The Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities asked the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) to review digital learning initiatives and activities in the province’s publicly assisted postsecondary system, with a particular emphasis on the role of government and of its two funded partner organizations, Contact North and eCampusOntario. More...

The US Federal government recently released its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System‘s (IPEDS’) data on enrolments in higher education for Fall 2018, which include extensive (and reliable) data on online enrolments. More...

Looking at the traffic on my web site last week suggests many of you have already headed off for the holidays to a probably well-deserved break. However, the end of the year kind of snuck up on me – is 2019 almost over already? As Queen once sang, another one bites the dust. Better make a list of Christmas presents. More...

In the most recent national survey of Canadian post-secondary institutions (Johnson, 2019), institutions were asked the location of their online students (in-province, out-of-province, international). The results, for me, were very surprising:

• over one third of institutions were unable to answer this question because they do not track this data
• of the two-thirds that did track these data, over half reported less than 5% of their for-credit online enrolments were out of province. Only 18% of institutions have 20% or more of their credit students who live out of province, never mind internationally.

The report concluded that ‘ultimately, the majority of online students are from the same province in which the institution is located.’ This is despite the fact that over 85% of institutions reported that online education is strategically important for attracting students from outside their traditional service area. More...