What does the Voice of the Online Learner UK report mean for online education?
This week has seen the release of Voice of the Online Learner UK edition from US online programme management (OPM) company Risepoint. Those in the know will be aware that this a UK version of a long running US survey of online learners. Some will know it as Wiley’s Voice of the Online Learner, but the OPM arm of Wiley’s business was acquired in 2024 and the end result was a new brand called Risepoint.
It is really good to see publicly available research on online learners, and it is a welcome addition given a clear lack of this kind of reporting in the UK. Although, some will point to this coming from a company with clear promotion objectives, the insights are still useful and if nothing else help to convey to a wider audience some of the known characteristics of the online learner audience.
The survey had 2,990 respondents across seven countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates, with the majority from the UK (49%). Although this is not a wide geographical spread, the absence of any reporting like this means for this edition, it’s helpful to have stronger representation from the UK. In the future it would be good to see a wider spread from across the globe, as a large proportion of international online students are based in Asia which isn’t represented here.
However, on the whole the survey is well-balanced in other areas such as the different stages of study and course types and levels. Survey respondents break down as follows:
Stages of online study:
50% currently enrolled online students
25% prospective online students
25% recent graduate of fully online programmes
Course type/level:
50% postgraduate
36% undergraduate
13% sub-degree / micro credential
There are lots of interesting insights in the survey findings to dig into and although this isn’t a comprehensive sweep of everything in the report, I’ve picked out a number of things that stood out to me when reviewing it.
Understanding the online learner audience
The report begins with a section called “Online learners are different from on-campus learners” and whilst this is hardly a revelatory statement for those working within online education, it needs to be reiterated. There are still many across UK HE that don’t really understand this fully, nor do they know the key characteristics of those that typically choose online courses.
This section helpfully conveys some of those basics such as age, with the average age of respondents being highlighted as 34 years old. This aligns with what we know from wider sector data which is that the majority of online students (over 60%) are aged 30 or over.
Other key findings that aren’t as easy to observe from other sources but are also well known in the online education field are that online learners are typically balancing significant life commitments alongside study. This survey helpfully surfaces that, showing that:
91% of respondents are working alongside their studies (72% FT and 19% PT)
68% have one or more children under the age of 18.
Presumably in the interests of trying to balance out the survey, the gender split is 50% female and 49% male. This is actually slightly less reflective of the bigger picture where the split is closer to 60/40, with more female online learners in general, than male.
While these findings do not uncover anything revelatory, they hopefully help the sector at large to understand who online education typically serves and why this mode of study is important to them.
While this may sound like a silly thing to say, the survey confirms that online learners are looking for online study. One of the most interesting questions presented to people was, if the desired course isn’t offered online at your institution of choice what would you do.
The survey results show that over 75% of people would look to enrol on a different online course or just not enrol in course at all. Only a limited number would look to enrol on on-campus courses as an alternative.
This is an important finding as in online education we often have to tackle the C word (no not that one)....cannibalisation. Or to put it the way it’s often expressed, “won’t this online course cannibalise my on-campus course?”
Well clearly, a large proportion of online learners are not looking for an on-campus course, they want an online course for very specific reasons and to meet specific needs. So this may be useful evidence to point to for those responsible for online education within universities, who are having those argum…sorry I mean….collegiate conversations with their work bezzie mates.
Barriers to online course completion and student retention
Another set of key findings that should be amplified to the higher education regulator the Office for Students (OfS), are around the challenges these learners face that impact their ability to complete and continue their studies.
Just to restate them here, 43% of respondents said they had previously taken an online course but not completed it and of those who didn’t finish in the past, the top cited reasons were
Difficulty balancing work, studies, and personal commitments (26%),
Unclear expectations (21%)
Unforeseen life events (21%)
Whilst unclear expectations is clearly an area where issues might be tackled and improvements made, we need to understand that there is not a magic formula or solution that we can adopt that stops people from having to step away.
Yes we should strive to design and deliver courses that give learners the best possible chance to continue and complete their chosen courses, but we should also accept that given everything we know about this demographic even our best efforts won’t always achieve those ends.
As I’ve said previously, B3 conditions imposed by the OfS don’t massively help here and this is where one of the recommendations of the report is worth quoting:
“Consider allowing online learners to temporarily pause their programme, supported by policies that make it easier for them to return.”
If, because of regulatory pressure we place all our emphasis on stopping something from happening, we’re not tackling this in a smart way, and I would like to see greater emphasis and incentives to support necessarily and unavoidable breaks and returns.
