The Future of Online Education is All About Relationships

Educators from all over joined us for an exciting conversation about the future of online education—a future with more options for students, less drudgery for faculty and staff, and more opportunities to build the transformational relationships and human skills we’ll need to thrive in the jobs of tomorrow.

Enjoy a pivotal conversation with Southern New Hampshire University President Paul LeBlanc, InSpace CEO Narine Hall, and moderator/education thought leader, Michael Horn, about building thriving and supportive virtual campuses.

Highlights include:

• InSpace Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Narine Hall on those lightbulb moments students have in the classroom and how to ensure they happen in online learning (06:32).
• SNHU President Dr. Paul LeBlanc on how AI changes everything (10:04), especially assessments (13:41) and academic advising (20:35).
• Dr. Hall on building community in online education (23:35).
• Dr. LeBlanc on the need for both asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities (29:51) and how to build and foster transformational relationships in online environments (30:49).

Panelist Bios

Paul LeBlanc

President, Southern New Hampshire University

Dr. Paul J. LeBlanc is the President of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). Under the 19 years of Paul's direction, SNHU has grown from 2,800 students to more than 180,000 and is the largest nonprofit provider of online higher education in the country and the first to have a full competency-based degree program untethered to the credit hour or classes approved by a regional accreditor and the US Department of Education.

Paul is widely considered one of America's most innovative educators. In 2012, SNHU was #12 on Fast Company magazine's "World's Fifty Most Innovative Companies" list and was the only university included. Forbes Magazine has listed him as one of its 15 "Classroom Revolutionaries." Washington Monthly named him one of America's ten most innovative university presidents. In 2018, Paul won the prestigious IA Institute Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education, joining some of the most respected university and college presidents in American higher education.

He served as Senior Policy Advisor to Under Secretary Ted Mitchell at the US Department of Education, working on competency-based education, new accreditation pathways, and innovation.

He is the author of Students First: Equity, Access, and Opportunity in Higher Education (2021) and Broken: How Our Social Systems Are Failing Us and How We Can Fix Them (2022).

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Narine Hall

CEO & Co-founder of InSpace

Narine Hall, Ph.D., is the Co-Founder and CEO at InSpace, a groundbreaking video collaboration platform rooted in neuroscience that is revolutionizing online learning with human connection through flexible and delightful experiences that empower students and teachers. Created with research and input from 500+ educators, InSpace gives educators and students agency and the freedom to move around the screen and online environment, join side conversations, enter and leave visually-connected breakout rooms at any time, and collaborate effectively with peers, allowing schools to scale their systems of care and learning opportunities.

Before InSpace, Narine was a professor of data science and created one of the first undergraduate data science programs in the country. She also started the Machine Learning for All (ML4ALL) movement to democratize machine learning for all and was awarded grants from Google and the National Science Foundation (NSF). She has worked at IBM Watson and Wolfram Research among other places.

As a data scientist, Narine is passionate about automating everything, including all her jobs before InSpace, and creating time and space for more important things, like human connection and enriching hands-on experiences through collaboration.

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Michael Horn

Moderator & Education Strategist

Michael B. Horn strives to create a world through his writing, speaking, and work in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their potential. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns; Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools; Choosing College; Goodnight Box, a children’s story; and his latest book, From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child.

Michael is the co-founder and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a nonprofit think tank. He co-hosts the top education podcasts Future U and Class Disrupted. He regularly contributes to Forbes.com and writes the Substack newsletter, The Future of Education. Michael also serves as an executive editor at Education Next, and his work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and NBC.

Michael is a senior strategist at Guild Education, which partners with leading employers and organizations to help offer education and upskilling opportunities to America’s workforce. He serves on the board and advisory boards of a range of education organizations, including Imagine Worldwide, Minerva University, and the LearnLaunch Institute, and is a venture partner at NextGen Venture Partners.

Michael was selected as a 2014 Eisenhower Fellow to study innovation in education in Vietnam and Korea, and Tech&Learning magazine named him to its list of the 100 most important people in the creation and advancement of the use of technology in education. Michael holds a BA in history from Yale University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

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