifted operations entirely online in spring 2020. Roughly 85% of undergraduate students reported disruptions to schooling because classes moved online in spring 2020 (Cameron et al., 2021), and about half remained fully-online through the 2020–21 academic year (Felson & Adamczyk, 2021). As the country emerges from emergency pandemic footing, colleges must consider the position of online education in a post-COVID world.¹

We draw on interviews with 35 college distance education (DE) leaders from the California Community Colleges (CCC) system to gain insights into their perspectives and expectations regarding the future of online education. Our study explores the following research question: What changes do college online administrators and experts foresee for DE in broad-access institutions going forward post-pandemic? Leaders anticipated two important shifts post-COVID. First, they predicted a rise in online course offerings, driven by greater acceptance of online education from both faculty and students. Second, they identified multiple instructional innovations—e.g., synchronous online courses and new approaches to engagement—that they anticipated would affect post-COVID course offerings and instruction.

Although our study was conducted during the pandemic, the findings remain highly relevant to the post-COVID era. First, the expectations of college DE leaders, who possess valuable pre-pandemic expertise and assume important administrative responsibilities, can provide crucial insights into the anticipated trajectory of online education beyond the crisis. Moreover, the pandemic compelled institutions to explore various instructional innovations to suit the remote learning environment. This period of intense experimentation can offer valuable lessons about what works best in online education and what instructional innovations will likely endure in the post-pandemic postsecondary landscape. Faculty and institutions can leverage these insights to refine online teaching and support, designing more engaging and effective virtual learning experiences.

To our knowledge, this is the first study drawing on the insights of those who held pre-pandemic leadership roles in DE to consider how the position of online education in postsecondary institutions may change post-pandemic, filling an important gap in the literature. Moreover, although this study collects data from leaders from California community colleges, other community college systems and four-year institutions are likely contemplating changes to post-pandemic distance learning policies. Accordingly, the insights from institutions in this study have broad implications for online course offerings and relevant policies nationwide.

Background and literature

To contextualize leaders’ predictions regarding the future of online education, we draw on theoretical literature on diffusion of innovations. We then review the pre-COVID state of DE and current literature around COVID-19 in higher education, including gaps in that literature, to ground our study of projected changes to online education going forward.

Diffusion of innovation theory

Our analysis draws on Rogers’s (1962, 2003) theory of diffusion of innovation, which posits that diffusion of a given innovation depends on its communication from one individual to another within the same social system, with the innovation process unfolding over time (Rogers, 2003). Diffusion of innovation theory has been applied extensively in higher education organizational change literature, with several studies explicitly exploring faculty adoption of education technology (see, e.g., Bennett & Bennett, 2003; Hixon et al., 2012; Medlin, 2001; Pereira & Wahi, 2017; Sahin, 2006; Shea et al., 2005; Soffer et al., 2010; Tabata & Johnsrud, 2008). Most recently, diffusion of innovation theory has been applied in studies seeking to understand processes through which specific educational innovations were adopted during the pandemic, including instructional changes to online learning and related technology like online proctoring (Frei-Landau et al., 2022; Nik Azman et al., 2021; Raman et al., 2021).

Rogers (2003) theorizes that people pass through predictable stages as they weigh whether to adopt a given innovation. Adoption processes begin with individuals’ burgeoning awareness of the innovation through professional or social networks (the knowledge stage). Potential adopters then gather information about the innovation and form attitudes about whether it may be useful to them (the persuasion stage). Choices to provisionally adopt an innovation as a trial—or to reject it without ever trying it—are made at the decision stage. Decisions to adopt may be the result of an individual’s choice or may reflect the will of another decision-making entity like an employer (Rogers, 2003). Adopters progress to the implementation stage, during which they may test out the innovation without fully committing to adopting it long-term. The implementation stage also involves innovation in its own right, as adopters modify or re-invent the original innovation to fit their particular circumstances (Rogers, 2003; Sahin, 2006). In the confirmation stage, the individual decides whether to adopt the innovation long-term, or discontinue its use (Rogers, 2003).

Rogers (2003) outlines several conditions that determine whether individuals find innovations sufficiently valuable to adopt. He argues that potential adopters weigh the relative advantages that innovations offer over their past practices; the compatibility of the innovation with their needs, values, and beliefs; the trialability of the innovation, or whether they can test out an innovation to determine its usefulness; and the observability of the innovation, or the ease of obtaining information about how the innovation works. Individuals may be discouraged from adoption if the complexity of the innovation is too high.

Our study considers online courses as an innovation subject to diffusion in the CCC system. The pandemic is unique because widespread adoption of online courses was compelled by institutions requiring online course delivery. However, as online teaching and learning become non-mandatory post-pandemic, the extent to which colleges and instructors will confirm their commitment to online education by maintaining the use of tools developed during the pandemic is an open question.

Online education before and during COVID

Pre-COVID, online courses were common in the CCC system, making up roughly 24% of course offerings (Cooper et al., 2020) and supporting 16% of enrollments (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, n.d.). Online courses were primarily asynchronous, without time-based meeting requirements (California Community College Chancellor’s Office, 2018). These courses generally required students and faculty to be proficient in the use of Canvas, the common learning management system for the CCC system (California Community College Chancellor’s Office, 2018), and demanded high degrees of autonomy and self-motivation for students to succeed in courses (Kalman et al., 2020; Lewis et al., 2014; Vanslambrouck et al., 2019). While many faculty members who taught primarily traditional, face-to-face classes needed only limited technological proficiency in their campus learning management system, the level of proficiency, training, and interest in using technology to enhance instruction varied (Hart et al., 2021).

