Episode 29: Rise of the COLOs

[#1]

Ryan Lufkin (00:01.301)
Hello and welcome to another episode of EDUCAST 3000. I'm your co-host Ryan Lufkin.

Melissa Loble (00:07.009)
And I'm your other co-host, Melissa Loble. And we are joined today by not just one, but two pretty incredible guests. They actually are both longtime colleagues and friends of both Ryan and I, and they have some big announcements to share on this podcast. And we're very excited to have them both here. So please welcome first Dr. Thomas Cavanagh, Vice Provost for Online Learning at the University of Central Florida.

and Dr. Jocelyn Widmer, Dean for Weapons Learning Transformation at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Thank you both for being here. You are eduleverities in this space. And again, deep colleagues, deep friends, and we can't wait to lean in with you.

Jocelyn Widmer (00:53.655)
Yeah.

Thank you so much for having us.

Melissa Loble (00:59.053)
Yeah, yeah. You probably already see one of the announcements if you're watching this on video, because I know quite a few people will watch this on video, behind Jocelyn. So part of this conversation is not going to just be about picking their brains or the world of online learning, but also a little bit about a book they're releasing. Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (00:59.061)
Yeah, we really appreciate it. Thank you.

Ryan Lufkin (01:00.883)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (01:19.637)
Yeah, and so Charleston, we'll actually start with you. I've already told you, I think you have the coolest title of anyone I know. But give us a little bit about your background for our audience.

Melissa Loble (01:25.038)
Yes.

Jocelyn Widmer (01:30.126)
Sure, I'm actually trained in the design field. I started my academic journey in colleges of architecture. So I've been on faculty at Virginia Tech and University of Florida and kind of had two career trajectories as a faculty member, but then also teaching online and kind of rose the ranks through administration. And then was the chief online learning officer at Texas A &M University where I got the chance to meet both of you all.

I should say I followed Tom before that. was definitely a fangirl of Tom's. And then Sense have transitioned somewhat outside of higher ed to Los Alamos Medical Laboratory, kind of the other side of the coin, I would say. Still very much doing digital learning and thinking hard about what classified learning management looks like.

Melissa Loble (01:58.127)
No?

Ryan Lufkin (02:03.86)
Ha

Melissa Loble (02:04.684)
I it.

Ryan Lufkin (02:22.773)
Yeah, that's awesome. And Tom, you were actually one of the first guests we ever had on the Educast 3000 podcast. So welcome back. But for those that are listeners who actually maybe haven't watched that episode, give us a little bit about your background as well.

Melissa Loble (02:28.765)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Cavanagh (02:31.349)
Thank you.

Thomas Cavanagh (02:37.493)
Sure, so yeah, 16 years at the University of Central Florida. I'm responsible for online blended and digital stuff, continuing ed. Before that, worked at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and then had a career kind of spanning corporate training and kind of the public-private partnership space. Some of it was literally space, because I was on site at Kennedy Space Center for five years.

Which was fun. Yeah, and I started my career in film and television. My first job out of college was driving Mouseketeers from their apartments to the studios here in Florida back in the 90s when the new Mickey Mouse Club was being. Everybody asks me that, do you know Britney? And actually I don't know Britney. I know a bunch of the other kids, the original kids though, but I actually left after the first year and a half before.

Ryan Lufkin (03:07.133)
Which, again, so cool, yeah.

Melissa Loble (03:07.369)
Very cool.

Melissa Loble (03:16.751)
Ow.

Ryan Lufkin (03:20.629)
the Britney Spears Justin Timberlake era.

Thomas Cavanagh (03:35.719)
all the super famous ones came in. And I moved to Nickelodeon and I wrote a bunch of shows for Nickelodeon at that time. But yeah, I'm actually still in touch with some of those kids, some of the Mouseketeers on social media.

Ryan Lufkin (03:37.578)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (03:42.405)
Awesome.

Melissa Loble (03:48.985)
That's really cool. Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (03:49.043)
Yeah, the Nickelodeon, that was such a formative growing up, know, this watching people get covered in slime and things like that.

Thomas Cavanagh (03:55.067)
I'm responsible for some of that.

Melissa Loble (03:57.601)
my, my gosh, there's so many questions to ask. and I love, yeah, totally different podcasts. I love the creative origins. mean, both of you, while you have really distinguished careers in online learning have had other interesting creative, pursuits early in your careers, which is just super cool, which leads me to Tom. I'm going to stick with you. You know, this drill, but we're going to ask again, which is a favorite learning moment.

Ryan Lufkin (04:01.141)
That's a different podcast. That's a totally different podcast.

Melissa Loble (04:27.061)
And given your diverse background, and it can be something that was you as a learner. It could be you teaching someone else. It could be you observing something, something that's, you you've seen in your current institution. No, no specific rules other than a favorite learning moment in your life.

