Dive Brief:

• A new study found that effective instruction from postsecondary educators could have a positive and lasting impact on students during their college career, according to a new Education Next report that analyzed data on more than 5,000 algebra instructors with the University of Phoenix.
• Studying UPX faculty allowed the analysis to measure the impact of online and in-person faculty, as the institution employs both. The report found that the deviations between positive outcomes for students was far greater for in-person faculty than for professors who taught classes online.
• The study’s authors asserted it was essential to analyze the ways in which professors can impact the educational potential of students, noting the research about postsecondary professor impact is sparse in comparison to the research available on teacher efficacy in K-12 education.

Dive Insight:

It is important to be able to measure how faculty can fare with non-traditional students and in non-traditional settings, though readers of this analysis should be cautious not to extrapolate UPX’s results to higher ed as a whole without taking note of some of the university’s controversial recent history. However, as colleges struggle to identify their unique strengths in a time marked by an increased fracturing of a once-stable industry, the potential positive impact an exemplary in-person educator can have on a student is hard to dispute.

As higher education continues to transition more robustly into online learning, universities must be sure that they are not shortchanging the inspiration that could stem from the perfect professor for the perfect class. Deviations between poor and quality teachers in online learning may be smaller than the positives and negatives of an in-person experience, but colleges must question if an online learning experience can really get the most out of a quality educator. As schools begin to utilize virtual reality and personalized experiences into online learning, it would be interesting to see future studies find that additional tech and innovation widens the gap between good and bad teachers in the case of an online learning experience.