Elements of Quality Online Education cation

Business Issues in Online Educationattempting to attract new markets, and individual programs championed by one or two persons in isolatedacademic departments to whole schools or campuses charged with integrating and expanding onlineeducation.Overall, the more than 50 people interviewed were deans, provosts, controllers, data managers, marketers,faculty directors and instructors, instructional designers, strategic planners, student services directors,support staff, faculty, administrative champions, visionaries, and budget directors. This helped present aview of the business of online education as a multifaceted integrative activity and a deep understanding ofmotivations and expectations.Interviews were general and wide-ranging. These interviews did not attempt to define online education ina specific way (e.g. blended, asynchronous, etc.). Instead interviews were geared toward allowing eachinstitution talk about what they are doing online as a broadly defined teaching and learning modality.Therefore, business issues that might be unique to certain modalities were not segmented. Also,discussions did not focus on educational quality, but, occasionally, there was some overlapping.One key challenge in writing this report was deciding what level of granularity to use in analyzing thebroad data collected. At what level of organization does it make sense to compare and contrast businesspractices? This is an “apples to oranges” question. Can one usefully compare the business model of arelatively small support organization driving online education at a public research-extensive university toone for a large school of continuing studies that has control of its own degrees and faculty? Can onecompare the business growth strategy for an online graduate degree coming out of an academicdepartment to one for an entire institution focused on providing education for employees of the financialservices industry?The answer proposed is that comparisons among business practices at different institutions’ onlineinitiatives are most valid when they are put in the context of each institution’s comprehensive educationalorganization as defined earlier.IV. WHAT DRIVES ONLINE EDUCATION?Each institution was asked what motivates the growth of online education. Some interviewees had longerperspectives than others. Overall, it became clear when interviewing multiple people from different partsof the same institution that no one person had the full answer and that people’s professional motivationswere bound up with the mission and goals of the particular units they worked in.The organization structures for planning, developing and delivering online education varied considerablyfrom institution to institution. Rarely were all the necessary pieces and resources brought together as asingle organizational entity, with unanimity of goals and reward structures. A useful way to think of eachof these online education organizations is as a collection of nodes in a network. Together, these nodes actas a coalition. Some of the nodes might be units charged with driving the growth of online education, andthese might occur within organizations (such as schools of professional studies) or support organizations(such as an information technology support arm). Sometimes there are multiple nodes within the sameinstitution driving online education. Other nodes might control the resources necessary to deliver onlinelearning, including faculty resources and student and infrastructure support. Some nodes, usually thetraditional academic departments, control the regulation of courses and degrees. Some nodes might reportup a common organizational channel (such as to provost’s office, or a school of professional studies), butusually multiple channels are involved, each concerned with their own specific goals and rewards, even if154