Thomas Cavanagh (04:47.881)
Yeah, wow. And I don't remember what I said last time, so I don't want to repeat myself. So I'll pick something I know I haven't talked about, because it's something that just happened to me over the weekend. So it's new, but it's on my new list of favorites. was at a, some of you may know I have a hobby of writing mystery novels, and I was at a conference over the weekend of mystery writers. And a well-known author was speaking and gave a talk.

Melissa Loble (04:57.913)
Cool.

Melissa Loble (05:04.69)
Okay?

Thomas Cavanagh (05:17.173)
on just craft, it probably the, it was like a master class in just an hour. It was one of the best sessions I had ever attended on just how to write a thriller. It was just really, really good. And yeah, it was, it was very inspiring.

Melissa Loble (05:32.803)
What about it, can I ask? Like what made you, because you, not only do you present all the time, but you probably attend so many conferences. And for something to stand out either from a professional or personal hobby perspective is pretty significant. Was there something about that talk that resonated with you or?

Thomas Cavanagh (05:50.869)
Well, he spoke from just such a position of both authority and humility in the same kind of like two sides of that coin. And he shared a lot of like examples from other authors. He wasn't picking his own work. He had Joyce Carol Oates and he had Stephen King and he like all of these different examples. They weren't even all thriller writers, but it was just really good. And then of course it was just very practical. It was like stuff that you can use. And it was just, thought...

Melissa Loble (05:56.537)
Bye.

Ryan Lufkin (05:56.725)
That's awesome. Yeah.

Melissa Loble (06:00.096)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (06:07.605)
Wow.

Melissa Loble (06:17.102)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Cavanagh (06:20.585)
very effectively done. So much was covered in an hour. I could have sat there all day.

Melissa Loble (06:25.017)
That's cool. That's very cool. Jocelyn, how about you? A favorite learning moment? Could be recent, like Tom's. Could be something from your past. But would you mind sharing one with us, please?

Ryan Lufkin (06:25.045)
Love that.

Jocelyn Widmer (06:37.302)
Yeah, so many to choose from. I was thinking about this earlier today. Definitely don't have one as poignant probably as Tom's most recent example, but I think all of mine typically involve a student and something I've learned from a student. And so a little bit of a one, two story with a student. Many years ago, I like to take students out to dinner and that's where I felt like I really learned the most about what their experience was, where they were struggling.

And so I asked them one night, what was their sequence of, you know, how do they check their communications? And I meant like their entire lives, like text messages at the time, I think it was Facebook and you know, whatever was popular at the time. And I was really shocked to learn that their Canvas messages was second on the list at the time. And this was probably like 12 years ago or something. I it was a while ago.

So that's always stuck with me as I've tried to make the case for why, you know, why communication matters and why kind of the holistic experience matters. And then fast forward to maybe a year and a half ago, and I was kind of on my way out from the higher ed setting and students were just kind of taking on to AI and using it on their own. And so I asked a student about their experience and kind of,

Melissa Loble (07:33.049)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (07:39.541)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (07:40.129)
Yeah.

Jocelyn Widmer (08:02.446)
I asked that question over and over again to see how it changes over time. And it was so interesting. And Ryan, I'm going to hit the article that you just posted. I think it was on Friday. The title was No Teach Without Tech, I think was the name of the article. And the student said to me, I mean, they were talking about how they're integrating AI as study buddies and all of these interesting things that are a little more mainstream today. And she said, you know,

Ryan Lufkin (08:12.287)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (08:17.257)
Yeah. Yep.

Melissa Loble (08:18.232)
home.

Jocelyn Widmer (08:31.726)
Some instructors, way they set up their course shell in LMS is the single most determinant of my success in that course, or in a course. And I was just blown away that students, you know, they see that as so critical to their success. And you should just set it incredibly elegantly and, you know, didn't skip a beat when I asked the question. So I just kind of always come back to the power of these digital tools, no matter what the modality is.

Melissa Loble (08:43.503)
you

Jocelyn Widmer (09:01.122)
have learned that over and over again from students.

Ryan Lufkin (09:04.309)
I love that you were able to kind of ask that question over time too and see how it evolves. It's amazing.

Melissa Loble (09:09.985)
I agree and I don't think we ask students enough, so I love that you do regularly ask students. What are their thoughts? What impacts them? What do they use the most? I think we can all spend across the space more time walking in our students shoes. This kind of leads me to why we're here, which is to really get excited about the new book that you two have co-authored and

As of listening to this will have been launched, which is really exciting. It's called the Chief Online Learner's Guidebook. So Jocelyn, I'll start with you. Where did this idea come from? What's the premise of the book? Why?

Jocelyn Widmer (09:50.862)
So it started probably in 2021. We were still amidst COVID, but trying to put together a strategy and really more fundamentally an org chart. So I was in search of the perfect org chart, as I have said, and I was just trying, it was kind of like we were able to travel for the first time in like 18 months or so. And so going to conferences, meeting people.

