Digital Transformation” is currently one of the most significant terms in the realm of information strategy. At its simplest, digital transformation refers to leveraging technology and data to reshape the core operations of an organization, thereby better meeting user needs.
The most direct beneficiaries of higher education’s digital transformation are undoubtedly the students. Hence, every higher education institution aspiring for technological innovation is keenly interested in how digital education can play a role in their activities.
In this article, we share insights from a practical study conducted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on six top universities and community colleges in the United States. The aim is to provide reference data, rich case studies, and practical suggestions for higher education institutions seeking to expand digital learning.
University of Central Florida—Transforming Undergraduate Education
The University of Central Florida (UCF), located in Orlando, Florida, has been at the forefront of digital learning for nearly two decades, particularly in the realm of research universities. Its online and blended learning courses, mainly targeting undergraduate students, set it apart globally.
Currently, online and blended courses constitute nearly one-third of UCF student credits. These courses offer all students a more flexible learning environment. For instance, in a typical blended course, one class may be conducted in a physical classroom, while the other two take place online. This approach is particularly beneficial for students balancing full-time work and studies or those residing far from campus(quotes from usms.ac.ma).
Survey results indicate that UCF students enrolled in online and blended courses, compared to those in face-to-face courses, are more likely to have flexible schedules (90% vs. 50%), more female (67% vs. 43%), and older (average age of 28 vs. 22).
The data proves that the significant flexibility inherent in online learning helps students complete their degrees faster. The survey shows that full-time undergraduate students taking 41% to 60% of their credits online can complete their degrees in an average of 3.9 years, approximately four months less than students studying all courses face-to-face.
A shorter time to graduation implies lower costs for students and allows them to enter the workforce more quickly, significantly enhancing their earning potential. Furthermore, students enrolled in blended courses are almost 3 percentage points more likely to achieve A, B, or C grades compared to those choosing face-to-face courses.
A crucial finding is that after implementing digital teaching, UCF not only increased student enrollment, learning capabilities, and graduation rates but also reduced operational costs. Data shows that the highest costs associated with online courses at UCF are 20% to 30% lower than the corresponding costs for face-to-face courses.
The average number of students choosing online or blended courses is between 45 and 55, while those choosing face-to-face courses are around 30. Although the numerical advantage is not substantial, the class size for the former is larger. Additionally, conducting online or blended courses requires minimal use of the school’s physical infrastructure, resulting in lower operational and maintenance costs.
Assuming more students opt for face-to-face courses instead of digital online courses, UCF would need to expand its actual physical space by over 500,000 square feet to accommodate the actual teaching requirements.
Fortunately, UCF embarked on the digital path early and successfully gained the acceptance of the majority of students. The institution’s centralized management and objective support for digital learning offer valuable lessons for other colleges and higher education institutions in this field. UCF established the Center for Distributed Learning (CDL), consisting of 90 education professionals, including instructional designers, media support personnel, teacher professional development staff, and quality assurance personnel. Notably, 25 of these team members are part-time staff or students. The CDL team collaborates to ensure course quality and successfully transition courses from face-to-face to online digital formats.
Every instructor assigned to teach online courses must undergo 80 hours of professional training and collaborate with instructional designers to develop digital courses. Each semester, the CDL team meets with deans to discuss the development of new online courses, resulting in the addition of two to four fully online programs each year. By approaching digital teaching at an institutional level rather than just at the academic department or individual teacher level, UCF can strategically and sustainably implement teaching initiatives in developing its course portfolio.
In summary, this approach has enabled UCF to develop a highly successful digital learning environment, enriching academic achievements, providing a better learning experience and opportunities for diverse student groups, and reducing operational costs for the institution(sources from usms).
Houston Community College—Addressing the Digital Learning Paradox
Houston Community College (HCC) is one of the top ten higher education institutions in the United States, serving approximately 56,000 students seeking degrees in the Greater Houston metropolitan area each year. The student body is diverse, with statistics from 2020 showing 41.1% Hispanic, 26.2% White, 22.6% African American, 8.5% Asian, and 1.7% other ethnicities.
Over the years, HCC has been committed to providing greater learning flexibility through distance education. Since the early 1990s, HCC has offered fully online and blended learning courses. Today, about half of HCC students enroll in at least one online or blended course each semester. Despite the current popularity of digital learning, the decline in on-campus enrollment at HCC in recent years has been significantly offset.
