This document summarizes data and trends related to online learning at SUNY during the COVID-19 pandemic. It finds that the percentage of online course sections at SUNY increased dramatically from Fall 2019 to Fall 2020. Online enrollment at SUNY also increased substantially from 2018-19 to 2019-20, exceeding expected trends. National surveys found that the sudden pivot to remote instruction in Spring 2020 significantly impacted faculty and students who had not previously taken an online course. The document recommends interpreting 2020-21 data with caution due to pandemic impacts and outlines future SUNY surveys regarding online learning.

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Deciphering Online Learning
Data during COVID-19
Kristyn Muller, Ph.D.
Impact Analyst
SUNY Online Summit
February 25, 2021

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 Online Learning Definitions
 Online Learning Data Reporting
 COVID-19’s Impact
 SUNY & National Trends
 Survey Insights
 Considerations Moving Forward
Presentation Overview

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 Online Program: An academic program that offers 50% or more of the course
requirements in an online or distance format. The 50% standard includes only
courses offered in their entirety via distance education, not courses utilizing mixed
delivery methods. Online programs must be approved by NYSED for the Distance
Education format.
 SUNY Online Signature Program (formerly Open SUNY+): A subset of programs
offered that provide an additional layer of support for students and faculty. Students
in SUNY Online Signature Programs have access to high-touch support, including a
personal concierge, help desk, and online tutoring. SUNY Online Signature
Programs receive the SUNY Online Signature Program designation after being
nominated by their campus and reviewed and approved by SUNY Online.
 SUNY Online Degrees at Scale: A subset of programs selected by SUNY to be
offered as part of the SUNY Online Degrees at Scale initiative.
Online Learning Definitions - Programs

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 SUNY SIRIS: Section Online Instruction Type
Description: Indicates whether at least some portion of the direct instruction (i.e., excluding advisement, office hours,
homework assignments, and help sessions) occurs online.
 Not Online: No direct instruction delivered online
 Asynchronous Online: 100% of the direct instruction occurs under time delay; that is, direct instruction
is recorded/stored and accessed later.
 Synchronous Online: 100% of the direct instruction occurs in real time without (time) delay.
 Combined Online: 100% of the direct instruction combines both Synchronous and Asynchronous type.
 Hybrid: Section where a portion (0.01% - 99.9%) of the direct instruction of the course section’s
curricular content is delivered to the student via an online communication method and the
remaining portion of the direct instruction is required to be delivered face to face.
 Hyflex: Combines online and face-to-face instruction simultaneously into one single course section, with
the mode of direct instruction determined by each individual student. Students are able to choose how to
participate in any given class meeting - online or face-to-face.
Online Learning Definitions – Course Sections

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 Online Student Intent: Student Special Population Code (#14) that indicates if a student
intends to complete their degree online. Collected in the Student Submissions (ESS & EOT –
element SE025). Students’ intent may change throughout the course of their enrollment.
Added in Fall 2017.
 Campuses should rely on students’ intention as reported on their admissions application, program
format declaration, and/or direct outreach. This is currently captured on the SUNY Application and
should also be added to all campus applications for programs that can be completed online. This
should be carried through to the student record once a student is admitted and enrolls in a program
that is available online.
 Student Online Status: This new element, collected in the SIRIS Early and EOT Student
data submissions (element SE190) starting Fall 2020, indicates the proportion of credits that a
student takes online as of census date in the term at the reporting campus.
 The definition aligns with the way SUNY System Administration traditionally calculates Student Online
Status after the Term Section data submission is complete. For Banner campuses, the SICAS Center
will calculate and populate this element automatically.
Online Learning Definitions – Students

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 SIRIS
 Section Online Instruction Type (only in Term Section data)
 Online Student Intent (submitted in Student data submissions, early and end-of-term)
 Online Student Status (submitted in Student data submissions, early and end-of-term)
 Online Student Indicator (at the roster level)
 “Open SUNY+ Online” Student Indicator
 Academic Programs Database (APES)
 Distance Education NYSED Approval
 Percentage (50%, 75%, 100%)
 SUNY Data Warehouse
 “SUNY Online” (Degrees at Scale) student and course section indicators
 Calculated Online Student Status (after Term Section data is submitted)
Online Learning Data - SUNY