Ryan Lufkin (10:05.557)
You

Jocelyn Widmer (10:19.404)
out and about, and I was trying to just have a cup of coffee or have a conversation with just colas that I had had the great fortune of meeting during COVID and just had been so gracious with their time. actually Tom definitely was one of the first of those. And so, you know, was just, I asked a series of questions, probably like six or seven questions, but you know, really looking at strategy and organizational structure.

what was in the portfolio, what wasn't in the portfolio, what should be, what shouldn't be, just consistently asking. And then the one question I asked at the end, which perhaps we'll talk about, and it always made me so, in the moment just defeated, asked kind of what's next for Kolos in terms of their career, which I do think is an important piece of this book and didn't get really great answers. I think it was a...

manifestation of the moment we were in that we had time to really career plan. research that's been done since then, I think, shows that there's not a great career trajectory for COLOs in terms of how we think about what's next. you know, just kind of put those interviews together, gave a presentation for a group at UPSIA that Tom was chairing at the time, the Council for Chief Online Learning Officers.

And Tom pinged me afterwards and was like, have you thought about writing a book? You know, I was an English major. So of course it's like a dream to write a book, but I never thought I had anything kind of amassed enough to say on any one thing. I actually used to keep tabs on the most crazy things that my online students would send to me as a PhD student. So I have somewhere in my file that's like,

Ryan Lufkin (11:50.069)
Ha

Ryan Lufkin (12:09.909)
You

Melissa Loble (12:11.439)
Love it.

Jocelyn Widmer (12:13.974)
It was titled like ridiculous. I was hoping that would be my first book. But here we are a little more serious. so Tom was really the catalyst in encouraging me and I didn't think I could do it by myself. And I know Tom has wonderful experience writing fiction novels. So I knew he would be the perfect partner, not only from his experience, but he's truly, he was, you know,

Ryan Lufkin (12:15.957)
That's good. I want to actually read those. That'd be awesome.

Melissa Loble (12:16.751)
It's hilarious.

Melissa Loble (12:21.007)
Yeah.

Jocelyn Widmer (12:42.443)
a of mine and a friend of mine and a colleague. So it's been a great partnership.

Ryan Lufkin (12:48.213)
Yeah, well Melissa and I have known you guys were working on this for some time and so it's exciting to see it come to fruition. So congratulations, but Tom, go ahead and walk us through some of the major themes of the book.

Melissa Loble (12:52.813)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Thomas Cavanagh (13:01.481)
Yeah, happy to and if you'll allow me just one indulgence, let me give the full title because there's a subtitle and everything. So it's the Chief Online Learning Officer's Guidebook, a framework for strategy and practice in higher education and it's being published by Rutledge, Taylor and Francis group. So yeah, there are several themes and I would say there's some overarching themes and it has a lot to do with the audiences we're trying to serve.

Melissa Loble (13:06.339)
Please.

Yes, please.

Thomas Cavanagh (13:29.415)
So one would be sitting colos, know, chief online learning officers. So, you know, how do you do the job well? What are the competencies? And it's based on kind of the spine of the center part of the book is grounded in the eight competencies of PCO leaders from UPSIA. And so that gave us a kind of a place to kind of hang all of the learnings that Jocelyn.

Melissa Loble (13:51.247)
Great.

Thomas Cavanagh (13:56.458)
had through all of these conversations against kind of an established framework. But another audience is aspiring COLOs. So for those who are in the pipeline who wanna be a chief online learning officer, what are the competencies and skills? What do they need to know? What are the things that they should be aware of? Identifying their own gaps and then developing their own sort of professional development to fill those gaps. And then maybe a tertiary audience would be, know, presidents and provosts and the people that...

these people report to so they better understand the position. The people that are hiring these people and writing the job descriptions because there is some variation around there. sometimes Jocelyn has described this based on her own observations that they seem to be really looking for a unicorn in some cases. you know, are you going to find that person? And so the book is about half of it, half of each chapter.

Ryan Lufkin (14:44.211)
You

Melissa Loble (14:45.183)
yeah.

Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (14:53.725)
was authored by Jocelyn and I. And then the other half are short, practical contributions by expert perspectives, including someone named Melissa Lobel, who we appreciate your contribution to the book. Yeah, absolutely. And so it's, I think it's a really nice balance between the perspectives that we have from kind of looking across the space, especially tied to these competencies.

Melissa Loble (15:05.391)
Thank you for having me.

Ryan Lufkin (15:05.887)
Ha ha ha.

Thomas Cavanagh (15:22.707)
but then grounded in practice by these practitioners that are doing the job and then their essays, which are short, are tied to that chapter thematically. And maybe the last thing I'll say is that we've kind of divided the book into three broad sections. So the first section is what we call the COLO context. It's like, what is a COLO? What's the profile? The first 90 days, like if you're walking into this job, what can you expect?

Ryan Lufkin (15:25.727)
Love that.

Ryan Lufkin (15:34.517)
That's awesome.

