Darcy Hardy

An Interview with Dr. Darcy Hardy Founder and Chief Strategist The Hardy Group

Darcy Hardy is a pioneer of online and flexible learning. From her role as a senior leader in the University of Texas System, responsible for telephone-based distance learning and later online learning, to her work in the US Departments of Labor and Education, she has supported and enabled many innovations in flexible and online learning. She also worked at Blackboard (now Anthology), leading their consulting and transformative services, and now leads her team at The Hardy Strategic Consulting Group LLC.

Q:  Looking forward five years or so, given developments in AI, what do you see being different about teaching and learning in higher education?

Darcy: Having worked in education for many years, I still find it amazing that we haven't changed much at all. Even more amazing is how few of those who lead higher education institutions and systems understand teaching and learning. They don't. They also don't understand the ways in which technologies can support teaching and learning. To account for what is happening now with AI and other developments, we need to become much more strategic. Much more focused.

If we look just five years from now, I don’t see much changing —from a budget perspective, from an enrollment perspective, from a teaching and learning perspective. Change is not in the air, depending on which country or region we are focusing on.

One problem we encounter in helping higher education leaders think about strategy is that they look to what happened in the pandemic and say, “We discovered we could do online learning!” But they see the remote teaching we rushed to during the pandemic as if it were the same as instructionally designed, engaged student learning, which it is not. They don't want to change the relationships between students and teachers, students and knowledge, and empower and engage students in effective self-directed learning. They still want to retain old wine in new bottles. They don't get it.

Q: What have you done to try to change that?

Darcy: Well, while I was at Anthology, I worked hard to create a bipartisan (Democrat and Republican) Congressional e-Learning Caucus in the US House of Representatives aimed at promoting a deeper understanding of what e-learning could be and could represent. The idea was to shift the mindset to the highest level, hoping that this mind shift would filter down to schools, colleges and universities. The Caucus was finally established, only to lose steam once I left Anthology last November (2023). I am now working on trying to get this back since I think driving change top-down (via the US Education Department and Congress) and supporting innovative teaching and learning will be key to driving change in the long term, assuming there is a US Department of Education and that it does have influence. Whether or not the Department is there, Congress will be there, and they can push for change — if Members are willing to understand how important online learning is in higher education. We’re in a bit of a scary place right now in the US.

Q: How does AI connect to all of this? Will this be a driver for change in higher education?

Darcy: AI will be something most students will use, and its use by students will increase significantly over time. However, faculty remain uncertain, and the policy space within institutions is “fuzzy” or, more accurately, “messy.” We need the work of all to be better aligned and to make effective use of AI tools for teaching, learning, research and assessment. In some higher education institutions, they have AI banned in one department, but it is required to be used in Engineering or Medicine as a “must-have, must-use” tool. There are two camps: those who want to stick their head in the sand and pretend they can keep AI out of the classroom, and those who embrace its potential.

So, this takes me back to leadership and why my focus is there: leaders in higher education need to accept the reality of AI and its rapid growth and potential and then work to embrace its effective use. A college or university needs a consistent and focused broad policy that its faculties and departments can then use to shape their practice. There needs to be an underlying consistency of approach within each institution.

Q: Do you have experiences that are relevant to this work, Darcy?

Darcy: When I was at Anthology, we did work across Latin America, particularly Colombia. Colombian leaders were interested in what might happen after the pandemic and how online and virtual learning may change the way higher education was accessed and deployed. Now, we are some years after the pandemic, and what happened, in Colombia, is that the faculty pulled right back into traditional face-to-face teaching and essentially made it difficult for remote learners to engage and learn. They had to come to campus. An opportunity lost, but there I still hope they continue to move forward in this area.

AI is pulling faculty, policymakers, leaders and administrators in all sorts of directions. Developments in AI are taking place at a rapid speed, but policymaking is slow. Policies just released relate to where AI was three years ago. We're not keeping pace, not leveraging the potential.

One thing Blackboard did was embed trustworthy AI tools in their learning management system (LMS) to support innovative course design and assessment. We also supported collaborative sharing communities so that an instructor did not have to completely reinvent the wheel to teach curriculum like algebra, calculus or basic biology. But when the LMS is in the hands of instructors only (and without instructional designers), they often ignore these powerful tools and do what they have always done: start from scratch. Some do use the tools, of course, but so many either ignore them or choose not to learn how to use them. This is one reason I don't expect to see a lot of AI use in course design and deployment in the next five years.

Q: So what do you see happening in the next five years and beyond?

Darcy: I have been involved with online and innovative learning throughout my career and at the heart of some major developments or opportunities. An underlying issue throughout has been the issue of quality. We want high quality. We demand high quality. We see quality as a virtue, but we cannot define it.

Ask an audience of 500 higher education leaders what quality is in online learning and what it means in practice, and you will get 600 answers! We need to sort this out and focus on what quality means in terms of vision, strategy, academic affairs, readiness for learning, marketing and student support. Once we do that, we can then identify how technologies like AI can help us deliver quality. When we don't define quality, we are soon lost in a plethora of different views and ideas, and we get “stuck in the mud.”

This is why I think before we get too far down the AI road, we need to focus on the policy landscape and the way policies can shape and drive behaviours. Let's look at one policy domain to make my point: authentication and attendance. Right now, at an in-person exam with 400 students, we do not know who is in the room and if all of the students who are supposed to be there are – we don't take an attendance register. Students themselves became concerned that there were different standards for online versus in-class, so a group of them created a proctoring system called HonorLock, which can be used in any setting. It leverages AI to ensure fairness and equity and appropriate exam behaviour, given the protocols for that exam. It provides authentication and attendance and ensures integrity. Developed by students to ensure quality student experience. A great way to assess learning and still meet any requirements that make come our way.

Q: Final thoughts on what’s coming our way?

Darcy: I am both excited and nervous about the emerging possibilities for higher education and AI. I am cautious. We don't want to see change driven by AI vendors, it has to be owned by faculty, students and institutions — they have to drive the change. Right now, they don't fully understand what the future might look like or even what the choices are, but some are experimenting and innovating and will act as lighthouses for others and show them the way.

One focus for the future must be on assessment. Right now, many assessments are designed to find out what a student doesn't know. What we need to shift to is assessing what students do know and using that assessment to shape their “next” learning. We need to have more formative assessments aimed at engaging the learner and helping them shape and own their learning journey and less assessments aimed at “calling them out!”

I am currently in the process of co-writing a book with my friend and colleague, Ellen Wagner, about leadership in digital higher education, with a strong focus on women in leadership. This will cover a lot of the ground we have explored here and more. But I think we have an obligation to be optimistic. I hope you do too.