Elements of Quality Online Education cation

Business Issues in Online Educationconnected by a common institutional mission. Finally, there are some nodes, external to the day-to-dayoperations of an institution, which nevertheless must be taken into account. For example, boards oftrustees at private and public institutions, and various state boards at public institutions, may play keyroles.For these reasons, it is important to examine all the nodes at any particular institution when trying tounderstand what drives online education. Plus, one cannot easily separate drivers from organizationstructures.A. Institutional MissionTo understand what drives online learning, one can start by examining an institution’s mission. As a firstfilter we can use the Carnegie classification to get an objective categorization of mission. As noted, of theeleven institutions studied, three are Doctoral/Research Extensive - public, one is Doctoral/ResearchExtensive - private, one is Doctoral/Research Extensive - private, two are Doctoral/Research Intensive -public, three are Master’s College and University I - public, and one is an Associate’s College - private.An institution’s Carnegie classification is relevant to understanding online education because it ties intoan institution’s overall mission, which typically comes into play as a force that affects at least some of thenodes on an educational organization. Two of the institutions studied illuminate this point.For instance, at one of the public doctoral/research-extensive universities, the unit charged withdeveloping online education is referred to as a separate campus and is viewed that way by other parts ofthe state system. One might conclude that the Carnegie classification of the university as a whole wouldbe irrelevant to the models and strategies of that “campus.” However, from a practical standpoint, itworks with traditional academic units at the university to gain permission to offer degrees and courses andto obtain faculty to teach them.On the other hand, at the private doctoral/research-extensive institution studied, its school of continuingand professional studies contains all the nodes necessary for an educational organization providing anonline learning environment. Although the school does have some restrictions on degrees it can regulate(e.g. it can not offer degrees similar to those at the other traditional academic schools of the university), itdoes have enough control of degrees and other resources (including ability to hire its own faculty) toconsider it as an educational organization in its own right. It does not have to seek approval frominstitutional regulatory bodies and garner resources from academic departments, which have goals moreclosely related to institutional mission (e.g. gaining research grants, traditional academic scholarship,rankings of professional schools, etc).Institutions where all the nodes of an online initiative fall into a proper subset of the institution (such asthe school of continuing and professional studies mentioned above), typically spread online educationefforts faster and farther than at other doctoral/research-extensive institutions where online educationdepends on the cooperation of nodes lying within the more mainstream parts of the institution.Repeatedly, interviewees responsible for growing online learning at institutions relying on suchmainstreamed factors talked about the challenges of garnering faculty attention, approval and resources.155