This semester, the university hit a milestone – more than 100 programs are now available fully online.

“UCF has been a leader in this field for more than 20 years, and since day one we’ve been committed to high-quality online education,” says Tom Cavanagh, vice provost for digital learning. “No matter how many programs we continue to add, that commitment to quality will never change.”

Since UCF Online was formalized in 2016, enrollment has steadily grown year after year. Cavanagh attributes its success to UCF’s emphasis on training faculty to be effective online teachers and integrating digital learning into the culture at UCF even before the pandemic.

“Before March, 86 percent of our students took at least one course online or blended every year. Almost 50 percent of our credit hours were online or blended before everyone transitioned online in March,” he says. “Teaching students online is something that was embedded at UCF, and it is done at the same high quality that you would expect from our face-to-face courses.”

Quantity with an emphasis on quality

That mindset and experience has paid off dividends as higher education has had to quickly shift gears in the wake of COVID-19. While many schools around the country grappled with struggling enrollments as a result of the pandemic, UCF Online saw an 18 percent increase from Fall 2019 to Fall 2020.

UCF Online currently offers 25 bachelor’s degrees, 34 �������ٱ��’s, three doctorates and an additional 41 graduate certificates. Eleven new certificates were created specifically in response to workforce demands created by COVID-19.

U.S. News & World Report recently ranked UCF among the top 20 Best Online Bachelor’s Programs in the nation for the third consecutive year, enabling students from anywhere in the world to enroll in fully online degree programs.

“Our goal has been to try to reach those non-traditional students who can’t access education in any other way and need the flexibility that online education offers,” Cavanagh says.

Bright future

Taylor Banfield is one of those students. The 25-year-old needed to balance her coursework with her job as a server to put herself through school and says UCF Online allowed her to do both.

She is months away from earning her bachelor’s degree in health services administration after persevering through a seven-year journey that saw financial hardship early on and a boating accident last year that landed her in the hospital for two weeks.

Banfield — whose leg was cut badly by a boat propeller— was able to stay on top of her homework from the hospital bed. She says she is thankful for her teachers’ understanding and willingness to work with her during that traumatic period of her life. She was also able to apply lessons from her classwork to her own situation.

“The class I was enrolled in focused on the insurance process in healthcare, and I was able to understand the explanation of benefits in my own situation,” Banfield says. “It was really helpful, and kind of cool that I could experience what I was learning about first hand.”

Banfield says finally earning her diploma will fulfill a lifelong goal she set out to make her grandmother proud.

“My grandma has 20 grandchildren, and none of them have a degree,” she says. “That made me want to be the change for my family. I didn’t want to just sit around waiting for something to happen. That’s why I went to school. This degree is going to be a stepping stone to where I’m going. I plan to get my �������ٱ��’s and eventually I want to specialize in helping people with disabilities. I want to make an impact.”

Cavanagh says the university will continue to develop and expand UCF Online’s degree inventory to continue to help students achieve their goals, and he envisions a future that holds more alternative programming such as skill-based short courses or smaller credentials that could be stacked to fit degree requirements to accommodate a variety of educational opportunities.

“That’s definitely an area of opportunity for us to explore,” he says.

“Over the past 20 years, we’ve learned that online options help our students learn and perform better, and we are proud to offer access to affordable, high-quality degrees.”
— Interim President Thad Seymour Jr.

UCF’s undergraduate online programs tied for No. 16 this year. The university also tied for No. 12 for Best Online Bachelor’s Programs for Veterans, No. 17 for Best Online Graduate Criminal Justice Programs and No. 31 for Best Graduate Online Nursing Programs.

The rankings are based on the publication’s 2020 Best Online Programs rankings, which assess schools based on student engagement, online learning technologies and support, faculty credentials and training, and the program’s reputation among other universities.

“As the landscape of higher education has shifted to accommodate students who take classes remotely, so has UCF, which is why the university’s online programs continue to rank among the top in the nation,” says Interim President Thad Seymour Jr. “Over the past 20 years, we’ve learned that online options help our students learn and perform better, and we are proud to offer access to affordable, high-quality degrees.”

The first online programs launched at ��AV in 1996, and today nearly half of all academic credits at UCF are completed in online or blended courses, which combine face-to-face and online instruction. Following 20 years of digital learning, the university in 2016 established UCF Online, an initiative that allows students to earn their degree fully online, from anywhere in the world, at a reduced fee rate.

“At UCF, we understand that many students have schedules and responsibilities that require flexibility,” Thomas Cavanagh, vice provost for Digital Learning. “That’s why we put so much effort into offering a robust, high-quality online learning experience.”

