Leadership Foundations in Global Online Education
Introduction and Context
Higher education has evolved over the past one thousand years depending upon the source you consult. While the origins of advanced teaching and learning go back eons to the days of Socrates and before, we have seen the most dramatic changes in the past thirty years with even more exciting changes predicted for the next decade or two. Despite the recent activity, higher education is infamous for the slow rate of change over those many, long years. We are now in a transformation from the mostly campus-based teaching and learning of the 19th and 20th century to the increasingly online distributed learning of the 1990’s until today. The advent of the World Wide Web with the release by the National Center of Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois of the first Web browser, Mosaic, in 1993 (Wikipedia, 2026 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCSA_Mosaic) opened the technological pathway of the internet to enhance the postal mail-based correspondence courses of prior decades. In the past decade, many universities began reaching out online to enroll learners in degree and certificate programs.
A pivotal point in demonstrating the potential and future of online education came in 1995 with the historic and devastating hurricane Katrina. I had the good fortune to be engaged in a remarkable effort of more than a hundred American universities with online courses and degree programs who came together under the auspices of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation through the higher education association, the Sloan Consortium, and many federal, state and regional groups to serve student at more than twenty colleges and universities along the gulf coast who were forced to close their physical campuses due to the hurricane’s destruction. The seminal effort in utilizing online education at scale in a natural disaster is chronicled by George Lorenzo in a paper titled simply “The Sloan Semester.” (Lorenzo, 2008 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 12: Issue 2) Students at the affected universities were able to take classes online from other fully accredited universities who volunteered their classes and no or reduced charges so that the students could complete their classes without delays in making progress toward their degrees and certificates.
It took the worldwide Covid pandemic that was declared in March 2020 (NA-ACCORD, 2026 https://naaccord.org/covid-19-timeline ) to motivate many higher education institutions to close their campuses and move instruction online in order to reduce student and staff close exposure to others and minimize spread of the disease. That resulted in a massive overnight change in the delivery of higher learning for millions of students from in-person to online. Campuses reopened in the spring or fall of 2021. Upon re-opening, the number of online learning enrollments remained elevated compared to pre-pandemic days, and they continued to rise. Now more than half of the post-secondary students are taking at least some online classes. (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2026 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=80)
This online shift, albeit, lasting only a year for most colleges and universities, expanded exposure to the online delivery mode among both students and faculty members. While in many cases the on-campus classes were hastily transitioned to online delivery mode over spring break, 2020; the advantages and potential of this mode became apparent and favored by many. The boost in exposure caused by the pandemic is a significant factor in the steady migration we have seen from in-person to online learning.
A central factor in the importance of online learning is that from any remote point on the planet, an institution can enroll, engage, teach and advance the lives of students anywhere on Earth. This is a powerful advantage that enables large enrollments and global influence for even a small institution. Over the quarter of a century, from 1997 to 2021, I founded and led the online learning initiative at the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS). The program accrued extensive national and international recognition for excellence and innovation in online learning. (ChatGPT 5.5 High, 2026 https://chatgpt.com/share/6a482d43-2f64-83ea-9dfd-7fe810b068a9O ) The online program accumulated more than half the credit hours generated by university in several semesters. Many of the non-credit professional development courses are now delivered online for the convenience of access for employed learners. Certainly, UIS was not alone in growing an expansive online program generating significant tuition revenue and extending the global reputation of the institution.
The evolution to global education online is rooted in the technologies that enable, for the first time in the history of humans, to effectively and efficiently provide interactive communication, collaboration and engagement of peoples worldwide across languages, cultures and geography. Collectively these technologies and their impact on societies are termed the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, https://www.britannica.com/event/The-Fourth-Industrial-Revolution-2119734).
Online Learning Rise in Importance and Influence in College and University Administration
As a result of the increasing enrollments in online learning delivered degrees, certificates, programs and courses, the position title of Chief Online Learning Officer (COLO) was created to give the leaders a position of influence at their institutions. Influence and importance in university administration historically has been determined most often by the number of enrollments and the generation of revenue, often tuition and fee revenue, that is so important in ensuring financial stability and success of the institution. Prior to the Covid Pandemic, many institutions put online programs under the supervision and leadership of persons carrying the title of “director.” Such was the case with my own career in which I was named Director of the Office of Technology-Enhanced Learning (OTEL) in 1997. However, as online programs and resulting enrollments increased greater responsibility and authority accrued to the leaders. That was the case with my position at the University of Illinois Springfield, in 2013 I was given the title Associate Vice Chancellor for Online and a seat on the Provost’s Cabinet of Deans. From that position, I and others in analogous positions were able to exercise leadership at university wide as well as influence among other colleges and universities. It is the positioning within the administrative structure and the “seat at the table” of decision makers that opened the door to leadership opportunities for the administrators of online programs.
We are amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2016 https://www.weforum.org/stories/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/ ). The experience of online leaders in leveraging technology to reach and create interactive online academic engagement for students at a distance also puts COLOs in a position of technology leadership. The transformation of higher education in this era began with the rise of the internet and online education. Now, nearly all of the Learning Management Systems (LMSs) use artificial intelligence (AI) as a key component in the delivery of online learning. Further, AI’s rapid expansion has begun to permeate the development, delivery, and assessment of classes and related academic experiences. COLOs must keep up to date on the latest applications of AI across the higher education and related fields. They must become AI experts for their universities. De facto, at many institutions, the COLO is the administrator on the Academic Cabinet to whom peer leaders turn for insight, advice and recommendations regarding next steps in the AI transformation of the university.
Leadership from Faculty
Leadership from Staff
Leadership from Students
Leadership Impact and Importance
Next Half Century
Future-Ready Strategies for Technology Leaders in Higher Education - Nathan Eddy, EdTech
Higher education technology leaders face an increasingly difficult balancing act. Enrollment pressures, tighter budgets and rising expectations around artificial intelligence (AI) are forcing institutions to modernize while proving the value of every technology investment. At the same time, aging infrastructure, fragmented data and staffing constraints leave little room for missteps. Research from EDUCAUSE shows institutions are increasingly prioritizing data modernization to improve operational efficiency, student success, decision support and institutional research, while Deloitte’s 2026 Higher Education Trends report identifies data integration and responsible AI adoption as critical priorities for improving decision-making and student success. Rather than treating modernization as a collection of technology upgrades, higher education CIOs are increasingly sequencing investments around institutional priorities, strengthening data foundations and building governance that allows AI to deliver measurable value.