Resources

Report

Online by Design: Cultivating a Culture of Care and Belonging Is Critical to Learner Persistence and Success

November 1, 2024

The third piece in CHEPP’s Online by Design series outlines how fundamental belonging is to learner-centered design. It focuses on the importance and opportunity of belonging work in higher education and highlights the strong correlation between belonging and student outcomes as well as what some higher education institutions and practitioners are doing to cultivate a culture of care and belonging both online and on-campus. The paper also presents a set of key elements for belonging in higher education environments and provides policy recommendations to institutions and at the federal level to advance belonging work across higher education systems.

Policy

Policy Recommendations | Improving College Credit Transfer

September 17, 2024

The release of Improving College Credit Transfer: Policy Recommendations follows CHEPP's first paper on transfer credit, The Costs of Today’s College Credit Transfer System for Learners and the Mindsets and Practices That Reduce Them. Building on the first paper that detailed the human, financial, and opportunity costs to learners when their credits don't transfer, this piece recommends specific actions and policies that system actors can take to improve the rate of credit transfer. To that end, it provides a set of policy recommendations to federal and state policymakers, institutions of higher education, and accreditors so that they might better meet the needs of learners in maximizing and facilitating transfer of credit across the postsecondary system in the United States.

Policy

Policy Recommendations | Online by Design: How Accessibility is Fundamental to Learner-Centered Design

September 11, 2024

This supplemental piece to CHEPP's paper, Online by Design: How Accessibility is Fundamental to Learner-Centered Design, provides a set of policy recommendations to institutions of higher education so that they might better meet the needs of learners with disabilities, as well as federal policymakers seeking to support and expand accessible and inclusive higher education opportunities across the sector.

Letter

Public Comment Letter Regarding Program Integrity and Institutional Quality

August 23, 2024

CHEPP submitted the following public comment to the U.S. Department of Education proposed rule on Program Integrity and Institutional Quality: Distance Education, Return of Title IV, HEA Funds, and Federal TRIO Programs. The letter focuses on the proposed rules on distance education and return of Title IV funds, specifically outlining some of the impacts these proposals may have on institutions of higher education and the students whom they serve. CHEPP conveys its support for increased data collection for distance education programs, shares ways that these programs regularly interact with students, raises concerns with institutions current capacity to take attendance as the department has proposed, and urges the Department to consider the needs of new traditional learners who seek out distance education programs because of their flexibility needs.