Now is Not the Time to Backslide from Online Programs

Can we return to face-to-face (FtF) teaching now? That’s the question asked by a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education (SOE) faculty meeting 10-years ago—one day after an entrepreneurial dean who put most of our classes online left the college. We did not close our online programs then and we will not close them after COVID, nor should any other institutions of higher education (IHEs). In fact, this is the year that colleges and universities should work to ensure that we do not backslide from the progress made since the advent of online teaching and learning over 10 years ago—and accelerated by COVID: Our students will not allow it.

Before online teaching and learning took its place in higher education, FtF faculty-student engagement was once or twice a week with little or no contact in between. Furthermore, information was communicated by relatively few sources, and the professors dominated the faculty-student relationship. Now, after years of teaching and learning online, faculty and students around the globe engage with each other all week long. The online world also enabled faculty to respond to events and policy changes in real time, particularly during the COVID crises. And most importantly, by offering them a world of online academic choices, students became an equal partner in the student-faculty relationship.

In postsecondary classes, because of technology, when students now enter the online classroom, they expect that the latest literature, videos and YouTubes on the subject matter are readily accessible.  Before online learning, faculty used the same syllabus for years. But because information now moves at internet speed, a syllabus may be out of date even before the end of the semester. Students understand the possibilities of the online environment and they expect faculty to as well. Over the last 18 months of the pandemic, in my leadership classes, I worked in real-time with students on the daily crises they faced as school, college and NGO leaders. I also engaged with students in individual meetings, offering them immediate support on papers and discussion posts. In today’s online world, students will settle for no less. Therefore, it’s imperative that colleges now build courses in which the faculty can make curricula changes and immediately engage with our students throughout the class. In addition, IHEs need to take greater advantage of the immediate access and greater equity that online and COVID gave us.


Additionally, technology gives a student the freedom to shop anywhere in the world for the specific courses and programs they need for professional growth. Today, many graduate students are already practitioners, and they know a good deal about what education they need to grow in their chosen professions. Therefore, one way for colleges to respond to the realities of this new online student recruitment marketplace is to minimize and/or end program course requirements. Instead, more students should be given the power to design their own concentrations, in consultation with the faculty. Many universities already do this on the undergraduate and graduate levels. Those IHEs that do not provide students with more freedom of choice in courses and programs may soon find the best candidates choosing to study elsewhere.

There is still more that online programs can do to advance teaching and learning in the 21st century. For example, during the early days of the pandemic, a new instructional tool—the online internship—was created. And many students took advantage of these online internships; some even took gap years to pursue them. Higher education should keep this option in place. For one, online internships are more flexible and accessible to all students, they provide equity for first generation and minority students who may not otherwise be able to take time from work to go do an internship. Furthermore, through online internships, students from all economic levels may access international internships without going abroad. Universities should augment their online instructional toolboxes by building networks of online internships and world cultural tours that may be accessed by all students to further their professional growth and open more employment avenues.

Finally, online can help improve the grading system. The purpose of a graduate school is to prepare students for professional practice; it is not to reward or chastise their efforts. Therefore, we should end letter grades and GPAs; especially on the graduate level. Instead, IHEs should switch to the 21st-century version of the Oxford method, online individualized end-of-semester meetings. In this ancient and still practiced instructional method, students read and then discuss the material in small groups with a subject matter expert. The Holy Grail for online teaching and learning has always been individualized instruction for students. And online engagement, for the first time in the modern history of education, provides all faculty and every student the time and place to provide that individualized instruction and feedback. Universities should take advantage of this online  opportunity  to forever change the student assessment system.

As university leaders plan for the future of the academy, they should not lose the ground we gained for teaching and learning over the last 10 years that was accelerated by COVID. Because of online instruction, faculty should be more informed and engaged with their students than ever before. And because students now have an unlimited array of academic programs from which to choose, they expect more from their programs and instructors. As we move past COVID, some faculty will still ask if we can now return to face-to-face teaching. But we may rest assured that none of our students will ask that question—they already left face-to-face courses behind.

Dr. Henry M. Smith, EdD, is an assistant professor of leadership and education policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education (SOE). He also served as SOE’s associate dean for development, and as a U.S. assistant secretary of education in the Clinton Administration.