Faculty and institutional attitudes toward DE have been mixed. A pre-pandemic survey of faculty governance leaders found widespread skepticism that online courses could be an appropriate substitute for face-to-face learning (Ciabocchi et al., 2016; see Xu & Xu, 2019 for a comprehensive overview of evidence on student outcomes in online classes). Concerns about overall DE quality, in addition to concerns over their own technology skills, dampened some instructors’ willingness to teach online (Tabata & Johnsrud, 2008). However, educators also acknowledged advantages of online learning, including flexibility for students with demanding schedules and fewer geographic constraints to course-taking (Dumford & Miller, 2018; Picciano et al., 2010). These mixed attitudes may have fostered an environment primed for a shift in willingness to adopt online education as an innovation in the face of a disruption like that posed by COVID-19.

The shift to online learning during COVID-19 prompted multiple articles on instructional adaptations to the pandemic (Aldahdouh et al., 2023; Mazur et al., 2021; Tang & Servin, 2020; Washburn & Bragg, 2022), including practices like offering greater flexibility and changes in content delivery. Particularly relevant to this study are several papers on innovative instructional methods leveraged among disciplines—like science and arts—that historically had limited representation online. For instance, Kolack et al. (2020) described faculty implementing synchronous lectures to deliver online chemistry instruction. Multiple authors detailed efforts within science departments to supply kits to successfully support at-home lab work in fields like chemistry, anatomy and physiology (Fuentes-García et al., 2023; Vasquez, 2020). Schell (2023) described innovations to provide online versions of courses in opera that utilized asynchronous and synchronous course delivery mechanisms. Bartlett and Braman (2021) described the use of Second Life as a virtual meeting space in a computer science class. Deutschman et al. (2021) related instructor experimentation with “flipped” classes, which have students watch lectures on their own time and use live time for engagement. One review also synthesized evidence from studies conducted before and during COVID to provide recommendations around instructional changes that may apply post-COVID (Schrenk et al., 2021).

However, there is still limited understanding of how online instruction is likely to change in the post-COVID era, including both instructional innovations and the broader positioning of DE in institutions. To our knowledge, our study is the first to answer this question drawing on insights from individuals holding established DE leadership roles pre-pandemic. We argue that established DE leaders are uniquely positioned to provide insight on this question, given their personal experiences observing and navigating changing attitudes toward DE among their colleagues pre-pandemic. Given that colleges nationwide face similar situations regarding online education, research drawing on the insight of such DE leaders in California is relevant to community college and other postsecondary institutions across the country.

Methods

To shed light on the likely position of online education in broad-access institutions post-pandemic, we drew on interviews with DE leaders across the CCC system. In this section, we review our methods, including the orientations we brought to our research, the data collection and analysis process, and approaches to ensuring the trustworthiness of our analysis.

Researcher orientations and positionality

This study is part of a larger project—combining interview data collection with survey data collection and administrative data analysis—looking at responses to COVID-19 within the CCC system. The broader project is motivated by a pragmatic approach to research, drawing on multiple methods to examine a range of questions; however, the interview-oriented piece of the broader project which is the subject of the current paper draws from a social constructivist perspective (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). That is, our study co-constructs knowledge about the likely future of DE drawing on multiple subjective perspectives. Our research question fundamentally touches on leaders’ subjective impressions about the likely future of DE, and we acknowledge that our own subjective stances likewise affected our data-gathering and interpretive processes.

Given our belief that our own subjectivities were important in shaping this study, the diverse perspectives within our research team were a crucial asset. Our team was diverse along multiple dimensions, including both men and women and a mix of race/ethnic backgrounds (White, Latina, and Asian). Of particular importance to this study, our team represented a mix of insider and outsider perspectives with respect to the CCC system. Specifically, two team members had pre-COVID experience teaching online and in-person in the CCC system. They brought with them personal experience with community-college teaching, as well as relationships with colleagues who navigated the transition under COVID as faculty members and DE leaders. Three of our team members had previously written about online education in various community college systems, including the CCC system, and had interacted with DE leaders, both within individual colleges and in systemwide leadership positions, in connection with those studies. These experiences motivated our interest in how COVID would influence the use of DE going forward, and informed the types of questions we asked in interviews. These different backgrounds also meant we brought different experiences to the table as we interpreted and made sense of our interview data.

Data and analysis

Between July and December 2020, we used purposeful sampling to invite leaders from 114 CCCs operating on physical campuses as of spring 2020 to participate in interviews. Because the structure of DE departments varies across colleges—ranging from lacking dedicated DE departments to having dedicated deans overseeing departments in charge of online education—we targeted a role that existed at most campuses: DE coordinators. DE coordinators generally help to promote course quality by keeping abreast of state guidelines around requirements like maintaining regular effective contact, and by ensuring that faculty implement legal requirements and best practices through mechanisms like offering PD around online pedagogy. When colleges lacked DE coordinators or we could not identify someone in that role, we contacted leaders in related roles like deans of online instruction, faculty leaders on college committees focused on online education, or instructional designers. In some cases, leaders that we initially contacted suggested that we also include colleagues in other roles—like student services leaders, instructional leaders, or leaders in faculty senates—in interviews as well. For simplicity, we refer to our sample collectively as “DE leaders.”