To ensure academic quality remains high, more than 75 percent of undergraduate online courses are taught by full-time faculty members who must go through the same rigorous departmental review process as for any face-to-face course. In addition, each faculty member wanting to create a new online course receives 80 hours of professional development with an instructional designer, while faculty members interested in teaching existing online courses receive 35 hours of training.

But academic success for students so often extends beyond the classroom. That’s why UCF offers students support from success coaches in addition to academic advisors. Success coaches provide mentorship for students from admission to graduation and beyond, helping students navigate a range of challenges from better understanding financial literacy to how to address personal crises now and in the future.

“Whether our students are just down the street or across the country, we strive to ensure that they receive the same high-quality education online that they would on campus,” says Cavanagh. “It’s that commitment that has made UCF an online learning leader for more than 20 years.”

“This is a growing national recognition for the quality of UCF’s large online program and an increasingly prestigious reputation for the work we do,” Cavanagh said.

Key to the CDL award was the work of the personalized adaptive learning team overseen by Baiyun Chen, he said.

Most of the award, $80,000, will be reinvested in the digital-learning operations. Two mathematics faculty members will share in the award. Associate lecturer Tammy Muhs and lecturer Rachid Ait Maalem Lachen, each will receive $10,000, Cavanagh said.

The consortium said the award recognizes “projects that inspire innovation, increase access, support implementation, improve outcomes, enable accessibility and promote sustainability” of digital courseware.

During the 2017-18 school year, about 82 percent of UCF students took at least one online or blended course. About 73 percent of students took at least one class that was totally online.

Thomas Cavanagh, associate vice president of UCF’s Center for Distributed Learning, received the Outstanding Leadership Award. The award recognizes leaders who “excel within their organization, consistently reaching out through mentoring, sharing and collaboration.”

Cavanagh leads a team that develops UCF’s distance learning strategy, policies, and practices, including program and course design, production, and assessment. He has led e-learning teams in both academic and private industry and is an award-winning instructional designer, program manager and faculty member.

“It’s a great honor to be recognized with the USDLA Outstanding Leadership Award,” Cavanagh said. “It’s an honor I gladly share with the entire staff at the Center for Distributed Learning. The team here at UCF truly is outstanding.”

Also the team of Charles Dziuban, Patsy Moskal, Jeffrey Cassisi and graduate student Alexis Fawcett received the Quality Research Paper Award from USDLA, given to authors who produce a research paper that has the potential of making significant advances in the area of distance learning.

Dziuban is director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at UCF and has been on the faculty since 1970. Moskal is the associate director for RITE and has been at UCF since 1989. They have been leading the impact evaluation of UCF’s distributed learning program for the past 20 years.

Cassisi is a professor in UCF’s Psychology Department and has been a faculty member since 2008. He is one of the early innovators in adaptive learning pedagogical methods. Fawcett has been developing innovative data analysis techniques during the past two years.

Their paper focused on a study related to UCF’s adaptive-learning initiative, revealing significant new insights into this growing area of technology-based education.

“The research team at Ů��AV is deeply honored by this recognition and validation that comes with it. Most certainly the future of impactful research will involve the collaboration of many disciplines- all of which add value to the new science of learning.”

The recipients received the awards Monday in Indianapolis during the USDLA 2017 annual national conference. USDLA was founded in 1987 to support research, training, development and best practices among e-learning communities.

These international awards are presented annually to organizations and individuals engaged in the development and delivery of distance learning programs.

“USDLA enjoys honoring leaders within the industry,” said John G. Flores, executive director of USDLA. “Each year these recognized leaders raise the bar and exceed best practice expectations for the industry as a whole and we are truly honored by their contributions within all distance learning constituencies.”

An interview with Thomas Cavanagh, UCF’s associate vice president of distributed learning, was taped Monday in Los Angeles and is scheduled for broadcast at midnight Thursday on WUCF TV.

Cavanagh discussed how UCF has leveraged the program to improve student access and success. The interview is the final installment in Smiley’s season-long emphasis on national higher education success stories. 

“I appreciated the invitation to share the UCF model with a wider audience,” Cavanagh said. “It was a fun conversation about an important topic.”

For those unable to catch the broadcast, the interview will be repeated at noon Monday on WUCF’s 24.3 world channel and will be available online on the Tavis Smiley Show .  

The award for UCF’s Center for Distributed Learning is one of just a handful of various institutional and individual awards to be presented Oct. 11 at the consortium’s 18th annual conference at Walt Disney World.

