Letter from the Editors

Abstract

15 Years of Predictions and Realities With this issue we begin our fifteenth year of publication. This decade and a half has certainly seen a number of changes to the field, and to the academy in general. If we compare the present state of the field, and higher education in general, to what was predicted for us 15 years ago, we can get a 30,000-foot view on some interesting advancements and disappointing stalls. We’d like to look at just two of those predictions, where the current state of affairs illustrates just how fluid and nuanced higher education is as we crawl out of the global pandemic. Parsing the field in any way we choose, via institutions, or disciplines, or geographic regions, or modes of instruction, etc., we can see but one commonality: we are not monolithic, and do not move in lockstep. Online / Digital / Remote instruction Perhaps the most ubiquitous and incessant prediction, one that began in the mid-1990s and which we are still working hard to manifest, is that online education will conquer the digital divide and democratize higher education. We can all point to successful online programs, degrees, and even entire universities. However, as we have learned in the past year, the potential for remote instruction is still high, but other factors, unanticipated fifteen years ago, mitigate against it becoming the panacea for all the ills of higher education. ZOOM fatigue is real, and a student’s success in an online environment relies heavily on their internal locus of control. Remote instruction, we have learned, requires students to be far more responsible for their own time and effort than any face-to-face instruction ever required. We’re not sure if this is the reason why students dislike remote instruction, but the fact is that they do, or at least they did. A survey of undergraduates conducted by SimpsonScarborough in March of 2020 (at the beginning of the lockdown of higher ed here in the US) revealed that 63% of the respondents said that online instruction was worse than the in-person instruction they received at their school. When SimpsonScarborough repeated the same survey just a month later, than number had risen to 70%.1 But, oh, what a difference a year makes. The Digital Learning Pulse survey of undergraduates in the US, published in April of 2021 by Bay View Analytics (in partnership with a number of entities heavily invested in