We interviewed 35 DE leaders across 27 unique colleges. Most interviews (18) were individual, but in some interviews—particularly when the participants were from the same college—participants were in pairs (7) or a group of three (1).² Colleges that participants represented had similar characteristics to the CCC system as a whole, based on data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System survey (comparisons available on request). Among our sample, 74% were DE coordinators or held other job titles directly related to online education (e.g., online education coordinator, instructional designer, dean of distance learning). The remaining 26% were faculty leaders or administrators whose primary roles were not in DE (e.g., deans of instruction, academic senate leaders, faculty serving on DE-related committees, etc.). When each respondent is first quoted in the study, we indicate whether the individual’s primary title indicates a “DE-Focused Role” or an “Other Role.” Because the individual characteristics of respondents were not a primary focus of this study, and because we wanted to avoid identifying details to the greatest extent possible given the limited pool of DE coordinators, we did not collect data on respondents’ demographic characteristics. For similar reasons, we assigned respondents gender-neutral pseudonyms to mask characteristics that could identify respondents.

Interviews generally lasted 45 to 90 minutes and were conducted over Zoom by the first author. Consent forms were circulated and signed prior to interviews (UC Davis IRB #1542511). Interviews were conducted leveraging a general semi-structured interview approach, ensuring that similar questions were asked to interviewees about their experiences, while allowing freedom and adaptability in probing for more specific and detailed information (Kallio et al., 2016). Since the interviews were conducted as part of a broader project on COVID-19 responses in community colleges, they covered several topics, including the status of DE on campus pre-COVID, responses to the pandemic, challenges that emerged in the transition to online courses, and predictions about future directions for online learning in the system. This paper largely draws on responses to questions around predictions about future directions for online learning (e.g., “Which adaptations that the campus has made during this crisis do you think are likely to remain in place and transform some aspects of operation, and why?”), although participants often touched on relevant themes in responses to other questions as well.

Interviews were recorded and we obtained Zoom transcripts, which we reviewed against the original audio and edited for accuracy. The lead author wrote field memos after each interview, generally the same day, to capture major ideas discussed during each conversation and other researcher observations. We emailed field memos to respondents to allow them to respond or correct any misimpressions and refined memos in response to their corrections and feedback. We revisited these memos and the original transcripts throughout the analytic process to check whether the themes we were defining captured the experiences highlighted by participants.

Our aim was to uncover descriptive themes about innovations during COVID rather than the generation of new theory. To establish these themes, we conducted two cycles of inductive coding, using Dedoose software. In the first cycle, the first and third authors conducted initial coding (Saldaña, 2016) to establish initial patterns in the data. For instance, we identified a set of codes related to “predicting the future,” in which respondents predicted phenomena like “changes in attitudes” toward online learning and “changes in resources” devoted to online learning. The first author generated an initial codebook by coding roughly half of the transcripts, and then trained the third author in the codebook. Reliability of coding was established by both authors co-coding an overlapping set of transcripts and resolving discrepancies to come to common understanding in the meaning of the codes.

For this paper, we focused on analyzing a set of codes that were future-oriented (e.g., “predicting changes in attitudes towards online courses”); that described successes that could bear replicating (e.g., “instructional successes”); and that identified on-going challenges (e.g., “challenging subjects to move online,” “ensuring accessibility”). All authors participated in writing an initial round of analytical memos (Miles et al., 2020) based on the first-round coded excerpts to develop candidate themes. For instance, one memo synthesized insights from excerpts discussing benefits of synchronous vs. asynchronous courses, reflecting anticipated instructional changes.

The team discussed how to refine our codes based on these initial memos, and the first author conducted a second round of focused coding (Saldaña, 2016). Using this second set of codes, we revised and recombined the set of candidate themes to identify a final set of themes and sub-themes detailed below. While we allowed themes to arise from the data inductively, we realized after generating our initial themes that they mapped neatly onto several aspects of diffusion of innovation theory, and so we connect our data with that organizing theory as well.

In presenting quotes below, we edit lightly to eliminate repetitive words (e.g., “to see, to see if … ”) or filler words (“like,” “um,” “you know,” etc.), taking care to preserve the meaning of quotes.

Trustworthiness

We implemented several steps to ensure trustworthiness (Miles et al., 2020, pp. 304–309) of our analysis and conclusions. Some of these explicitly sprang from the research design: For instance, we sampled participants from across multiple colleges, and the fact that we heard similar themes from participants situated in colleges across the state bolstered our confidence in the dependability of our findings. Similarly, we implemented checks, described above, to ensure that our coding process was similar across coders, while discussions of any disparities in coding allowed us to draw on the different perspectives within our research team to produce a richer understanding of potential ways to interpret interview data.

Other checks around trustworthiness of our findings sprang from our ability to compare participants’ insights against other sources of data. For instance, we confirmed that some of the enrollment patterns in online courses that leaders predicted in 2020 in fact came to pass. This increased our confidence in the credibility of the leaders’ predictions in other domains as well. Moreover, as we highlight in the discussion section, the similarity between some of the innovations described by our participants and innovations described by researchers looking at other settings lend confidence around the transferability of our findings to other settings.

Finally, to confirm the credibility of our interpretations of our interview data and subsequent analyses, we conducted multiple forms of checks with various audiences with expertise in DE. As noted above, we sent memos recounting major interview themes to participants after each interview and incorporated corrections that they made. We also asked several outside readers with connections to DE in the CCC system to read early drafts of this paper. While all errors are of course ours, their feedback helped us further hone our themes.

