Open SUNY: A New Era Begins

Since its founding, SUNY has been committed to its mission of providing the people of New York educational services of the highest quality, with the broadest possible access, across a vast range of programs. To meet this mission, SUNY has continuously evolvedto meet the changing needs of students and the State of New York, stemming from its original mission to train teachers to meet the expanded demands that arose from compulsory public education, to accommodate returning veterans after World War II and the passage of the G.I. Bill, and to broaden accessto include underserved populations and those excluded from higher education because of their gender, race, religious affiliation, or income.

Today, change in higher education is dramatic and fast moving. New technology tools make rich, adaptive, and flexible methods of engagement and learning more feasible than ever before. For-profit education has expanded dramatically. Leading universities like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford and state systems like Wisconsin, Georgia, and Florida, are making major investments in online-enabled education. Further, more than 70 percent of today’s students nationally can be characterized as “non-traditional,” meaning, for example, that they are part-time students, work full-time while enrolled in classes, are adult learners, or did not graduate from high school.

To stay abreast of the dramatic changes in this landscape, SUNY’s evolution as a higher education system must continue apace. “Open SUNY” represents avital step in that evolution.

Open SUNY is our systemwide effort to embrace and expand online-enabled education in order to improve education outcomes and help more students attain their degrees and be successful after graduation. Open SUNY takes the power of technology, and the power of teaching, and elevates their collective impact through the power of SUNY.

By enhancing SUNY’s existing, and substantial, efforts in online-enabled education, Open SUNY will expand access to higher education in New York State, raise completion rates, prepare more studentsfor success in their lives and careers, and contribute to the economic and societal health of the state, the nation, and the world.

Open SUNY willmeet pressing needs by providing more underserved adultswithaccess to higher education.

The people of New York need broader access to higher education. About 6.9 million of the state’s adults have a high school degree but no college degree, and 4.2 million have associate or bachelor’s degrees but seekmore education to advance their careers. These non-traditional student populations often have parallel commitmentsor constraints—jobs, families, financial limitations, community ties—that limit their access to higher education in its traditional form. A recent Eduventures report showed that while 75% of US adults are interested in pursuing higher education, only 15% will likely enroll in the next three years, with many of the remaining 60% ultimately deciding that going to school is impractical.[1] As a result, many of these adults are prevented from advancing toward their desired careers.

Colleges and universities need to provide programsthat fit into non-traditional students’ lives. High-quality online-enabled education canprovide this increased accessibility without sacrificing quality. Major, peer-reviewed meta-studies suggest that, in general,there is no significant difference in outcomes between traditional and online education.Tallent-Runnels et. al. 2004 found that for online courses, “learning outcomes appeared to be the same as in traditional courses”[2]and Zhao et. al. 2005 write that “the aggregated data of available studies show no significant difference in outcomes between distance education and face-to-face education as previous research reviews suggest”[3]A more recent meta-analysis by Means et. al. 2009, indicates that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”[4]

In the next five years, Open SUNY will expand high-quality, affordable higher education to 100,000 online students to meet the needs of these non-traditional student groups.

SUNY already has a rich online offering and history on which to build

SUNY already has more than two decades of experience, research, experimentation, and investment in high-quality online education. SUNY institutions offer nearly 400 degree programs with an online component, and approximately 12,000 online course sections each academic year. Additionally, more than 5,000 SUNY faculty have been developed to conduct online-enabled teaching.

Our path to today involved a series of innovations, including the creation of the SUNY Learning Network (SLN) in 1994, supported by a grant from the Sloan Foundation, to provide services and supports to campuses.SLNalso launched in 1995 the first online multi-institutional Learning Management System that scaled to support 40+ institutions. Over the years, SLN has received awards and recognition from leading institutions in online education and technology, including EDUCAUSE, the U.S. Distance Learning Association, the National University Technology Network and Sloan-C. And over the last several decades, campuses across the system have made major investments, and undertaken a wide set of experiments, that have pushed the available models and approaches for online education.

Beyond its extensive experience in online education, SUNY also has a variety of other characteristics that position Open SUNY for success. Unlike other online education providers, SUNY encompasses 64 campuses—including research universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and technical colleges—across New York State. By providing students with awareness of and access to the full range of programs available through these campuses, with the world-class faculty and facilities they provide, Open SUNY will provide a broader set of higher quality online-enabled education options than its peers.

SUNY’s extensive network of campuses and commitment to student mobility enables the University to offer seamless ladders of degree programs, allowing students to move from an associate to a bachelor’s to a master’s program in a way that speeds time to degreeand minimizes college costs for students.

Additionally, SUNY’s geographical footprint provides a distinct advantage relative to other higher education institutions operating in New York—allowing students to benefit from the flexibility of online education combined with in-person accessibility. Ninety-three percent of all New Yorkers live within 15 miles of a SUNY campus, and nearly 100 percent live within 30 miles.

Finally, unlike most of its peers in online education, SUNY’s powerful and universallyrecognized brand will increase students’ employability and success.

Open SUNYcapitalizes on our systemness and positions us to expand our reach.

Open SUNY will help individual campuses and faculty achievetheir full potential for online-enabled education while fostering collaborations that will accelerate SUNY’s leadership in the field. This is a distinctive approach compared to what is being undertaken by other systems. By fostering inter-campus interactions and raising campuses’ overall capability levels, SUNY will build its online platform sustainability and collaboratively.