Thomas Cavanagh (15:50.453)
And then because so much of this is being driven by a post-COVID kind of reaction, lot of these jobs are now being recognized by institutions as necessary as they realize they need an online learning strategy. So there's a section, Jocelyn's titled, Designated Survivor, COVID-19. The next section, the largest section is about the competencies, what we call strategy overlays for COLOs. And then the last section, the last,

Ryan Lufkin (15:55.796)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (16:08.69)
hahahaha

Melissa Loble (16:09.185)
I love it.

Jocelyn Widmer (16:11.598)
Thank

Thomas Cavanagh (16:19.951)
of four chapters are distinguishing next gen leaders. So what's the future look like? And we even have a section, this is I believe where you contributed Melissa, also careers outside of higher ed, kind of working in the commercial space or in the nonprofit space or some of those other things.

Melissa Loble (16:33.113)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Melissa Loble (16:39.757)
What exciting and I think really meaningful subject areas and very comprehensive if we think about what chief online learning officers both need to be thinking about the skills and the competencies, but then also how they manage their own careers. I love that. And I think all of the audiences you described spot on, I would think there's another audience too that I think will really appreciate the work that you both have done.

which is the vendors in the technology space, the online vendors, because really understanding the practices, the needs, the approaches and strategies by these leaders is incredibly important to us because as technology providers, we're serving you all. I do think you have another audience as well in all of this, but I love the topics and I love the richness and the depth. Maybe share a little bit about

Ryan Lufkin (17:26.73)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (17:39.663)
How best, if somebody's, how do you see individuals leveraging this work in their own practice? Is this for guidance as a colo? Is this for your bringing it into your institution to sort of help more broadly individuals understand what's needed from a strategy? Can this be used in that way? Can this be used to start to help transform change in institutions? Maybe share a little bit about that, Tom.

Thomas Cavanagh (18:07.761)
sure. But now I'll let Jocelyn jump in soon enough. But yeah, absolutely. think, I mean, a lot of the things that we talk about in here are things that I think can be directly applied to the job, like immediately. So like we talk about governance and we talk about how to work with your CIO and we talk about like, you know, just all kinds of, we even touch on budget model. It's not about budgeting, but we talk about, need to know what they are and how to work with them.

Melissa Loble (18:09.721)
Great. Yeah.

Melissa Loble (18:27.151)
Great.

Melissa Loble (18:34.061)
rate.

Ryan Lufkin (18:35.285)
Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (18:37.685)
So some of it is very practical that can be applied right away, but it's also every so often we kind of pull the lens back and you kind of get a look at the landscape. And so the idea is to try to walk that line. Would you agree, Jocelyn?

Melissa Loble (18:51.535)
That's great.

Jocelyn Widmer (18:53.134)
Yeah, one other piece that I would add is in Bob Hansen, the president of Upsia, Upsia's endorsed the book and he wrote the foreword and he talks about the decade of the colo. And so one of the pieces that I do think is really important about this book is it's a moment in time. We've collected 50, I think almost 55 expert contributions from a swath of sitting colos.

Some have retired since we've got the book out. We've got CAOs, we've got university presidents, we've got individuals like yourself. All the major professional organizations are represented. And it's just this wonderful, robust moment in time where we have this incredible collection of characters who have contributed. So I think my hope for kind of the staying power of this book is that there are some really heavy hitters and just some.

premier thought leaders who have given rise to the role and who will forever have their mark on the role, even as the role continues to evolve, which I think we're probably seeing with AI right now. There's a lot of probably self-help in this book. I had moments where I was thinking, if this were on my shelf, would I pick it off the shelf to read a chapter or a section or hear what?

Ryan Lufkin (20:03.071)
Ha ha ha.

Melissa Loble (20:03.565)
Love it.

Jocelyn Widmer (20:13.102)
you know, some particular polo at a peer institution has to say, or would I read it start to finish? And it's probably a little bit of both based on the, you know, where the individual is coming into the role or who our audience is. Another thing, you know, just kind of in the weeds that I think is really important with the role is we got some great perspective and we laid out some of the differences between someone coming up.

through an academic, like faculty trajectory versus someone coming up through a staff trajectory. And there's no one way to become a colo. So we tried to cast the net pretty broadly because as we look to this next gen of colos, think we're gonna see, know, maybe we'll start to see some more trends and patterns, but perhaps we'll see even more varied routes to the destination.

Ryan Lufkin (21:03.967)
Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (21:04.341)
Can I make a comment on that? Because I think that that is really a great point. And maybe like a sub-theme of the book is a comparison of the COLO to the CIO. So if we go back 30 years, maybe not every institution had a CIO. But now it's almost unthinkable that an institution wouldn't have a CIO. And we propose that the chief following learning officer is perhaps on a similar

Melissa Loble (21:05.839)
Please.

Ryan Lufkin (21:15.945)
Ooh, interesting.