Findings

We highlight two main themes that emerged from our interviews with DE leaders. First, DE leaders discussed the pandemic as an event that catalyzed increased use of online teaching, and prompted many faculty and students to reevaluate their pre-pandemic opinions on whether online courses would meet their needs. They anticipated that online teaching would take a more prominent role post-pandemic (relative to pre-pandemic levels) due to better-than-anticipated experiences during the forced trial of online teaching during the pandemic. Second, they describe significant new innovations in online learning that emerged during COVID. They anticipated that many of these innovations would persist in the post-COVID world as well. Their insights align well with Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation Theory, as modeled in Figure 1. The diagram lists the five phases of diffusion of innovation and the ways that those phases were represented in our interviews, as further detailed throughout the findings section.

Figure 1. Features of the online learning adoption process during the COVID-19 pandemic connected to Roger’s diffusion of innovation theory.

T1 refers to findings summarized in theme 1; T2 refers to findings summarized in theme 2.

Continued growth in the use of online education going forward

DE leaders predicted substantial growth in the use of online education in colleges post-pandemic. These predictions were driven by a sense of increased respect for, and openness to, online teaching among faculty, and by a belief that a growing number of students experienced the convenience of online learning and saw online courses as a setting where they could thrive.

“Not just eating bonbons”: increased respect for online teaching

In a post-pandemic world, DE leaders anticipated an increased role for online education due, in part, to a shift in beliefs about the efficacy and accessibility of online instruction. To a large extent, this reflected DE leader impressions that some faculty who were previously resistant to online learning may become more receptive post-COVID. DE leaders reported that some faculty who initially were skeptical about online instruction recounted finding teaching in an online environment more enjoyable than expected. Cameron (Other Role) noted:

There are faculty who have discovered that online teaching is not as hard as they thought it was going to be, and I don’t mean hard in a workload [sense]. I mean hard as in “I didn’t think I would be able to connect with my students online.” … Those are anecdotes about how, “Oh, yeah, I thought this [teaching online] was great.”

Numerous DE leaders recounted faculty without prior online experience expressing surprise that meaningful interaction was possible in an online setting. These comments echoed diffusion of innovation theory (Rogers, 2003) in that DE leaders believe that online education may expand post-pandemic partly because faculty members (many of whom formerly held negative attitudes toward online learning and did not progress past the persuasion stage until the forced trial of COVID) found online instruction more compatible with their instructional goals than they anticipated.

Faculty’s pre-COVID attitudes may have reflected beliefs that DE was less rigorous or that online instructors were putting less effort into teaching their classes than faculty in traditional face-to-face classes. However, after moving their courses online, some of these reluctant adopters began to realize that online instruction required substantial work and committed time from faculty and could be delivered with a high level of rigor. One participant recounted colleagues saying they “had no idea how much work was involved” in online teaching, adding that these admissions were refreshing because online educators had faced skepticism pre-COVID that they were “really working when they’re teaching online” (Lee, Other Role).

This shift in faculty attitudes may result in both an increased acceptance of online courses in academic departments, as well as an increased willingness in previously-resistant faculty to voluntarily accept new online teaching assignments. One participant reported encountering many faculty colleagues who were “absolutely scared to death to teach online” that now “have this confidence [and] want to go ahead and pursue teaching online in the future, whereas they never, ever would have voluntarily done that on their own” pre-COVID (Sidney, DE-Focused Role). In this college, as in others, DE leaders observed that online teaching experiences improved faculty confidence in online instruction and made them more willing to consider online assignments. In Rogers’s (2003) parlance, COVID-19 effectively increased the trialability of online instruction as an educational approach by making its use mandatory. The exposure to DE that faculty received during this trial may have made them more receptive to future online teaching.

This was a relief to some DE leaders who felt that pre-pandemic, institution-level culture undervalued DE. As one leader reflected, “the college now understands what it is to be an online teacher, that we’re not just sitting around eating bonbons and … playing tennis: that it does involve teaching. So, I think all those misconceptions have been washed away” (Riley, DE-Focused Role). This sentiment was echoed by Auden (DE-Focused Role), who described a college culture where DE was “looked down on for years and years. … I do think that has changed currently. I hope it stays in memory, in institutional memory, once we get out of this.” Overall, while DE leaders did not suggest that the newfound interest in online teaching was universally held, they did anticipate greater willingness to teach online in the future. This shift may help institutions adapt more readily to changes in instructional needs if students demand more online options post-pandemic.

“This really works for me”: predicted changes in student demand for online courses

In addition to faculty becoming more comfortable with online teaching, DE leaders largely believed that students became more comfortable with online learning, and they anticipated growing demand for online class options. Some participants predicted attitude changes on the part of students who “maybe were afraid to take online and never had, and then they were forced to and they’re realizing, ‘Oh, this really works for me’” (Casey, Other Role). As with faculty, students may have found online learning more compatible with their needs (Rogers, 2003) than anticipated. One leader predicted that students would demand more online courses, including “not just the core stuff but more variety, so they can get their ADT [Associate Degree for Transfer] degrees mostly online” (Bailey, DE-Focused Role). This prediction was echoed by multiple leaders.

