Former TLT director named UOnline chief, associate dean

By Scott Sherman

Cory Stokes has spent the past several years helping faculty and the university navigate the quickly changing landscape of technologies used to develop and deliver courses. As executive director of Teaching and Learning Technologies, Stokes and his team have pushed the envelope of emerging teaching practices and platforms to position the university among the nation’s leaders.

His work with the Canvas learning management system — as well as collaboration with Equella and Kaltura, and building the UOnline testing center — has caught the attention of other major universities exploring better online learning environments. It also caught the attention of the academic leadership at the University of Utah, which led to his recent appointment as Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and UOnline Director.

“It’s a new position bringing a strategic lens to our online offerings. It’s not just about faculty innovation, which is important, but we need to align the mission of the University and online,” Stokes said.

Online education is nothing new to the university, with more than a decade of history and over 400 courses with more than 11,000 enrollments already offered each semester. But the focus largely has been on faculty innovation and less on clearing obstacles to students’ progress toward degrees. Stokes hopes to turn the model into one that can not only help give students greater access to their courses on a more flexible schedule, but one that could open up richer opportunities or keep students on track when life circumstances might make them veer from that path.

“We’re trying to create a more flexible university,” he said. “That takes looking at online and saying, ‘What has to happen to the online offerings to make sure we’re offering the right courses at the right time to enable more access to a University of Utah education.’”

It also means ensuring the online education aligns with the needs of the state’s workforce, partnering in some cases with local companies or industries seeking graduates with a certain skillset.

“It’s no longer about just putting interesting courses out there,” Stokes said. “We’re going to put a lot of work into discovering those needs and finding where do we have natural partnerships with industries that are located here in Utah.”

Stokes will collaborate with four distinct areas as director of the U’s online education strategy: Student Services, UOnline program management, Teaching & Learning Technologies, and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence. His goal is to ensure the holistic online strategy starts with marketing, recruiting, and enrolling students in online courses; assesses what programs are online or should be online; bring faculty together with instructional designers and media specialists to develop and create engaging online courses; and build upon successes with faculty by providing fellowships and development opportunities.

“My role is to float above these four areas and make sure their processes all align in an efficient way and we’re all working together toward the same outcome with online,” he said.

Stokes still will work closely with TLT, which dual-reports to him and the CIO. Filling Stokes’ previous role for the time being is Jon Thomas, who has significant experience in instructional design, platforms integrations, programming, and collaborative educational content development.

“I just can’t think of a better person to be running TLT at this time,” Stokes said. “Jon has been chest deep in the operational side and taking all of the vision and turning it into reality around a lot of our platforms and our instructional design processes here.”

Thomas happens to be beginning work on his doctoral dissertation, which will examine the values and methodologies of agile software development and how to apply them to course design to develop online courses faster and more efficiently.

“What he’s doing in his personal education is going to make big changes here at the University of Utah in how we support course development,” Stokes said.

As for other possible changes, he sees more discussions about the financial model behind online education.

“We’ll be looking at questions like should online courses cost less or the same as on-site learning? Should we continue to have an online course fee? How do we share and reinvest revenue from online enrollments? What’s the tuition model and how do we determine value for students taking online classes.”

If the past few years are an indication, online education may become a major element in how we provide degrees, certificates and continuing education. But Stokes is confident the University of Utah will be pushing hard to create the most value for students and faculty.