While HCC may not have been particularly groundbreaking in its approach to digital teaching methods, the institution has successfully addressed various paradoxes associated with digital learning. This undoubtedly serves as a model for many higher education institutions.
Like other higher education institutions, HCC faced a digital learning paradox in the past: Although students choosing digital courses graduated faster than those exclusively opting for offline learning, students in online and blended courses performed lower on average in individual courses (measured by the proportion of students obtaining A, B, or C grades) compared to those choosing face-to-face courses.
HCC’s administrators hypothesized that this gap might reflect a lack of preparedness among some students and instructors for online learning and teaching. Due to the asynchronous nature of courses, the level of interaction between teachers and students was lower. Some students and instructors expected online learning to require less time than face-to-face learning.
To elevate course quality, HCC is implementing several strategies to support students and instructors. To provide academic support when students need it most, HCC hired 27 professional digital mentors who can regularly offer online tutoring to any student, not just those enrolled in online courses. Similar to on-campus tutoring, this service is free for all students. Additionally, students with fewer than 12 credits must take the “Student Success” course to help them quickly attain the learning skills and competencies required by the college, including time management, effective note-taking, exam skills, setting educational goals, and prioritizing tasks when facing a heavy academic workload.
Students can attend the “Student Success” course in person or online. However, for online learning, they must first pass the “Smarter Measure” assessment, designed to measure their readiness for success in an online learning environment. This assessment primarily tests individual learning attributes such as motivation and procrastination tendencies, as well as specific skills like technology, typing, and reading skills.
Furthermore, to enhance the teaching quality of digital courses, HCC invested in a central team of 20 instructional designers to assist instructors in designing digital courses, both individual courses and courses taught by multiple instructors. Instructional designers also provide professional development, training instructors to use criteria similar to those established by the nonprofit education organization “Quality Matters” to ensure new courses meet quality standards. Finally, HCC has its own advisory group, which, while offering advice to any student, primarily focuses on advising online course students.
At the institutional level, HCC is restructuring and streamlining its organizational structure to enhance teaching efficiency. The college has established Centers of Excellence to provide students with the skills needed for success in professions such as accounting, automotive repair, and fashion design. Currently, HCC’s Centers of Excellence and all other academic teaching units are available campus-wide, ensuring a more uniform teaching quality across all branches.
Because students now learn throughout the entire HCC system, ensuring consistency in teacher engagement, instructional content, and student expectations across campuses is more critical than ever. HCC has appointed a President of HCC Online and hired a Director of HCC Online and Instructional Technology to provide stronger leadership for digital teaching initiatives.
It should be noted that HCC’s restructuring of its teaching model and instructional organization will enable it to strategically manage the entire course portfolio, reducing duplication of courses across colleges. It is worth mentioning that the costs of providing online and blended courses at HCC differ. The incremental cost of online courses is minimal, around $2 million per year, including the cost of a lean center team consisting of approximately six instructional designers, as well as operational, technical, helpdesk, counseling, and administrative staff, averaging about $6 per student credit hour.
These costs are offset by savings elsewhere, as the teaching costs for online courses are $19 lower per student credit hour compared to face-to-face courses. Part of the reason is the larger class size for online courses (typically around 26 students, compared to around 21 for face-to-face courses), and personnel costs are slightly lower than the average (each online course costs $3,400, while face-to-face courses cost $3,800).
At HCC, the cost of blended courses is approximately $1 per student credit hour, higher than the average cost per student credit hour for all forms of courses (including face-to-face, online, and blended courses). This is mainly because, unlike online courses, the class size and personnel costs for blended courses are very similar to face-to-face courses. The average class size for blended courses is 22 students, and for face-to-face courses, it is 21. Additionally, compared to fully online courses, HCC uses instructional designers less frequently for blended courses, and students participating in blended courses have the same academic advisors as students participating in face-to-face courses. The additional cost for blended courses is $1 per student credit hour, reflecting the time costs that HCC administrators spend on tasks related to these courses.
Unlike other educational institutions in this study, HCC has not significantly saved on operational and maintenance costs for its online and blended courses. Because its physical facilities are fully utilized only about 10% of the time on average each year, the savings from online courses are low (a total of $110,000, or $0.30 per student credit hour). However, HCC’s leaders have begun efforts to improve teaching schedules to further optimize the use of teaching space.