Some DE leaders suggested that anticipated increases in student demand for online courses could result in competition for student enrollments both within the CCC system and beyond. One participant predicted that students would become savvy consumers, shopping for online classes across multiple colleges based on course quality:

As students become more and more smart shoppers—smart consumers—they’re going to have less tolerance for a shoddy online class, and they’re not stuck because the next campus is 50 miles away [like for a physical campus]. The next campus is one click away. (Terry, DE-Focused Role)

Other leaders agreed that colleges may increasingly begin competing for online students. For instance, Alex (DE-Focused Role), whose college faced likely cuts in courses due to financial pressures, predicted, “at some point, we are going to be offering [online courses] in which students from other colleges will be able to enroll in [our] online courses, and students from our college will be able to enroll in theirs.” Alex, like other leaders who spoke on this theme, stressed that colleges should continue to increase the quality and variety of “local” online course offerings to avoid losing students to colleges with more robust online offerings, or to colleges that make larger investments in online course design and instructional quality. This suggests that online offerings may expand if colleges believe DE provides relative advantages (Rogers, 2003) in attracting and retaining students.

Importantly, this is one set of predictions that we could partially verify using 2022–2023 enrollment data (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, n.d.). While online enrollment has declined from the high points of the pandemic—when up to 61% of full-time-equivalent enrollments were taken through DE—it still surpasses pre-pandemic levels. While DE accounted for 16% of 2018–2019 enrollments, it represented 49% of enrollments in 2022–2023. These figures align with DE leaders’ forecasts regarding the increasing prominence of online education.

“I don’t think the system will ever be the same”: innovation and anticipated instructional changes

While DE leaders anticipated that online courses would serve a growing share of students, they also anticipated that the structure of courses would change post-pandemic. DE leaders shared numerous success stories around new instructional techniques for online learning. In each of these cases, our leaders’ experiences reflect re-inventions and modifications (Rogers, 2003) of online course delivery that occurred during the rapid implementation of pandemic-era online instruction that may increase the likelihood that individual instructors, or programs more broadly, continue to use DE post-pandemic.

“Creative solutions”: developing instructional approaches for classes newly online

One major theme was that different disciplines within colleges found new ways to teach material that had not previously been taught online. Many subjects, especially those involving face-to-face demonstrations of different physical techniques, had little online presence pre-COVID, creating challenges in offering classes required for two-year degrees: “Figuring out how to get a fully-online degree without having an online lab [science] class has been an obstacle for everybody; doing a fully online speech [public speaking class] is always a tricky one. And those are all requirements for the associate degree” (Lane, DE-Focused Role). In addition to lab-based sciences and public speaking classes, other participants recounted career-technical education, childcare classes and art-based classes posing particular challenges to move online.

During the pandemic, however, DE leaders reported that different departments developed new techniques that could potentially broaden online offerings in these fields going forward. For example, several DE leaders described efforts by their science departments to deploy lab kits to students to enable instruction comparable to traditional in-person education. Another participant described a colleague’s adaptations to automobile repair instruction that allowed students an arguably better experience than in-class demonstrations had:

[This instructor] puts a GoPro camera on his head and he says, “Okay, guys, we’re going to try and fix this engine.” And he’s not sitting in an office with a Logitech camera or whatever; he’s actually under the hood. And the students get a better view of what he’s doing there than they did with all the slides and PowerPoint stuff he had. DE actually brings them into entirely new laboratory experiences. (Terry)

DE leaders related that the pandemic forced colleges to find approaches to offering classes online that had been considered difficult to convert previously. This suggests that one lasting instructional effect of the pandemic may be online course offerings in a broader array of subject areas.

“A game-changer”: new techniques to improve engagement in online courses

In addition to pushing some courses online for the first time, the pandemic also sparked development of new techniques that can be applied more broadly to improve experiences in classes long offered online. For instance, some participants discussed finding new ways during the crisis to communicate with students and ensure that they maintained engagement; many of these techniques could easily carry over into post-COVID online education. Avery (DE-Focused Role) described using student surveys at the start of a class to allow students to indicate their preferred methods of communications—including texts—and using those methods to reach out to struggling students to a greater degree than pre-COVID. While the pandemic gave instructors a clear reason to check in on students, Avery argued that the resulting improvement in communication with students suggested that instructors should use such outreach even in a post-pandemic world: “It’s something that we should have been doing all along in our online classes. And [that] is more important in our online classes than in our face-to-face classes, and I didn’t realize that until I had this experience [teaching during COVID].”

An even larger pandemic-era innovation was the surge in the use of synchronous online instruction. Pre-COVID, very few enrollments in the CCC system—around 1% of full-time-equivalent enrollments in 2018–2019—were taken synchronously (CCCCO Data Mart, n.d.). Asynchronous meetings were generally preferred because one major argument in favor of online education had been that it freed students from the strictures of attending a class at a set time and place. In other words, there was no expectation that students and instructors would meet in real-time to deliver or discuss material. During the pandemic, however, leaders reported a tremendous surge in the use of synchronous courses being held through platforms like Zoom.

Many leaders came to conclude that live sessions could improve engagement for students who depended on regular contact to keep motivated. Ari (DE-Focused Role) advocated for offering more synchronous sessions of introductory classes to provide more structure, noting “I think there’s a lot of students out there that really want to have the [assurance that] `Okay. On Tuesday, Thursday at noon I get to see my instructor and she’s going to tell me what to do.’” Casey agreed, noting that synchronous teaching allowed online courses to more closely mimic face-to-face environments:

A few years ago if you went into my subconscious, I’d say, “I think I’m kind of short-changing my [online students]. I do my best. But [the online and face-to-face classes are] not really the same.” And I do all the things I’m supposed to [in asynchronous online instruction], but there’s not as much of a human element.

With pandemic-era teaching modifications, Casey added, “I think I’m getting there [to comparable classes] … The game-changer was the Zoom video conferencing.” Even as long-time online instructors, many leaders in our sample identified new practices, like using synchronous instruction, that they adopted in response to the pandemic but planned to incorporate to improve engagement post-pandemic.