Ryan Lufkin (21:20.019)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Cavanagh (21:33.449)
maybe not the same, but a similar trajectory that if there's one thing COVID revealed is that you better have an online strategy for your institution. And a lot of institutions have realized that, which is why you've seen sort of proliferation of a lot of these leadership roles recently, which was part of the inspiration for the book. I think that there are lessons to be learned from the CIO experience over the past, you know.

30 years or so. as Jocelyn said, Bob Hanson kind of called what were the 2020 to 2030 timeframe, basically COVID launching the decade of the the colo.

Ryan Lufkin (22:13.129)
Yeah. Well, you and you've both worked in the Colo role. You both held that position, but as you were talking to this kind of bright, like wide, segment of people in this audience, are there any, ideas or insights that surprised you basically? mean, I don't know anybody else that surveyed that many, experts in the space. Jocelyn, any, anything that stands out there?

Melissa Loble (22:32.801)
Yeah.

Jocelyn Widmer (22:37.998)
Well, I think the first was just how willing people were to contribute to this. I mean, this wouldn't exist without this really broad willingness. I I think with the exception of just a very small handful of people whose bandwidth was beyond full, we just got these emphatic, yes, we'll all participate. So that's been really cool. I would say almost in every chapter,

So we went through this process and maybe we'd do it all over again differently. Maybe we'd do it the same, but we had the chapter or the section outlines as Tom went through and then the chapter outlines. And then we kind of did this matching to try to get robust representation across a whole bunch of different domains. And then people we knew who had just tremendous expertise or experience who could have something very interesting.

to say on any one of these topics. And then we were also thinking about, you know, there's a little bit of matchmaking in the three to five individuals who contributed per chapter. So I think by and large, we just hit this wonderful harmony in the contributions too. I there wasn't anybody who really stuck out. I think we moved one person and I think he asked to be moved. I mean, his contribution could have made sense. John O'Brien.

I think we had him in the CIO chapter and his contribution actually made sense in getting a seat at the table chapter. So it was just really neat how it all came together and how everybody really had something to say across probably all of these topics, but the way that the organization laid out, it really worked. But through that structure, the common thread was relationships and networking.

Melissa Loble (24:05.486)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (24:15.183)
Yeah.

Jocelyn Widmer (24:34.45)
And I think that's an important piece. We don't know each other without that, obviously. But that's been such an important piece of my journey through this, and especially during COVID. And that's how Tom and I came to know each other. I was looking for somebody who understood scale. And there isn't anybody who understands scale like Tom does. And so hopefully that piece is.

Melissa Loble (24:35.777)
Hey.

Jocelyn Widmer (25:00.238)
you know, just front and center for them to aspire to be a colo because I think it is going to be harder to filter and file into these roles moving forward because there's, you know, they're, more popular. Maybe there's more of them, but I think people in leadership roles will have a better sense of what, should be in these roles. So there's going to be some competition. Um, so I think every single person kind of had their own wisdom or experience or, you know, lesson, lesson to share on.

Ryan Lufkin (25:18.921)
Yeah.

Jocelyn Widmer (25:30.26)
networking and relationships were.

Melissa Loble (25:34.095)
That I love that that networking relationships piece surfaced in all of that. As you talk about, think, you know, we are a small space to a certain degree in education, but a growing one as new and different types of people come in and take leadership roles like this. And Tom, you already talked a little bit about why now for the book, the timing around the book. What do you?

Ryan Lufkin (25:39.029)
home.

Melissa Loble (26:00.537)
Do you, you know, you, maybe a little prediction. Do you see 10 years from now, basically every major higher education institution having a COLO? Do you, how do you see this rise of the role and even globally, do you see this, this occurring as well?

Thomas Cavanagh (26:17.917)
Yeah, I mean, we don't make any sort of predictions in the book, but we do posit that as a premise that that is possible. And it's certainly the recent trends support that. So I would say, yeah, 10 years from now, unless your institution is very intentional about not wanting an online strategy. And, you know, that could be for any number of reasons. Maybe you're

Melissa Loble (26:22.521)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (26:25.967)
and

Thomas Cavanagh (26:47.943)
a seminary or you're a service academy or something that you there's a reason or you just you're totally bought into this is all about the liberal arts on campus coming of age experience whatever it is there there but even so there's there's going to be digital tools that are going to be part of that experience even if it's not fully online it just may not be at the scale as jocelyn said that some other institutions might have

Ryan Lufkin (27:05.343)
Yeah, yeah.

Melissa Loble (27:06.137)
and

Thomas Cavanagh (27:14.343)
So I do think that there will be a growing role that becomes more ubiquitous as time goes on. But also as Jocelyn said, yes, it's analogous to a CIO, but it's different because as we said, there are all kinds of different paths in. If you talk to all the different colos, if you read the 54 people we have contributing, I don't know, probably three quarters of them are sitting colos and the others are like university or association presidents and stuff.

