The tenth Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE) survey report—produced by Eduventures, Quality Matters™, and EDUCAUSE— offers fresh insights into non-degree investment, student orientation, online revenue, and AI. This Wake-Up call highlights what the findings reveal—and predict—about the student experience (for undergraduates).
In one key section, we asked Chief Online Learning Officers (COLOs) to choose five keywords to describe the typical student experience—today and five years out—for traditional-aged and adult undergraduates, as well as graduate students. The results offer a reality check—capturing the everyday experience rather than outliers— but also suggest that significant change may be closer than we think.
Traditional-Aged Undergraduates: Physical Classroom in Retreat
According to 70% of COLOs (representing a wide range of public and private and two- and four-year institutions), the “physical classroom” remains central to the experience of traditional undergraduates today for these students. No other keyword comes close. Three other “traditional” keywords feature in the top seven: “full-time faculty” (56%), “residential” (50%), and “lecture” (43%).
But three less-traditional keywords are also prominent: “mix of online and campus” (51%), “digital course materials” (48%), and “online asynchronous” (45%). A blend of physical and digital is the norm at many institutions.
Figure 1 contrasts contemporary and predicted “Top 5” ratios for all 20 keywords for traditional-aged undergraduates.
Figure 1
According to Figure 1, the next five years are projected to constitute a sharp shift. The “physical classroom’s” dominance is expected to halve, with “full-time faculty,” “residential” life, and “lecture” all shedding 20 percentage points or more. “Physical course materials” falls off a cliff—from 19% today to just 1% in 2030.
What replaces these staples? “Digital course materials” emerges as the predicted number one feature (50%), followed by a “mix of online and campus” activities (48%). But the gap between the leader today (70%) and the leader in 2030 (50%) signals a more fragmented future. No single element is expected to define the traditional-aged undergraduate experience for a majority.
The wildcards are AI and “adaptive learning.” “AI support services” leaps from obscurity to 43%, and “AI tutoring” rises to 31%. “Adaptive learning” grows from 2% to 21%. These numbers also show caution: even the most talked-about technologies are forecasted to be central for only a minority of these students.
Interestingly, “online asynchronous”—long the default for online delivery—drops from 45% to 34%, with modest gains for “online synchronous” and “immersive” tools. This hints at the value of experiential diversification.
Institutional size plays a role. Larger online enrollments correlate with greater enthusiasm for AI, while smaller online operations show more faith in “adaptive learning.” This may reflect differing levels of experimentation and lived experiences with these tools.
Adult Undergraduates: Homogeneity Today, Complexity Tomorrow
If traditional-aged undergraduates are still tethered to the campus, adult undergraduates are firmly in the digital realm. Over 80% of COLOs identify “online asynchronous” as fundamental today—10 points higher than the most dominant traditional age keyword. “Digital course materials” and a hybrid “mix of online and campus” follow closely, but “physical classroom” comes in fourth at 46%, followed by “full-time faculty” (43%).
“Work experience” (43%) and “practitioner faculty” (25%) feature more prominently than in the younger cohort—reflecting adults’ overriding career orientations—but are nonetheless minority pursuits. “Online synchronous” is also more common (25% vs. 11% for traditional undergraduates), but in the shadow of asynchronous.
Figure 2 contrasts contemporary and predicted “Top 5” ratios for all 20 keywords for adult undergraduates.
Figure 2
Five years out, the adult landscape becomes more nuanced. According to Figure 2, “online asynchronous” declines somewhat to 72%, while “AI support services” (51%) and “AI tutoring” (34%) surge from almost nothing. “Competency-based learning” (CBL) (27%) and “adaptive learning” (24%) also post big gains. “Self-paced” learning nearly doubles to 17%. “Work experience” and “practitioner faculty” both edge down in predicted centrality.
This suggests that COLOs expect to double-down on the convenience that is essential for busy working adults but use new technology and pedagogic frameworks to boost responsiveness, personalization, and learning effectiveness. Raising adult undergraduate completion rates is key to growing the prospective student pipeline. The risk is that an increasingly technology-mediated experience may increase the tension between convenience and learning. But requiring a lot more time in-person or on campus is impractical (and expensive), making the “mass customization” promised by AI a sensible (if inherently uncertain) bet.
The Bottom Line
These CHLOE 10 findings get real about the typical student experience today and offer a glimpse into COLOs’ collective imaginations looking ahead to 2030.
After years of hype—not to mention a lot of hard work from advocates—is it sobering to see “competency-based learning,” “adaptive learning,” immersions, and “simulations” languish near the bottom of the list for all three study types in 2025. It is still very unusual for a COLO to judge any of these words as truly characteristic of the typical student experience.
COLOs predict that by 2030 forms of AI will be as important as physical + digital combinations, full-time faculty, and lectures are today. Based on other CHLOE 10 findings at most schools, AI investments, policies, and applications are still in their infancy.
“AI” today may be the equivalent of the “Internet” or even “online learning” in decades past: a big, disruptive category that evolves over time into discrete applications and approaches. By 2030, real world AI applications in higher education will be clearer and likely more fragmented.
The promise of AI is to transcend legacy constraints in terms of operational productivity, personalized learning, and student transformation. COLOs’ keyword predictions are an acknowledgement of the limitations of contemporary campus and online learning, but a bet on an unproven technology that must wrestle with all the complexities of human-mediated goals, motivations, and interactions.
Future CHLOE reports will reveal whether COLOs were blinded by hype or saw the future before it happened.
Many thanks to all the online leaders who took the time to complete the CHLOE 10 survey. CHLOE could not exist without you! Thanks also to CHLOE 10’s sponsors: iDesign, Science Interactive, Archer Education, and the Online Learning Consortium™.