I’m not very hopeful we’ll see anything soon on this as the last time I can remember the OfS even talking about online learning was tangentially through a report which I think was named after Michael Barber’s favourite sci-fi B movie. However, I hope this data might nudge the OfS to get real and move away from the McNamara fallacy that governs some of their approaches.
Career outcomes and motivations for online learners
One theme of the report that really resonates with the current mood in UK higher education is online education’s utility for careers and career advancement. Amongst the reasons selected for pursuing online programmes the following had a strong response:
Career advancement/promotion: 50%
Gain more marketable skills and/or certifications: 44%
To get first professional/salaried job (i.e. start first career): 19%
Employer or industry requirement: 18%
Switch to a new career: 17%
Returning to the workplace: 8%
These are not only positive findings but given the current mood are positive messages for online learning and higher education as a whole. I think we should be making more noise about the role that online education is playing in career advancement and development rather than having endless vapid debates about the efficacy of modalities.
However, given the current climate in the sector I think it would be easy to overlook some other findings that are equally valid. These include the highest rated reason which was “Achieve personal growth (55%)” along with “broaden knowledge of a particular subject matter (40%)” and “make my family proud/set a good example (22%)”.
These things are at risk of getting buried here because the sector is becoming a bit obsessed with education’s utility for work, but wider reasons shouldn’t be excluded when thinking about both appealing to, and serving, this audience. It is not only about career utility, there are wider, more deeply personal reasons that influence why people are pursuing online courses.
Clearly, and for obvious reasons, the report is keen to make the link to utility for the workplace prominent, and another finding that is emphasised is that 97% of respondents attributed a net positive career impact. Obviously in some cases this might be a post-rationalisation that does not totally reflect reality, but nevertheless the majority of people have evidenced or feel that online courses have had a positive impact and neither of those things should be discounted.
One other finding related to this area worth exploring is in relation to microcredentials. Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, most microcredential students cited the signalling value of them, with 55% citing their reasons for pursuing online microcredentials as looking to gain more marketable skills and/or certifications. This is a message worth listening to in relation to microcredentials more generally, and in respect to upcoming changes such as the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE). Not simply in the case of picking courses in areas of demand and of professional value, but in developing an offer in such a way that supports learners to market those credentials to serve their goals.
This would help in some way to address concerns raised by some respondents about the perceived value of microcredentials over a degree, and their currency with employers. These could also get buried by those looking to use this report to bang the drum for microcredentials, but I hope that these findings can support more sophisticated conversations about what the report calls alternative credentials.
One thing that would really support that is zooming in to specific subjects/sectors as much of the debate around microcredentials is imprecise, with some dubious prophets out there using the success of industry certificates in a narrow set of fields as evidence to call the sector to repent of its idolatry of degrees and believe in the transformational power of microcredentials.
Generative AI in online learning
The report also delves into generative AI with questions centred on people’s perception of its impact. For what it’s worth, I think these are of limited value because they are essentially asking people to predict the future, which is likely to be heavily influenced by wider debate, that at times feels like a combination of the sensationalist and the facile. So much of the current debate around AI in education feels as though it is either to excite or depress the gullible, rather than stimulate the thoughtful.
What was interesting in this section was the finding that only 51% of educators have talked to students about the proper use of GenAI technologies as it relates to coursework. This felt low to me and is an interesting one to reflect on in respect to growing commentary I see from the academic integrity fraternity pronouncing the death of online education.
Another question of interest that taps into a current live debate was asking if the person’s institution is teaching them how to use GenAI as a tool in the workplace. 45% answered affirmatively here but I actually think this is a bit of an unfair question.
There are a lot of workplaces that are still figuring this out themselves and have been for some time. It is still early days, and I think to an extent we put undue emphasis on universities here. We have to be honest that there is not an insignificant number of university educators that have limited industrial experience and limited proximity to industry. Whatever you feel about that, to an extent it’s a systemic issue.
So taking that into account I would be more interested in whether there are people being brought in from industry to explain how they’re applying it or grappling with it. This also taps into one of the big affordances of online education in that you can reach professionals from all over the globe and bring them in to present and speak to your students.
Another set of findings that have something of a relationship to AI are those linked to reasons for choosing an online course. Whilst flexibility, balancing commitments and convenience were high up, I was interested to see 25% saying they preferred to learn on their own and 16% saying for a certain degree of anonymity.
I sometimes wonder whether there are students that may find a more directly AI mediated/tutored experience appealing. It’s difficult to say either way without testing and experimentation, but some of what I’m seeing in respect to imbuing courses with AI aren’t around offering people with different motivations and desires choice, but applying changes more widely and wholesale.