And their paths into the COLO seat are all different. Some were instructional designers, some were faculty, some were student advising people. Like it's all kinds of different paths in, which is why the competencies really help. Cause you can look at those and say, I'm good in these five, but these two I need help with or something. And you can kind of craft your own professional development plan to, to aspire into a role like that. And, and also as opposed to like a chief academic officer.

who a lot of colos report to. If you talk about that, you'd kind of know what the competencies are. You know what the career path has been. You know, they became an assistant professor, an associate professor, department chair, dean, now they're a provost or something. And you have that all in your head. For a colo, it's completely different. They don't even have a consistent title. We're calling them colos. I serve functionally as that at UCF, but I don't have that title. So everybody's got kind of a different title, even if the function is the same.

Ryan Lufkin (28:23.263)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (28:34.643)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (28:39.283)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (28:40.11)
Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (28:43.647)
So there's some differences and we're still, think, navigating that in this decade of the colo.

Melissa Loble (28:46.863)
Okay.

Ryan Lufkin (28:49.587)
Yeah, so were there specific skills that stood out as most important?

Melissa Loble (28:56.992)
I seen Jocelyn nodding. Thoughts on skills, Jocelyn?

Ryan Lufkin (28:58.217)
Justin's back.

Thomas Cavanagh (28:58.696)
Heh.

Jocelyn Widmer (28:58.83)
We have a chapter, I mean, as Tom mentioned, the book is framed around, up C is eight competencies. And we've got a chapter, chapter 10, I think is about the pipeline and ensuring we get those skills and competencies in the next generation. So I would say there were three or four that really came to light in that chapter in the expert contributors all had really interesting things to say about those.

these kind of dimensions. I'm not sure if you would specifically call them skills at this point, but certainly in AI literacy, which I'm sure everybody has those now. And I do think, mean, for another podcast episode, think Tom and I have...

Ryan Lufkin (29:42.357)
I mean, you'd be surprised. Honestly, one of those, it's a spectrum really, you know.

Jocelyn Widmer (29:54.078)
some divergent thinking on the role as AI comes into play. Like what is the relationship between the COLO and the chief AI officer, for instance, are they nested or are they parallel or does one one usurp the others? We've had some interesting conversation on that. I'll start with that.

Ryan Lufkin (30:07.061)
That's interesting, yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (30:13.725)
I want to have that conversation with you too at some point. We're gonna we're gonna do a follow up on that.

Melissa Loble (30:16.856)
Yes.

Jocelyn Widmer (30:18.584)
But so AI literacy and the futures literacy, which was a big kind of theme that emerged in that pipeline, in that chapter on pipelines. And then trust, which is something that I, surprisingly, you know, I wish we would have hit on that probably more throughout the book, but I'm glad we got to shine the light on that in this particular chapter. And then leadership development.

Tom has had some, I think, really great commentary around what's the distinction between up CSA competencies and just good leadership and good leadership competencies. So we try, I think we do distinguish some of the unique characteristics of a colo in this book. But you you could step back and see that these are all just really good leadership skills and competencies.

So I think that chapter 10 that really looks to the future and the pipeline is one where we're able to look around the corner and see what's next. So, you know, I'll be interested to see how these competencies evolve and get updated. think it's in process of doing that. But a lot of them, think, have been informed by this post-COVID world and certainly AI.

Ryan Lufkin (31:31.53)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (31:41.241)
Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (31:41.501)
And if we had to look sort of at areas that we maybe didn't have time or space to explore, know, we mention AI more than once, but the book's not about AI, right? We just sort of touch on it as you better be paying attention to it kind of going forward.

Ryan Lufkin (31:54.783)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (31:55.599)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (31:59.423)
Well, that's thing, you know, I've got an AI book that Melissa brought me from a conference and I'm like, once you put that on paper, especially with something that's evolving that quickly, it's very quickly outdated, right? And so talking more about the need to be aware of that and embracing emerging technologies is important. So I like your approach there.

Thomas Cavanagh (32:06.41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (32:17.289)
Yeah, and another area that came up that we talked about early on and we got some feedback from the contributors, but it just turned out we just didn't have space was the international side of things. So this book is very sort of American centric. And, you know, there's a lot going on internationally, as you both know, because I see your LinkedIn posts from all over the world.

Melissa Loble (32:17.465)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (32:31.466)
yeah.

Melissa Loble (32:36.26)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (32:40.335)
Mm-hmm.

Jocelyn Widmer (32:41.452)
Yes.

Ryan Lufkin (32:41.513)
Yep.

Melissa Loble (32:43.993)
Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (32:45.397)
in this digital learning space that we just didn't have the kind of bandwidth or space in the book to explore. But it would be interesting and frankly, I personally don't have the context to kind of, we would have to do more open solicitation of contributors than we did for this one instead of the more kind of invitation that we did.