Open SUNY will help us work together to expand ACCESS by:

  • Expanding the breadth of our online programs to ensure high-quality online degree programs at the associate, bachelor’s,master’s and Ph.D. or terminal level for the highest-need disciplines in the state;
  • Enhancing existing outreach to prospective online students and making it easy for them to find the right SUNY offering with easy-to-use search functionality across all of SUNY’s online courses and ~400 online-enabled degree programs; a readiness assessment that helps students understand whether online learning is right for them; and an exploration course that generates interest and allows students to experience online education first-hand before enrolling.
  • Lowering the cost of degrees by taking advantage of open educational resources and helping students graduate earlier or to earn their degrees while continuing to work; and

In addition, Open SUNY will help raise student COMPLETION rates by:

  • Providing online students with a full suite of high-quality services that re-creates the supportiveness of an on-campus environment without sacrificing the flexibility of online learning;and
  • Letting students shorten their timetodegree through supporting the investigation and, where appropriate, scaling of innovative credit earning, such as prior learning assessments and competency-based learning

Open SUNY will help prepare students for SUCCESS in their lives and careers by:

  • Supporting the creation or enhancement of programs in high-needs areas that develop skills and competencies required in today’s workforce; and
  • Integrating experiential learning that provides students with hands-on experience and aids them in securinggainful employment after graduation.

Finally, Open SUNY will help create an unrivalled environment for faculty and campuses to enhance their use of online-enabled education by:

  • Establishingfaculty-driven centersthat dramatically enhance professional development opportunities, research, and innovation in online-enabled instruction and methods;
  • Recognizing, rewarding, and elevating faculty for excellence in online teaching,innovative programs, and pedagogical methods
  • Offering instructional and content design support for faculty developing or refreshing online courses; and
  • Assisting them in adopting new research-informed practices in online education shown to support desired student outcomes through support from the Open SUNY Scale Up Lab

Open SUNY will be introducedin January, as an important step on a longer journey.

Open SUNY to the world in January 2014. We will showcase and demonstrate Open SUNY’s signature elements to current and prospective students, faculty, and campuses, setting the stage for a broader at-scale launch in September 2014.

In January, we will:

  • Introduce up to eightdegree programs powered by Open SUNY+ in high-needs areas such as engineering, healthcare, and business that will showcase signature elements of Open SUNY. For all students and faculty affiliated with these degrees, SUNY will provide new student and faculty services (described below) and experiential learning opportunities
  • Implement extensive student supports for students in programs powered by Open SUNY+, including 24/7 customer service, online academic tutoring, and a personal student concierge
  • Design and launch a faculty center to facilitate a peer-to-peer faculty network promoting excellence in online education, which will support faculty with course development, community building, competency development and expansion of research in the area
  • Begin implementation of the Open SUNY Scale Up Lab which will create and implement operational models to expand across the system new research-informed practices in online education shown to support desired student outcomes
  • Launch a program navigator to help prospective students identify the right online-enabled degree offered by institutions across the SUNY system, as well as a readiness assessment to assist them in determining the appropriateness of online education for their needs

In September, Open SUNY will be formally launched at scale as we welcome the first incoming class of students in degree programs powered by Open SUNY+. We will expand upon the foundation laid in January, substantially increasing the number of degrees powered by Open SUNY+ and supporting campuses in introducing tools for student completion. We will continue to formalize permanent business models for student, faculty, and campus supports first introduced in January. Finally, we will introduce new initiatives and innovative learning practices, leveraging research from the faculty center and the capabilities of the Open SUNY Scale Up Lab.

In following years, Open SUNY will continually evolve to use online education to enhance student access, completion and success. SUNY will continue to: add new online courses, degrees, and degrees powered by Open SUNY+, especially in high needs areas; improve and expand established Open SUNY services; enhance the ability of students, consistent with faculty curricular ownership, to benefit from the breadth of offerings across the system; evolve and expand the use of new supports and tools for completion; and lead the investigation and broad implementation through the Open SUNY Scale Up Lab of the newest innovations in higher education. Taken together, these initiatives will continue to elevate SUNY’s distinctive online-enabled offerings and expand our opportunities to serve all students.

Open SUNY will help us achieve our shared vision.

In the decades ahead, SUNY’s unique approach to online education will provide millions of additional students with access to high-quality higher education they could get nowhere else, and help them complete their degrees, succeed in their careers, and improve their quality of life.

Open SUNY will help our faculty achieve their own aspirations for online teaching excellence, reach a much wider array of students in New York and around the world—and teach them in new ways. It will enable each campus to support its own unique student and faculty experiences.

And Open SUNY will help New York State meet the needs of employers, society and an increasingly global economy by producing graduates with 21-st century skillsand knowledge.

SUNY will play a leadership role in the new era of online-enabled education.

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[1] The Adult Higher Education Consumer (2013).Eduventures.

[2]Tallent-Runnels MK, Thomas JA, Lan WY, Cooper S, Ahern TC, Shaw SM, et al. (2006). Teaching courses online: A review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 76, 93–135.

[3]Zhao, Y., Lei, J., Yan, B., Lai, C., & Tan, H. S. (2005). What makes the difference? A practical analysis of research on the effectiveness of distance education.Teachers College Record, 107(8), 1836–1884.

[4]Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2009).Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies.Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development.