My worry here is around the risk that you essentially optimise for the mean. However what these findings may point to is a spectrum spanning a desire for a higher-touch experience, supported by online community, periodic campus visits and synchronous learning, to those that are essentially looking to crack-on individually and off the radar.
I hope as a sector we explore the possibilities of serving that spectrum of needs through varied approaches. However, I worry what will happen with the use of AI within online learning is that, given the financial climate, rather than using it to enhance choice and meet more needs we’ll get some kind of horrible halfway house that no one is that happy with.
Affordability and decision-making in online education
Other findings of interest were presented under the banner of affordability. These findings largely supported the importance to prospective students of three key areas that I tend to find myself repeating: price, reputation and curriculum. The following were the highest selected areas when people were asked about the “Most important factors that weigh heavily in the decision to enrol:”
Affordability/tuition and fees: 54%
Institution/programme accreditation: 40%
Rank/reputation: 36%
Program concentrations/specialisations: 33%
These findings are more confirmatory rather than revelatory, but there are other responses that I think are more interesting to explore.
For example, it was really interesting to see 26% say the location of the institution is an important factor. Because the trap people can fall into sometimes, is thinking online education is simply a means extend reach to other geographies and not as a way to achieve greater market penetration in your existing location.
In addition to this, it was interesting to observe that 25% said a factor was it “offered the quickest path to complete programme” and 23% said “faculty reputation”. When reflecting on marketing messaging, both of these things could be used more effectively and as a stronger differentiator in some cases.
Inevitably, this section implicitly and explicitly focuses on pricing and I think this presents some of the biggest risks in interpretation. Fundamentally, most people are price sensitive, but we don’t all go to the shops and buy the cheapest version of the product we want, which incidentally, is why we’re not all drinking Rola Cola. I think too often in online learning there has been a mentality to overly differentiate on low prices, and to be totally blunt, it’s hardly rocket science to try to get more people to buy your product by reducing the price.
The findings here do not lead me to the wholesale conclusion that online courses should be cheaper, but there’s a risk that’s how it could be interpreted. Of course a programme has to be affordable, i.e. not completely and utterly out of reach, but there’s a much more sophisticated human psychology to making a choice than robotically deciding based on price comparisons. For what it’s worth I think some parts of the online education sector have lost sight of this.
One thing that I really liked in this section of the report was about the fact that over 60% of respondents said they have access to employer tuition assistance but relatively few take advantage of that. I think this is an area that UK universities can do a lot more on. Whilst there are some universities I know that have leaned into this, I haven’t seen any that have gone to the lengths of an institution like Western Governors University (WGU) in the US, who have lots of advice and template letters to support learners with employer tuition fee assistance.
How online students discover courses
Last but not least, there were some interesting findings on how these online students discovered courses. A finding of note was that 20% learnt about their chosen institution/programme via a ChatGPT or similar AI. This is a useful barometer of changing search behaviour and aligns with wider trends towards AI search usage, and the increased ability for longer tail and conversational search queries. Personally, I think that should be viewed as an opportunity rather than a threat.
The top areas of discovery were web search (42%) and social media (35%), and given these are probably the most utilised digital marketing channels, this feels a little a bit like saying that most trainspotters discovered trains via train station platforms. Although if anyone is interested, I hear you can even do that online these days, but sadly research shows it’s not as good as in-person.
One thing that shouldn’t be overlooked are results showing the use of course review sites (24%), with Student Room directly mentioned. This is a useful finding relative to another broader trend which is the increase in appearance of things like Reddit threads within search results. This may just be my bad luck but when I spend time on those types of sites I’ve witnessed significantly more negative feedback on specific online courses from some UK universities than positive and no real effort from universities to engage.
Equally, one last area that is really worth sitting on for a while is the fact that the third highest area was 30% of respondents who learnt about an institution from friends, family or a colleague. That carries some weight.
Final thoughts on the Voice of the Online Learner UK
My overall reflections on the first Voice of the Online Learner UK, is that it’s really positive to see some dedicated research and data on online learners being put out in the UK. Whilst there are other sources such as Jisc’s Digital Experience Insights Survey and the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) from AdvanceHE, previously there has been no dedicated online equivalents and this survey helps to fill that gap.
This development reflects the growing maturity of online learning in the UK higher education sector and has the potential to support a better understanding of online learning, as well as supporting institutions more directly with insights and messages they are trying to get across. Ultimately, we would benefit from more online learner surveys but this is hopefully a good step on the road to that.
