Elements of Quality Online Education cation

Business Issues in Online Education• Measures of competition (traditional academic measures include inquiry conversions, crossapplications,and yield)IX. POINTS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH OR ACTIVITIESIn this final section, a summary of ideas for future projects or activities that emerged from discussions isprovided. Although each project many have its own set of persons most interested in it, driven by job,experience and the like, an overall special interest group in business issues might be formed to helpprioritize, guide, coordinate and communicate results.1. Case studies. An interviewee, early on, when asked what information she would find most usefulin a study of business issues, remarked that a series of case studies of different types of onlineeducation programs would help establish some baseline data. Others echoed this theme includingthe idea of writing and sharing case studies on best business practices. Sloan-C already does workon effective practices. This might be expanded to include an emphasis on business issues. Hereare examples of potential cases collected: Affinity marketing, B-to-B marketing, outsourcing,publishing as a business paradigm, models for faculty organization and deployment, customerservice issues, the demise of a major effort in online education at a not-for-profit institution.Many more potential topics exist.2. Customer experiences and expectations. Several interviewees expressed interest in obtainingdata that would help prioritize resource allocation among support options. They wish better tounderstand customer expectations with respect to education delivered through online modalities.The term “customers” includes individual learners as well as group buyers of services (such ascompanies or industry groups that contract for education). It was pointed out that someinstitutions already are doing some of this work.3. Business models and processes, cost models, performance metrics. As discussed in section V,models for business planning and costing online programs already exist or are being evolved atvarious institutions. Many interviewees expressed interest in knowledge of others’ methods andbenchmarks; some, but by no means all, interviewees expressed interest (or were optimistic) thatcommon, cross-institutional models and metrics could be established. Beyond the writing of casesabout best business practices, other means might be created to allow those with interest todevelop and communicate models collaboratively, or define and prioritize cross-institutionalperformance metrics (see section VIII above), that could be collected and disseminated forbenchmarking.4. Structural/predictive model of factors correlated with success measures. I stated at the outsetof this report that the business issues I set out to study could be compared cross-institutionallyonly if understood in the context of the individual institutions’ missions and goals. But as crossinstitutionalcosts and performance measures are developed, and data becomes feasible to collect,it becomes possible to test to what extent certain factors correlate with particular outcomes. So amodel could be developed and tested that might further our understanding of how businesspractices and resource allocations correlate with different possible success measures. This projectwould require assistance from individuals adept at building statistical models and collecting data.170