Van Davis
A Road to Somewhere

Last month I asked our readers to contemplate whether or not we’re “on a road to nowhere” as we prepare for the fall and beyond. Today, I want to take a look at where we are on that road and consider what this journey may look like for the next several months.

A Road to Somewhere
Van Davis
Avoiding a “Road to Nowhere:” What We Must Do ...

In 1985 The Talking Heads released “Road to Nowhere.” That song, and that metaphor, have been on my mind a lot lately as I think about where higher education is going in the fall and beyond.

Avoiding a “Road to Nowhere:” What We Must Do This Fall
Van Davis
Update on Federal Regulations Impacting ...

I suspect many of us feel a bit like Phil Connors right now—every day seems like the last as we go through a seemingly endless series of Zoom meetings, emails, and revisiting many of the same issues over and over as circumstances require us to reevaluate and revise former decisions. High on that list of issues is likely questions about federal regulations and regulatory relief in this time or remote education.

Update on Federal Regulations Impacting Distance Education During the Pandemic
Van Davis
Fall and Beyond: Higher Education in the Age of ...

Even before the COVID-19 global pandemic, higher education was struggling to make sense of what David La Piana and Melissa Mendes call a VUCA world in The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution: Real-Time Strategic Planning in a Rapid-Response World. Originally coined by the US military to describe a post-Cold War world, VUCA stands for:

· Volatile– The world is rapidly changing and is no longer static.

· Uncertain– The world is unpredictable.

· Complex– The world is interwoven and interconnected.

· Ambiguous– We no longer understand what the change levers are or even the extent to which everything is interconnected.

Fall and Beyond: Higher Education in the Age of COVID-19 and Other Disasters
Van Davis
Regulations Review #1: Regular and Substantive ...

This post will examine the proposed changes to the distance education and credit hour definitions. We’ll have another post early next week that will dig deeper into the proposed changes related to direct assessment and competency-based education as well as a few other select issues such as proposed changes to the credit hour definition, calculating financial aid eligibility for correspondence education, and defining an instructional week for asynchronous delivery.

Regulations Review #1: Regular and Substantive Interaction

Office of Inspector General

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The OIG Report on WGU, Part 3: A Brief History of Regular and Substantive Interaction

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The OIG Report on WGU, Part 3: A Brief History of Regular and Substantive Interaction

A little over two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released its long-awaited and much anticipated financial aid audit of Western Governors University (WGU). Since then, there have been a number of great discussions of the report as well as its potential impact on higher education. Today, in the third post of our series on the audit, we are going to take a trip down memory lane and revisit a post that we wrote last year that reviewed all of the available information at that time on “regular and substantive interaction,” the issue at the heart of both the audit findings and the source of much discussion among online educators.

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The OIG Report on WGU, Part 2: React... But Don't Overreact

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The OIG Report on WGU, Part 2: React... But Don't Overreact

It has been more than a week since the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued its Final Audit Report declaring that “Western Governors University Was Not Eligible to Participate in the Title IV Programs.” Both of us (Russ Poulin, WCET and Van Davis, Blackboard) have been following the activities surrounding the audit (competency-based education, regular and substantive interaction, the definition of faculty) for some time. Last year we wrote a post trying to compile and interpret previous OIG and Department of Education information about “regular and substantive interaction.”

This is the second in a series of blog posts on the OIG Report. This post begins with some additional background. We also want to be the first to provide advice as to what this means for distance educators and suggest some issues you and your institutional colleagues should consider.