Other faculty likewise expressed appreciation for the greater student engagement that synchronous instruction offered, for multiple reasons. One participant noted that synchronous instruction appealed to faculty “who want to see the students. They want to make sure it is the student and … they’re concerned about cheating, and just overall participation” (Drew, DE-Focused Role). These leaders noted that live sessions enabled instructors to monitor the learning process more closely.

At the same time, leaders emphasized that asynchronous instruction can be effective and equitable depending on course design, and would likely remain the dominant form of online instruction. For example, Devon (DE-Focused Role) argued that when carefully designed based on evidence-based practices (see Pacansky-Brock et al., 2020), exclusively-asynchronous classes could provide humanized learning experiences:

A lot of people felt like [asynchronous instruction] was worse than fully synchronous because they’re not interacting … but they didn’t really know a lot about [asynchronous online] course design … you can still have a highly connected humanized class with mostly asynchronous. And that’s actually more equitable.

Leaders particularly argued that asynchronous courses were more equitable for students with unpredictable work or family schedules, who could not guarantee availability at a given time for course meetings.

Several DE leaders touted potential benefits of combining synchronous and asynchronous approaches to optimize instruction. Jamie (Other Role) experimented with adding a non-mandatory synchronous meeting to a technically-asynchronous class to support students who preferred consistent meeting times: Then students “feel like ‘Okay, this is [a regular] class every single week’ … I’ve seen my students thrive in those cases.” Similarly, Casey shared a “happy medium” approach, incorporating optional live components into technically-asynchronous courses to avoid requiring students to engage over Zoom at any particular time: “I have a weekly meeting, and I move it. It’s a floating meeting throughout the week to catch different people’s schedules.” Casey recorded the meetings and required students who did not attend live “to watch the recording, and then participate in the discussion board. … that’s worked really, really well. So it’s asynchronous, but it still has that human element that you would find in a synchronous course.” Such careful design approaches may enable courses to maintain the flexibility of asynchronous instruction while bringing a human element to the learning process.

The growing use of synchronous courses spurred conversations around how best to enact instruction to improve compatibility (Rogers, 2003) with instructional goals. For instance, Reese’s (DE-Focused Role) college counseled instructors to not “require cameras if [students] don’t want to put them on” to avoid privacy violations, and to make attendance at live sessions optional, with recordings posted for those who could not attend. These practices were intended to improve equity in synchronous instruction. Other leaders emphasized limiting the time students were expected to engage synchronously to combat Zoom fatigue. Thoughtful inquiry to further refine best practices for synchronous online education will be an important task going forward if re-inventions like synchronous sessions play a more prominent role in online education.

Like the overall trends in online enrollment, we verified predictions around synchronous course-taking against 2022–2023 enrollment data (CCCCO Data Mart, n.d.). During 2022–2023, synchronous course-taking represented 5% of total full-time-equivalent enrollments. While this is a modest share—and a decline from the ~ 9% of enrollments taken synchronously during 2020–2021 and 2021–2022—it is a substantial expansion from the 1% share taken synchronously in 2018–2019. Thus, enrollment data bear out predictions both that asynchronous courses would remain the dominant form of online instruction, and that synchronous courses would be more prevalent post-pandemic than pre-pandemic.

“Thou shalt use Canvas”: sustained use of technology in face-to-face courses

While many leaders predicted changes in the delivery of online courses post-pandemic, they also predicted that use of new techniques would alter delivery of primarily face-to-face classes. Leaders noted that the crisis prompted a massive increase in the use of Canvas. One leader described a campus requirement that instructors sign a memorandum of understanding codifying the use of Canvas for course delivery: “And that MOU said ‘Thou shalt use Canvas.’ Regardless of whether you use Zoom, regardless of what you’re doing, you still need to teach your class through Canvas” (Loren, DE-Focused Role). Many other campuses similarly pressed instructors to move onto Canvas.

Leaders thought that the standardization of course presentation through Canvas was a positive development that instructors would preserve even if they moved back to face-to-face instruction. The prediction that Canvas would be more universally used, including in face-to-face classes, was common in our interviews. Ali (DE-Focused Role) estimated that “We’re still going to be supporting, I would assume, 70 to 80% of faculty [through Canvas] even once we go back in the classroom.”

Other respondents predicted that new software or techniques that instructors adopted during the pandemic would be sustained going forward to create more tech-enhanced face-to-face courses. One participant shared: “Our speech department now has gotten used to certain software [adopted during the pandemic] … [They] said, ‘Even when we’re back on campus, we think this [is a] really good tool for our classes’” (Cary, DE-Focused Role). This suggests that in addition to possibly opening up the movement of new subjects online, the time investments that faculty made to innovate new techniques may support continued use of technology-enhanced instruction even among courses primarily delivered face-to-face.

“Effective and credible assessments”: new forms of assessment in online classes

Assessing students in online courses has been a long-standing issue, partly because the lack of physical presence opens up new avenues for students to potentially cheat on exams without detection. DE leaders acknowledged the concerns of many of their colleagues that online courses may be more vulnerable to cheating, particularly with the emergence of sites like Course Hero that post instructors’ assessment materials online. One leader acknowledged, “I have colleagues around the world who are monitoring those cheating websites and searching for their [exam] questions on there and following up with students” (Avery). Another participant linked this point to concerns about the credibility of credentials granted by online courses. Though some instructors may prefer not to police students’ academic integrity, Terry points out that community colleges “offer certification, and that certification needs to be credible, so we need to develop more effective and credible online assessments.”