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 Institutional Characteristics
 Whether you have distance education courses and/or programs at the undergraduate and/or
graduate levels
 Completions
 # of completions by CIP code and program level (by ethnicity and gender) - check yes if program is
offered as a distance education program
 Enrollment (Fall)
 # of online students (Exclusively Online and Some, but Not All Online) by student level
 # of Exclusively Online students by student level and residency
 Enrollment (12-Month) – New!
 Collected in the Fall for July 1 – June 30 of the prior year
 # of online students (Exclusively Online and Some, but Not All Online) by student level
Online Learning Data - IPEDS
https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data/distance-education-in-ipeds

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 SUNY
 Campuses were asked to report Spring 2020 course sections instruction types as they were originally
planned for the semester
 The online learning numbers for this term shouldn’t be impacted, but outcomes for this term may look
different.
 IPEDS
 No Spring-specific reporting. Fall 2019 will be unaffected.
Spring 2020 Campus Reporting

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 SUNY
 Campuses were asked to report Summer 2020 course sections instruction types as they were when
the semester began
 Summer 2020 sections were mostly online, so those numbers will be higher (as well as 2019-2020
academic year enrollment numbers since Summer 2020 is counted for some campuses).
 IPEDS
 Only affects the 12-Month report (July 1 – June 30)
 In theory, the numbers shouldn’t be too inflated. Summer courses, which were primarily online, will be
included though.
Summer 2020 Campus Reporting

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 SUNY
 Campuses were asked to report Fall 2020 & Spring 2021 course sections instruction types as they
were when the semester began
 SUNY IR asked campuses to manually report the number of course sections that switched modalities
throughout the semester
 Fall 2020 data and 2020-2021 academic year online learning numbers will be greatly inflated
 Campuses were also asked to report Student Online Status in SIRIS for the first time
 IPEDS
 Fall 2020 & 12-Month data will be affected
 NC-SARA
 Follows the same methodology as IPEDS, so it will also be affected
Fall 2020 & Spring 2021 Campus Reporting

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Data Trends – SUNY Summer Term Course Sections

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Data Trends – SUNY Fall Term Course Sections
*Missing data from 20
campuses for Fall 2020

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Data Trends – SUNY Mode of Instruction Over Time
17% 17% 16%
8%
15% 18% 18% 16%
7%
17% 20%
15% 16%
5%
13%
32% 30% 29%
1%
30%
12% 15% 14% 12% 12%
66% 69% 68%
80%
72% 64%
72%
68% 83%
72%
57%
62% 60%
73%
65%
55% 56% 58%
93%
61%
75% 75% 76% 79% 80%
16% 14% 16% 12% 13%
18%
10%
16%
10% 11%
22% 24% 24% 22% 21%
13% 13% 13%
6% 9% 13% 11% 11% 10% 9%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Sept
1
Oct
15
Nov
15
Dec
15
Feb
1
Sept
1
Oct
15
Nov
15
Dec
15
Feb
1
Sept
1
Oct
15
Nov
15
Dec
15
Feb
1
Sept
1
Oct
15
Nov
15
Dec
15
Feb
1
Sept
1
Oct
15
Nov
15
Dec
15
Feb
1
SUNY Total
Section Instructional Mode as a Percentage of Total Sections¹ by Sector and Collection Date
In-Person Online Hybrid
Doctoral Institutions Comprehensive Colleges Technology Colleges Community Colleges
¹Only sections reported in SIRIS Submissions as Instruction Types lecture, seminar, recitation/quiz/discussion, laboratory, programmed instruction, studio, and lecture/lab/recitation.
SUNY System Administration Office of Institutional Research and Data Analytics :: February 8, 2021
81K 83K 82K 81K 71K 19K 19K 19K 19K 18K 21K 21K 21K 20K 19K 7K 7K 7K 7K 7K 34K 35K 35K 36K 28K