Ryan Lufkin (33:05.481)
Well, it's difficult because of the regionally specific regulation, know, the different challenges by very specific to region, things like that. It would be hard to kind of cast a holistic met over the whole globe. You'd really have to dive in by region.

Melissa Loble (33:05.871)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (33:10.915)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (33:19.649)
Yeah, or even lean in again into the skills. I think that there are just, you know, how do you understand the context in which you are driving online learning strategies, right? And that would be where the regional differences might, and how do you navigate those? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the next book. I can see this. I can see this happening.

Ryan Lufkin (33:22.505)
Yeah. Yep.

Ryan Lufkin (33:30.202)
navigate those, know, tailor that to your specific country.

Jocelyn Widmer (33:35.086)
One thing I'll add about the skills in this was the chapter that you contributed to, Melissa, I think it was it's called Other Duties as Assigned. So it's life outside the Academy. And we got some wonderful contributions from yourself, Jen Stringer, who's at the Getty.

Ryan Lufkin (33:36.798)
Hahaha

Jocelyn Widmer (33:59.156)
So just really neat chapter and myself having stepped out of higher ed, I do think it's there's a very valuable transferability of skills that you articulate, especially in the chapter. And then we try to frame in that chapter because we are seeing colos take interesting leaps outside of academia or a little bit adjacent to academia. So we, that chapter talks about.

Ryan Lufkin (34:12.191)
Yeah.

Jocelyn Widmer (34:27.926)
the workforce trends and how COLA's understanding of workforce data is a really valuable insight as you step into, say, the corporate side, upscaling around AI. How do you beat the drum in terms of change? That's something that is very transferable. And then just being able to look to the future and understanding the workforce today, which that comes from an understanding of our own.

students I would say or students more generally today. So lots of interesting comparisons to Glean in that last chapter.

Ryan Lufkin (35:05.205)
Yeah, it's awesome.

Melissa Loble (35:06.007)
I love that you have thought about that. That was a question I was going to ask you was around how does this, how does what you've uncovered translate into maybe a non higher education or not just education in general setting. You shared a little bit about that. You know, I can see some pretty significant opportunity where the skills that you're talking about in the book are really important for, even think HR teams in corporations. So often you run into

people without the kind of real understanding of how to create an online learning strategy for their own employees or workplace. And so I just, see lots of opportunities there. As you did the work, maybe I'll start with you, Jocelyn, what were some of the biggest challenges that you saw that colos were facing today?

Jocelyn Widmer (35:57.582)
Probably positionality. So it comes back to titles and seat at the table. We have a whole chapter framed around a seat at the table. And if you don't have a seat at the table, then how do you get one? Or at least how do you get your ideas there and get a champion who is sitting at the table? And that's that kind of academic scene suite.

So that's a significant challenge. think the change in higher leadership is also a challenge. I mean, we see that all the time with Kolos who had solid footing under one leader's vision and several leaders removed. That vision has become diluted or state politics have changed or whatever it may be. So that's something I think we, at some point I need to do the count, but we have, like I said, 54, 55 expert.

contributors and a significant number have switched roles or retired since we'll have published the book. And, you know, that's for all different reasons. And so I think it is important to acknowledge that the COLA role is not yet, I think, established in a lot of institutions and there still is some justification that needs to be made. And then there are a lot of COLA's who are looking at what

Melissa Loble (36:55.919)
I don't know.

Jocelyn Widmer (37:19.566)
growth looks like or career advancement looks like in that role. so at least side conversations have been a lot about that. And that commentary wove its way a little bit into some of the expert contributions we received.

Ryan Lufkin (37:35.327)
Yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (37:36.965)
We didn't spend a lot of time talking about that, I do think that it's an interesting maybe follow on conversation, sort of like what's next for the colo? There are, because is it a terminal position? And in a lot of cases like the CIO, if we're using that as a comparison, has become a terminal position with a few exceptions. So for example, there are a couple of people who've moved from a colo role.

Melissa Loble (37:46.412)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Cavanagh (38:04.637)
into presidencies, one of whom is the contributor to the book, actually two are contributors to the book. And that's still an exception. We have some, we know some that have moved into provost roles. I know probably three or four that have moved into like VP of enrollment management roles. And so it's like, you could take these to kind of touch again on what Jocelyn said, sorry, you're Melissa.

Melissa Loble (38:31.087)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas Cavanagh (38:33.779)
You could take these leadership skills and point them up in a couple of different directions, which in some ways I think makes the colo a better launching pad, more flexible than even a CIO potentially.

Melissa Loble (38:39.897)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (38:47.469)
Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting, there's an, now something very similar in the corporate space. We're starting to see the rise of chief customer officers. And so there's, definitely see that in a tech and they're just now starting to path into CEO roles. Whereas for a long time, that was also thought as terminal. I think the way you've described this, skillset is so valuable in those senior leadership roles. I love to see that the colo is.

is those core skills become that much even more important as somebody rises in the organization. That's inspiring, particularly because I kind of consider myself a colo, but in a unique setting. And so I love seeing that. I'm curious, you did a little prediction there, Tom. I'm gonna wrap up with a final question for both of you, but I'll start with you, Tom. Where is online learning going, I'll say broadly in three to five years, and where is the?