Leaders in our sample noted that the pandemic encouraged faculty to think about how they had been assessing students and to consider new techniques, some of which may help address concerns about cheating. Pre-pandemic, Terry administered exams through a proctoring network that allowed students to take exams in-person at proctoring sites near their homes. This approach became unworkable given closures during the pandemic. But Terry described a new approach that arguably improved upon the old practice:

What I started doing is developing something that I call “Bumblebee tests.” Bumblebee—it was a character from the Transformers: “More than meets the eye.” And so the tests that I create on a weekly basis … have ten topics. And within those topics, there are three different questions that have variable parameters to it. If you look at all the variations of that test, there are 58,000 variations for each one of those quizzes. That means a student can take it at 8 am and another student can take it at 9 pm on the same day, and there is no chance they’re sharing information … [That] also means I can reuse those tests many times without worrying about cheating or [the website] Course Hero or something like that. So there are ways to achieve and couple that with Proctorio so I can say, “Yeah, Bill took my test. I saw Bill take it.”

With this approach, Terry argued that instructors may have more confidence in the identity of online students than when students are in large face-to-face classes.

While software like Proctorio offered instructors confidence that students were actually taking the exams they turned in, some leaders identified concerns around privacy and inequity. Avery noted that requiring use of Proctorio could be “stressful” for students who “don’t have a space that facilitates not being interrupted.” Mid-test interruptions could result in students being erroneously flagged for academic integrity violations.

Some forms of alternate exams potentially skirted such concerns. For instance, Ola (DE-Focused Role) suggested that colleagues consider new approaches to having students demonstrate knowledge in online courses, including oral exams over Zoom, suggesting to colleagues: “What about having Zoom final exams where you ask them to walk you through the process? Wouldn’t you get the same information that they know how to do the steps?” Ola argued that such oral, Zoom-based exams could alleviate concerns about academic integrity while allowing students to demonstrate their knowledge.

DE leaders also raised new ways that instructors could assess participation in online classes. Devon described a colleague’s approach to running discussions, which historically have been a primary way for students to demonstrate engagement and participation in online courses. This colleague provides students with three ways to demonstrate participation via weekly metacognitive questions to students about their performance:

They can either talk on a discussion asynchronously, come synchronously and speak with her and whoever joins, or they can write a journal about it. So she gives them three ways to do this check-in every week, and it’s flexible, but it allows the students that want that one-on-one [engagement] live time to meet with her without excluding all the rest of the students. So I think that, to me, is the ideal approach. It takes some creative thinking. (Devon)

These flexible approaches may avoid issues with privacy that DE leaders reported emerged on campus with respect to both class participation and exam proctoring.

Across multiple domains of instruction, DE leaders echoed an over-riding sentiment that the pandemic “pushed everybody on-board to what the possibilities [in DE] were … It’s just totally opened the floodgates for us. And I don’t think we’ll ever be the same. I don’t think the system will ever be the same, even when we go back to face-to-face teaching” (Lane).

Discussion

While the swift shift to remote instruction in the wake of the COVID-19 presented many challenges, it also opened new opportunities to expand online course offerings and implement innovative instructional strategies. Drawing on interviews with DE leaders from the CCC system, this paper identified two key changes experts foresaw in online education in broad-access institutions going forward post-pandemic: a further expansion of online course offerings as a result of the online resources and coursework created during the pandemic, and an increased adoption of instructional innovations that incorporate lessons learned during the pandemic.

Our findings echoed several aspects of Rogers’s (2003) diffusion of innovation theory. Predictions around expanded use of online courses partly reflected notions that the pandemic effectively forced a trial of a new innovation on many instructors and students who may otherwise never have adopted online courses. While some instructors may opt to discontinue use of online instruction post-pandemic, many others found online courses more compatible with their instructional goals than originally anticipated, and identified relative advantages (like the ability to compete for students who may increasingly demand online education) that may prompt colleges to expand online offerings. Similarly, DE leaders highlighted areas of creative redefinition and re-invention (like new approaches to engagement and assessment) that instructors pioneered, making online instruction more compatible with their instructional goals. As mandates to offer classes online recede and faculty members enter a confirmation stage where they decide whether to maintain or discontinue their use of online instruction, these changes may increase the likelihood that DE expands post-pandemic.

Our findings around instructional innovations during the pandemic also echo those observed by other scholars. For instance, our findings accord with those of Mazur et al. (2021) that many faculty found innovative ways to counter the perceived lack of student-instructor interactions that kept some from adopting online teaching pre-pandemic. Moreover, our leaders’ experiences echoed findings by other scholars (e.g., Bartlett & Braman, 2021; Deutschman et al., 2021; Fuentes-García et al., 2023; Schell, 2023) around innovations allowing subjects historically taught mostly in-person—like arts and sciences—to move online. Similarly, our leaders’ impressions around the emergence of synchronous instruction echoed other scholars’ findings (e.g., Kolack et al., 2020; Mazur et al., 2021). This increases our confidence that trends identified by our leaders were likely broadly shared in other colleges and that our findings are relevant to other college systems post-COVID.

Our findings advance the existing literature both by documenting new innovations, and by delving into the anticipated persistence of these innovations. Participants’ insights regarding promising practices for synchronous instruction, the integration of synchronous and asynchronous modalities, and innovative approaches to assessment in online classes provide important guidance for practitioners contemplating the optimal structure of online classes post-pandemic. Adopting such promising practices will be important for colleges if, as our leaders anticipated, students are increasingly willing to look outside of their home colleges for high-quality online course offerings.