“The award is gratifying because it validates that Ů��AV is a leader in creating and delivering online learning,” said Thomas Cavanagh, assistant vice president in charge of distributed learning. “While the size of our online initiative is large, this award also confirms that it is of the highest quality.”

Distributed learning impacts curriculum across the university.

UCF currently offers 59 completely online programs: 5 undergraduate degrees, 25 graduate degrees, and 29 graduate certificates. These offerings cross six different colleges plus the general undergraduate interdisciplinary studies program.

About 58 percent of the university’s students are enrolled in at least one online course, and in the most recent academic year, more than 32 percent of all student credit hours involved courses with online components.

“The CDL office staff provides invaluable services that continue to differentiate our institution from others,” College of Nursing Dean Jean D’Meza Leuner wrote in a letter of support for the award. “The Ů��AV has made technology a priority and CDL continues to promote excellence and demonstrate high quality in its responsiveness in order to impart a high quality educational experience to our students.”

Alisha Janowsky, assistant chair of the psychology department, also praised the helpful advice CDL staff presented in a course for faculty about how to develop online learning.

Janowsky wrote: “The take-home message was that we should shift our focus from ‘How can I move my face-to-face content online’ to ‘What can I do online that I could never do face-to-face.’”

Sloan-C said this year’s field of nominees represented an impressive variety of innovative approaches, creating a competitive selection process.

“The 2012 recipients have demonstrated exceptional leadership and real success in advancing online education,” said Burks Oakley II, vice president of Sloan-C.

Cavanagh said the CDL staff is pleased to be recognized with the award, especially because the evaluators are peers from around the country.

“UCF takes online learning seriously and supports it from the highest levels of university administration,” he said.

Google calls the exercise 20 Percent Days, because employees can take one day a week to work on projects that motivate them. Some companies call them FedEx Days – because the results have to be delivered by the next day.  Whatever the exercise is called, organizations say those hours are some of their most productive.

The Ů��AV’s Center for Distributed Learning is taking the same approach with similar results.  The center is responsible for delivering online learning to UCF’s growing population, which creates a host of unforeseen challenges.

So once a semester, employees are encouraged to step outside the confines of their normal workday and find solutions to challenging problems or create something unexpected that helps the team accomplish its mission.

The center calls it Hack Day and recently held its third exercise. Hack Day is a term used by computer programmers and software developers when they work collaboratively on projects.

“Every time we have done this we end up with many projects that are both fully developed and ready for immediate implementation, or are substantially complete and only need minimal work to wrap up,” said Thomas Cavanagh, UCF assistant vice president in charge of distributed learning.

“I should also note that the projects are not all focused around programming tasks. We have had people develop new policies, improve purchasing forms, create a style guide, and other important tasks.”

Some of the dozen or so ideas that have been implemented are:

The center’s staff designs, delivers and supports online learning through faculty development, course production and research. Their task grows bigger each semester: In the 2011-12 academic year, 72 percent of UCF students (49,856) enrolled in fully online or blended learning courses, and out of the total class enrollments, 30 percent (159,981) were online or blended.

Cavanagh said Margie Chusmir, an organizational development consultant with the UCF Human Resources staff, passed along the idea to the CDL for staffers to design and work on projects that interest them.

“This is their second year and the results of the one day dedicated to innovation have been very impressive,” Chusmir said, adding that she hopes the concept spreads to other areas of the campus.

Ian Turgeon, a web application developer, took on the responsibility of organizing the project. Each Hack Day starts off with a quick meeting to go over all the proposed ideas and allow teams to form. The following day, the participants meet again and present their work. Projects are voted on, and the top teams receive prizes.

From 15 to 30 CDL employees participate each Hack Day, said Francisca Yonekura, assistant department head.

“This spring was the first time people started to venture out. Some of them worked at the Student Union and other folks went to the patio area by the Technology Commons,” Yonekura said. “Since the budget is limited these days, we are printing magnets with a Hack Day identifier, which amazingly enough you see at the winners’ desks…the ‘medals’ are proudly displayed.”

So far the winning ideas from these bursts of creativity have been used in-house, but some of them could eventually be patented for external use, Yonekura said.

The scope of projects is as varied as the talents of the CDL employees, Cavanagh said, adding that even though all the ideas don’t pan out, the exercise strengthens the team.

Yonekura said: “The event seems to already be in our minds as we often hear statements such as, “Oh, that is a Hack Day-worthy project. When is the next one?’”

To check out the CDL’s web page for Hack Day, go to