In order to further advance higher education’s accessibility to the local community, HCC is exploring two new additions to its digital investment portfolio: online degrees and Open Educational Resources (OER). While HCC currently offers 25 certificates that students can obtain through online learning, it has not yet separately launched its specific online degrees to the public. However, considering that nearly three-quarters of HCC students are working professionals, the college has determined that it can periodically offer the instructional content of these degrees and certificates to the public in a fully online format to fully leverage the flexibility and personalization of online learning.
Additionally, HCC is acutely aware of the financial vulnerability of ordinary students. Whether due to unforeseen events in life or the daily expenses of learning, these factors can potentially hinder students from completing their education, thus threatening their future educational success and career progression.
Therefore, HCC is helping students save on educational costs by offering more affordable instructional expenses. Data shows that students can save hundreds of dollars per semester, a significant amount within the landscape of U.S. community colleges.
Nevertheless, the application of digital technology has significantly improved students’ learning outcomes and efficiency. Through a series of technological reforms, HCC has not only optimized online teaching and other digital modes but also significantly reduced its operational costs, effectively dismantling the digital learning paradox.
Kentucky Community and Technical College System—A System-Level Approach
The Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) consists of 16 independently accredited two-year colleges throughout the state. The system serves approximately 100,000 students annually, offering a wide range of course programs for degree and non-degree-seeking students. These programs include traditional offline learning, semester-paced online courses, and the “Learn on Demand” program
The “Learn on Demand” program is a new initiative focused on competency-based education, providing asynchronous learning terms where students can choose courses that start a new semester on any given Monday, based on their individual circumstances. Currently, nearly three-quarters of KCTCS students take at least one online course, with around 5,000 students enrolled in the “Learn on Demand” program.
However, KCTCS found that the graduation rates of students taking 21% to 40% of their courses online are 25 percentage points higher than those taking all courses face-to-face (37% vs. 12%). However, the course-level performance is lower. Over the past six years, the average pass rate for traditional courses has varied from 77% to 81%, while the average pass rate for online courses is 8 to 9 percentage points lower.
Certainly, the introduction of online learning at KCTCS aims to cater to an increasing number of non-traditional students. Surveys indicate that KCTCS online students have a slightly smaller racial difference (15% online students vs. 21% offline students are non-white), but they are often older (27% online students vs. 25% offline students), have lower income (67% online students, 60% offline students), and consist of more females (67% online students, 53% offline students).
KCTCS offers semester-based online courses, and the cost per student credit hour is approximately 8% lower than the average cost for all online and face-to-face modes. This is mainly because of the larger scale of the online portion (average class size of 21 students for online and 14 students for face-to-face) and greater use of part-time online instructors (46% of online instructors compared to 41% for face-to-face instructors).
KCTCS is committed to evolving toward a more centralized management and educational model, leaning toward systematically using third-party vendors to provide valuable insights into effectively implementing digital learning and its impact on return on investment.
To maintain consistent teaching quality across its 16 colleges, KCTCS has been focused on centralizing several academic services. Although the level of instructional design support varies among individual colleges, KCTCS is assembling a central team to help instructors improve the quality of online courses, aiming to increase student pass rates in online courses.
KCTCS has also centralized its student support and management functions to ensure that students can access similar academic services across all colleges in its system. KCTCS provides a digital tutoring service that all students, including those attending face-to-face courses, can use. For “Learn on Demand” courses, KCTCS offers six student coaches to guide students in dealing with the challenges of self-paced online learning. KCTCS strategically advocates for third-party partnerships to provide some of these services, helping avoid the significant upfront investment required for internal development of such features.
In general, KCTCS signs external contracts with vendors to provide services such as student outreach software, student support, faculty gradebook management, and guidance in “degree mapping” for students. By centrally signing contracts with vendors rather than at an individual institution level, KCTCS achieves more significant instructional outcomes, crucial for ensuring graduation rates.
KCTCS has also centralized many administrative functions, including course registration, financial aid, and grading, further standardizing the overall learning experience for online and face-to-face students across all 16 member institutions.
Moreover, the introduction of a financial aid program based on newly acquired commercial software, aimed at optimizing the statistical tracking and management of scholarship data, is equally crucial. This measure effectively ensures that students who have not met registration standards within a short period can still access financial aid in a timely manner, thereby not affecting their academic progress. This initiative is likely to showcase a key advantage of the “Learn on Demand” program, allowing working students to balance their work and study time.