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Data Trends – SUNY AY Online Enrollment
13.5% increase from
2018-19 to 2019-20
We would have expected
about a 5.6% increase (or
204,678 students total).
2019-2020 includes
Summer 2020 for most
CCs & a few State-Ops

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Data Trends – SUNY Fall Term Enrollment Comparison
EOT Data Calculated by
SUNY System FA 12-19
Two FA 20 Preliminary
Columns
• Left: EOT Data (missing
20 campuses)
• Right: New “Online
Student Status” reported
in Early Student
Submission

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Data Trends – National (IPEDS)
Steady upward growth.
Fall 2019 should follow a
similar trend.
Fall 2020 will be greatly
increased.

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Garrett, R., Legon, R., & Fredericksen, E. E. (2020). CHLOE 4: Navigating the Mainstream, The Changing Landscape of
Online Education, 2020. Retrieved from the Quality Matters website:
qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/resource-center/articles-resources/CHLOE-project
 CHLOE 4 surveyed 366 chief online officers in 2019.
 Shows trends for online learning plans pre-pandemic
Survey Insights – CHLOE 4

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Survey Insights – CHLOE 4

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Survey Insights – CHLOE 4

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Survey Insights – CHLOE 4

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Garrett, R., Legon, R., Fredericksen, E. E., & Simunich, B. (2020). CHLOE 5: The Pivot to Remote Teaching in Spring 2020 and Its Impact, The
Changing Landscape of Online Education, 2020. Retrieved from the Quality Matters website:
qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/resource-center/articles-resources/CHLOE-project
 CHLOE 5 surveyed 308 chief online officers in May 2020.
 The average institution needed to move more than 500 courses.
 This pivot most profoundly affected the 50% of faculty, 51% of undergraduate students, and
27% of graduate students at U.S. institutions who had never taught or experienced a fully
online course.
 Twenty-five percent of COOs judged the campus-based faculty’s attitude toward online
learning as very positive after going through the remote pivot, and 42% thought faculty were
somewhat positive. Thirty percent did not think faculty attitudes were affected by the remote
experience, and only about 11% had developed more of a negative view.
Survey Insights – CHLOE 5

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Survey Insights – CHLOE 5

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“Time for Class: COVID-19 Edition”
Survey Insights – Tyton Partners

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“Time for Class: COVID-19 Edition” – Report 3
 Survey of 852 faculty who teach intro-level courses from 600 institutions
 Practices the will persist post-pandemic:
 Use of asynchronous, pre-recorded materials
 Increased modularization of content and learning outcomes
 More frequent and formative assessment
 Use of digital tools to engage students, foster collaboration, and assess learning
 Targeted and individualized outreach and support to students who need it
Survey Insights – Tyton Partners

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“Time for Class: COVID-19 Edition” – Report 3
Survey Insights – Tyton Partners

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 Be mindful of how this data is interpreted
 2020-2021: The Big Asterisk
 Online Student Intent
 Tracking and reporting students’ intention is important!
 SUNY Survey Insights Forthcoming
 FACT2 Faculty Survey – Faculty perspectives about online teaching pre- and post- pandemic
 UFS Campus Survey – Online learning governance structures
 SUNY SOS Student Survey – Student satisfaction with campus services
Considerations Moving Forward

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 Keep an eye on the dashboards – data will be updated when it’s available
 http://online.suny.edu/dashboards
 Enrollment trends
 Student demographics
 Also, don’t forget about the BI dashboards!
 https://www.suny.edu/analytics
 List of all online programs (FYI - Open SUNY terminology is still used)
 100% Online Students by State (for NC-SARA reporting)
Considerations Moving Forward

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Kristyn Muller, Ph.D.
Impact Analyst
SUNY Online
kristyn.muller@suny.edu
Questions?