January 2009
A newsletter for higher education executives to ensure financial and strategic success in their online learning initiatives.
Shrinking endowments. Tightening student loan funding. Declining subsidies. These are the realities of higher education in the coming years. Administrators are desperately seeking solutions for new sources of revenue with lower overhead costs. Online learning could be the answer for many institutions, but it’s not the silver bullet. Decisions about which programs to offer, what to charge, how to market, how to scale the curriculum, and how to ensure high retention become critical when resources are precious. The articles in this e-newsletter are designed to answer these and other questions that are being asked in board rooms and faculty meetings across the country.
Dr. Gloria Pickar
Dr. Pickar is the President and Chief Academic Officer of Compass Knowledge Group. With over 35 years of higher education experience, Dr. Pickar is a former college dean and distinguished author of a bestselling textbook in nursing.
- Theme #1 – The Business Side of Online Learning - Gloria Pickar, Ed.D.
Article #2 of a twelve-part series.
Good Ideas Are Not Enough
In our last newsletter, I summarized the development of a new supply chain in the online education industry, one that is quite different in structure and cost than that of traditional residential education.
In this volume, I will discuss the very first link in that supply chain, namely "Market Feasibility and Institutional Readiness Assessment."
To say that ideas abound in higher education would be cliché, but they do. Every president, provost, dean, and faculty member has an idea of what programs would work in the marketplace. But most of our ideas are hunches, what we heard at a conference, observations of what worked for a competitor, or based upon what a student said in a class of ours. If we approached our academic research in such a manner, we would certainly fail, and the same is true for the development and marketing of our good ideas. Everything we have been taught as academicians suggests we must take an evidence-based approach.
Looking internally we must ask: even if we do have a great idea, is our organization capable of exploiting it in the marketplace? One might assume so, given most universities’ tremendous investment in infrastructure, admissions, and technology. But in online markets, these functions are not easily assumed by traditional personnel or systems. More importantly, there are some extremely efficient and effective business processes being used by your competition to support programs in their institutions. Remember, this is a different supply chain, and it takes different talents and processes.
Compass Knowledge has developed an evidence-based, predictive model that creates a clear picture of the marketplace for any potential offering. We take an equally systematic approach to assessing an institution’s capabilities. A summary of our internal model can be found below. It provides a road map of the "points of interest" that a university should visit on this journey to the best online markets and institutional assessment. To explain each line item would take hours of time and pages of website. But this summary is a good start in understanding the level of detail that organizations must pay attention to in dealing with the complexity of this increasingly competitive industry.
If you have any thoughts or questions on this subject, please email me at gpickar@compassknowledge.com. In our next issue, we will assess how organizations finance their good ideas for online programming, from bringing them to market to minting new graduates.
Dr. Fredrick R. Snow
Dr. Snow has served in academia as university President, Vice President, Dean, and Tenured Faculty. He was the Founding Dean of the Online
Graduate Programs of Norwich University. These programs are often cited as industry examples of academic rigor, financial success, retention,
and effective marketing.
- Theme #2 – What Should You Expect out of Online Programs? – Fredrick R. Snow, Ph.D.
Article #2 in a twelve-part series
Building a National Reputation
In our last newsletter, I suggested that the financial benefits of online learning were dwarfed by the potential strategic benefits, and then I laid out the notion of how online learning prepares us to deal with a generation that assimilates information in a very different way than our generation.
Today’s article looks at how online learning can deliver extraordinary academic outcomes. Few of us would argue with the statement that strong academics are the most important part of each of our organization’s reputation and future competitiveness. However, few of us would suspect that online learning could be a path to those extraordinary academic outcomes. Academicians seem to have a natural bias against the academic aspects of online learning, no matter how necessary they consider online learning to be to their competitiveness.
But the literature grows richer everyday with evidence of strong academic performance in online programs, performance that many times exceeds face-to-face. Anecdotally, let me share a personal experience with you that has cemented in my mind the power of online pedagogy. In 2001, we developed an online MBA program at Norwich University. We approached the project with the intention of "orchestrating" strong academic outcomes. We worked hard to develop a common pedagogical template to use in all six seminars of this degree. We carefully structured the order in which the material was presented, and we sewed it all together with a running "case study" of a company we contracted with to entertain our students’ questions and work with their recommendations. We made each student "turn and face their workplace" in each subject area, providing recommendations to their employers and learning in a real-world setting. And we absolutely demanded that they write well.
