Eduventures Summer Sessions Learning Collaborative

The Summer Sessions Learning Collaborative (SUM-LC) is designed to highlight successes, challenges, and opportunities associated with summer session, and to assist program leaders and administrators in more successfully leveraging summer session as an institutional asset. It provides insight and direction to identify best management practices, benchmark performance, and improve core processes through research, analysis, and networking opportunities.

SUM-LC provides Collaborative Research, Focused Research, and opportunities for interactions with our analysts, as well as decision-makers, at peer institutions. Research is organized into three tracks: organizational strategies, programming decisions, and marketing productivity. Upcoming studies include:

Summer Session Benchmarks
This benchmarking study will focus on core program success measures, including aggregate and program-specific enrollment figures, aggregate and disaggregated budgets (by income and expense line), and marketing productivity, as well as institutional characteristics related to organizational design, product offerings, and delivery modes. The study will provide analysis of productivity at peer institutions, enabling members to forecast program growth rates and benchmark their own institutional year-over-year improvements.

Assessing Consumer Preferences for Summer Session Programming
This market research project is focused on identifying summer session students’ motivations, purchasing behavior, receptivity to marketing messages, and curriculum and delivery preferences. By providing analysis of program members’ prospective and existing customers, this study enables members to develop more relevant courses and programs; differentiate their offerings; and build more effective marketing, pricing, and positioning strategies. The scale and diversity of this study provide members with a data set of substantial and unique value.

While the premise of SUM-LC is the same as our other Learning Collaboratives, there is a slight variation in its deliverables. SUM-LC takes the broader topic of continuing and professional education and focuses on the particular area of summer session. It serves as a complement to our Continuing and Professional Education Learning Collaborative (CPE-LC), although an institution does not need to be a CPE-LC member in order to be a member of SUM-LC. Unique offerings provided by this program include:

Annual Report
Once a year, Eduventures will produce a synthesis of program research in the form of a state of the union summary of key trends and issues in summer session. This research output is intended to support discussions, both internal and external to the institution, regarding the strategic value and educational impact of summer session programming – whether for the benefit of university administrators or state or federal policymakers.

Focused Research Reports
SUM-LC members will undertake 12 original investigations that are defined by the membership each new membership year. These small-scale studies may take the form of benchmarking investigations, environmental scans, or primary research investigations.

Projects this program year will include effective new program development strategies; targeting new audiences for summer session; effectively marketing and branding summer session; understanding motivations and preferences of summer session students; and market research on innovative summer session programming, among other issues.

Member Roundtables
SUM-LC staff members organize and host regular Member Roundtable teleconferences to address issues of emerging concern to the membership. Drawing on the expertise of SUM-LC members and other educational thought-leaders, these facilitated discussions are designed to address current information gaps and identify future research directions.

Please contact us to explore how membership in Eduventures Summer Sessions Learning Collaborative can help you make better, more-informed decisions.