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“I Don’t Think the System Will Ever Be the Same”: Distance Education Leaders’ Predictions and Recommendations for the Use of Online Learning in Community Colleges Post-COVID

While the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the short-term use of online courses, colleges’ experiences with COVID-era online course delivery may also affect the way that they offer and approach online courses going forward. We draw on interviews with 35 distance education leaders from the California Community Colleges system to provide insights into how the use of online education may change in the system going forward. Leaders predicted that post-pandemic, colleges would increase their online course offerings, and that many instructional innovations to online courses from the pandemic—such as the use of synchronous courses—would persist. They hoped that a more prominent position for online education within the system would be matched by more resources to provide supports for online learning.

Keywords
COVID-19, online education, distance education, community colleges, postsecondary education, diffusion of innovation
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/97sc-dm64

EdWorkingPaper suggested citation:

Hart, Cassandra M. D., Michael Hill, Emily Alonso, and Di Xu. (). “I Don’t Think the System Will Ever Be the Same”: Distance Education Leaders’ Predictions and Recommendations for the Use of Online Learning in Community Colleges Post-COVID. (EdWorkingPaper: 22-687). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/97sc-dm64

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