Implications for practice and policy

To cope with these changes, institutions should attend to several issues in the post-pandemic era. For instance, our participants note that online courses present unique challenges to teaching and learning, such as challenges in structuring courses to promote engagement. Since students’ backgrounds may be related to their preparation for online coursework, whether an online course is designed and taught in a way that sufficiently addresses these challenges will have implications for performance disparity among subgroups of students. Yet, there is neither consensus among DE leaders nor sufficient empirical evidence from the current literature on how best to resolve these issues. Taking the debate around synchronous versus asynchronous instruction, DE leaders identified benefits and disadvantages observed with each delivery mode, but work is needed to determine the appropriate mix of synchronous vs. asynchronous courses, as well as practices that promote student success—and equity of student outcomes—in newer types of online courses.

Moreover, if online course-taking takes a larger role in community college landscapes, colleges should invest in different areas to maintain and improve course quality. Particularly as promising practices are developed in newer types of online course delivery, like synchronous education, colleges will need to train instructors to deliver high-quality instruction. Furthermore, some of the software products that respondents reported benefitting their faculty colleagues were purchased by the CCC system for the first time during the pandemic. If online course-taking continues to expand, the system should continue to invest in software and other supports that address equity and pedagogical needs.

Finally, colleges should carefully consider how to foster expertise in DE on their campuses. While our sample targeted DE coordinators and deans, some colleges lacked personnel in these roles. Hiring dedicated point-people for DE may help colleges streamline efforts to keep abreast of emerging best practices in online education and dissemination of those practices to other faculty on campus. Recruiting experts in related areas, such accessibility for online courses, may also bolster support for the provision of high-quality online classes with equal access for all students.³

Implications for future research

This study has several delimitations resulting from choices about the scope of the study that leave room for future work to build on these findings. For instance, our interviews were conducted in late 2020; enthusiasm for online learning may have waxed or waned since then. Though early signs indicate potential shifts in the uptake of online education post-pandemic, evidenced in state enrollment data, it is too early to know whether changes in beliefs and perceptions of online learning will remain over the long-term. Future work should take up this question.

Similarly, our interviews also occurred before the artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT emerged as a major influence in college classrooms. AI may offer opportunities to improve online education if used to personalize learning pathways for students; provide real-time support to students; and assist educators in designing adaptive assessments, tracking student performance, and identifying areas where targeted interventions are needed. At the same time, online instructors will need to grapple with the challenges AI presents in ensuring academic integrity for written assignments. Future work must be done to keep abreast of such changes in online education.

Moreover, we opted to study the California Community College system and to focus on an important but unique population of educators who held leadership roles related to DE prior to the pandemic. This choice had important benefits in that this population was especially well-poised to contextualize current trends in the broader history of DE at their colleges. However, at the same time, this group may have different views of online education compared to the general population of faculty. Other faculty may be less enthused about the prospects for expanding online education going forward. In that case, online education could revert to its pre-pandemic position on campuses rather than undergoing a major shift in long-term importance. Future research should explore how attitudes toward, and offerings of, online courses continue to change going forward to determine whether the predictions made by the leaders in this study are borne out.

If the predictions of the DE leaders in our sample are correct, the way that colleges offer online education in the future may differ markedly from the structure of past offerings. Continued innovations around online course delivery—including the use of synchronous education, increased use of techniques to increase engagement, and new approaches to assessment—will necessitate additional research to determine how these approaches are associated with student outcomes. This highlights the pressing need for institutions and researchers to collect systematic data on instructional practices in online courses to identify evidence-based practices that can be used to continuously improve student online learning, reduce equity gaps, and establish a benchmark system of online course quality.

Moreover, the relationship between online course-taking and student success may be different in classes that use these new pedagogical tools than in historical online classes. Future work should explore whether performance gaps between online and face-to-face students change in light of new tools developed during the pandemic. Future research must also attend to the equity implications of new innovations: equitable student outcomes are a priority of the California Community College system (California Community College Chancellor’s Office [CCCCO], 2024) and new innovations must be evaluated with respect to equity.

The predictions of leaders in this study provide important guidelines to topics that require attention from practitioners and researchers alike going forward. We hope that practitioners and researchers are able to use these insights to improve and study online course quality.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Spencer Foundation to the first author (Grant # 202100019). We thank the Distance Education Coordinators Organization for providing information about the study to systemwide distance education leaders. We thank Jim Julius; Kandace Knudson; Marcela Cuellar; Jenni Higgs and participants at the Sociology of Education Mini-Conference on COVID-19, the annual meeting of the Association for Education Research and Policy, the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, the graduate student retreat of the UC Davis Center for Poverty and Inequality Research, the Education Research Initiative seminar at UC Irvine, and two anonymous reviewers for feedback at various stages of conceptualizing this project. Finally, our sincere thanks to all distance education leaders who spoke with us in interviews. All errors are solely ours.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Spencer Foundation [202100019].

Notes

1. We use the terms “online education” and “distance education/DE” interchangeably.

2. Participants were asked whether they preferred to participate individually or with a partner. When contacted participants suggested that we include colleagues from the same college, we generally scheduled those interviews as paired/group interviews.

3. See an earlier version of this study (Hart et al., 2022) for additional analysis addressing these recommendations specifically from leaders in our study.