COLO's role in that going in the next three to five years.

Thomas Cavanagh (39:49.331)
Yeah, it's interesting because I'm kind of a little schizophrenic on it. So in general, it's like if you read the Chloe reports and we've got all the Chloe people who have contributed to the book. And so it's a great it's a great addition. the Chloe data show that it's growing still, right? More people are doing online learning and as a percentage of the whole and maybe even slightly growing the pie where other places it's it's actually dipping.

Melissa Loble (39:54.223)
and

Thomas Cavanagh (40:18.301)
So I think at the macro scale, it's still growing and there's still gonna be demand for leadership in this space to help institutions determine strategy. But at the same time, when you look at like a school like mine, which is large and we do have a scaled online learning operation, I would say over the last year, it feels like we started to plateau a little. Now that's...

Melissa Loble (40:40.813)
Hmm, interesting.

Thomas Cavanagh (40:43.957)
That's barring any new investment to try to actually grow the pie. But for a long time, a lot of our digital growth has been by seeing behavior of students who are on campus and taking more and more online credit hours. That seems to be what's plateauing. I'm not talking about growing new students who are like non-traditional who are looking for it, because I think there's millions and millions of those still to be served. But the more traditional student who's looking for online options

Melissa Loble (40:56.569)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Loble (41:09.273)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lufkin (41:12.798)
that flexibility of online courses and yeah.

Thomas Cavanagh (41:14.069)
Yeah, at least here it feels like at about 60 to 65 % credit hours. I'm just wondering, have we reached a stasis point or is it just an anomaly and then it'll continue growing at two to 3 % a year like it's always grown? don't know, it's an interesting moment where I've noticed this flattening for a year.

Melissa Loble (41:16.015)
Yeah.

Melissa Loble (41:35.521)
Interesting. How about you Jocelyn, where do you see the next three to five years taking us?

Jocelyn Widmer (41:41.774)
Yeah, I'm sort of on the sidelines, or at least in the comfort of the armchair at this point on this. But I do have the ability to have some conversations with all sorts of leadership at different institutions and with individuals like yourself. So it's given me somewhat of a more macro perspective on this. So I think two things. And the first is one that's

is going, kind of coming off of what Tom is saying, I think we still don't have robust digital strategies at institutions, digital learning strategies, comprehensively. And that was something that we saw so many institutions who just struggled during COVID and kind of piecemealed it together, the infrastructure, the skills, the talent needed to sustain that. So I think that's gonna continue.

to like ferment in institutions, large and small and everything in between. But I also think, I think the integration of AI is going to change the game some. And I was talking with the university president a couple of weeks ago and just listening to her thought process and hiring an AI strategist. I think this is my prediction is this is gonna become the norm.

is you see these individual, and this is where I think the colo didn't get a fair run of things because COVID was so demanding on the colos. Cause I think the colos could have played this role. I think the chief or the AI strategist, chief AI officer is going to integrate into the business side of higher ed and the academic side and all facets. Whereas the chief online learning officer

is pretty squarely on the academic front. So I worry about the COLO because of that. And I can see how an institution is strapped for resources is gonna put more emphasis on the AI piece because of the efficiencies and potential cost savings, et cetera, et cetera. Where I think the COLO could have done all of those things and more and understands, you

Melissa Loble (43:35.503)
you

Ryan Lufkin (43:50.962)
you

Jocelyn Widmer (43:57.804)
the framework in which they're working probably more than some of those who are being pegged for these AI strategist roles. So I think time will tell. It's very generic, like throwing my hands up answer, but I think it'll be interesting to see, I think the colo is going to have to continue to make the case and.

Melissa Loble (44:09.475)
Yeah.

Ryan Lufkin (44:13.288)
haha

Jocelyn Widmer (44:22.658)
you know, bring that student experience to the front and demonstrate the value in ways that I don't think what will replace the colo has at their fingertips.

Ryan Lufkin (44:31.602)
Yeah. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. We already have like two other podcasts follow ups that we we've thrown out there. we get so excited for the book. Thank you guys. Congratulations on publishing this. I'm so excited for both of you and thanks for joining us on the podcast today.

Melissa Loble (44:37.322)
Mm-hmm, yes we do.

Thomas Cavanagh (44:48.351)
Thank you, really appreciate it.

Melissa Loble (44:49.487)
Yeah. We'll have links to the book in the show notes. So if you've listened to this, make sure to follow up with the show notes as well as a couple of other resources that were mentioned. And thank you again.

Jocelyn Widmer (44:49.518)
Thank you. Yeah, really appreciate it.

Ryan Lufkin (45:03.006)
Thanks so much.

Jocelyn Widmer (45:04.152)
Thank you.