The results? For quite a few years, our average student score on the ETS National Field Test exam was in the top 5% of the nation. And every other program tested at that time was a face-to-face program.
The reasons? I would venture to say that few, if any, of the other programs had pedagogical planning of any sort. I would also venture to say that their professors had never gotten together to dovetail their instruction. I would also venture to say that none of those professors had ever had any pedagogical training. As professors, we are all well trained in the principles of our field, but not necessarily in the principles of teaching and learning.
Online learning brings with it the opportunity to rethink how we deliver education, not only technologically but also academically. Demand a lot out of the process, and your academic outcomes will be extraordinary as well.
If you have any comments or questions, please contact me at fsnow@compassknowledge.com.
Dr. Cynthia Wheatley
Dr. Wheatley is the Vice President for Academic Partnerships with Compass Knowledge Group. She has 15 years’ experience as both a faculty member and an organizational consultant. She has presided over 20 online program launches and has expertise in instructional design and change management.
- Theme #3 – Foundational and Organizational Issues in Implementing Successful Online Education - Cynthia Wheatley, Ph.D.
Article #2 of a twelve-part series
Addressing Faculty Concerns
In our last article, I discussed the importance of addressing faculty concerns about academic quality in online learning. It is the most common impediment to timely implementation of good online programs. In today’s article, I will discuss other common faculty concerns. Alleviating these concerns will work wonders in achieving buy in and clearing the way for a successful launch.
I don’t know how to build an online course and I don’t want to learn. This is a valid concern for faculty members who have never worked in the online environment. Many institutions leave it up to the instructor to build his/her course in whichever platform has been chosen by the institution (Blackboard, Angel Learning, eCollege, etc.). You would never ask the faculty to build their own classrooms on campus, so why expect that they can build their own virtual classrooms? The most successful online programs provide instructional design and technology support for the faculty. Instructional designers are specially trained in online pedagogy and can work collaboratively with the course instructor throughout the development process to ensure that the course is designed to their specifications.
How much time will be required to interact with students in a meaningful way? This is the one we hear most often from faculty: "I already have a full-time job and I know that online courses require more time than face-to-face courses do." We have three suggestions for responding to this concern. 1) Provide the students with help desk support to respond to questions about technology or administrative matters. This will alleviate 50% of the emails and phone calls instructors receive. 2) Put structure around the way that students will interact with their instructor online. Use message boards and virtual office hours to curtail the flow of emails and set appropriate expectations of when the instructor will respond to them. 3) If a course has more than 20-25 students, provide a facilitator or qualified teaching assistant who can help respond to student inquiries, monitor online discussions, and grade assignments.
These two issues do not seem strategic to administrators, and they are often pushed off as workload complaints. Providing adequate student and faculty support is the secret to successful retention in online learning.
- Theme #4 – Online Learning Research in 2008
2008 was a windfall year for research in online learning. The Babson Survey Research Group and Sloan Consortium released their annual report in November called Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008. December brought us the National Center for Education Statistics’ report on their distance education survey entitled Distance Education at Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions: 2006-2007. For those of us who devour research data, both reports are worth careful study. For those of us who are time-constrained, we have pulled out some noteworthy trends.
- Online enrollments continue to outpace on campus enrollments at an astounding pace: 12.9% versus 1.2%.
- Nearly 4 million students were taking at least one online course-representing 21.9% of all higher education enrollments.
- Online growth is the only area of optimism among higher education administrators.
- Online learning pervades all types of institutions and all discipline areas. It’s no longer limited to continuing education divisions or business programs.
- Sixty-one percent of all 2- and 4-year degree-granting institutions reported offering fully online courses.
- Twenty percent of all institutions offering online courses in 2007 were newcomers.
- Demand for flexible schedules and access to education by students is the number one reason institutions cite for offering online courses or programs.