Elements of Quality Online Education cation

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Success Versus Value: What Do We Mean by the Business of Online Education?“Try not to be a man of success, but rather one of value” – A. EinsteinI. I. INTRODUCTIONGiven the diminishing resources of colleges and universities and the increasing complexity of thedemands placed on them, those of us who lead online programs and institutions are joining our face-tofacepeers in exploring how to make our schools more like businesses. However, the goal of education asa business, at least as it is widely understood, is not the path to take. We need to understand, to paraphraseClark Kerr, what the uses of online learning are [1]. Therefore, before this paper begins to describe theskills that can make us better educators, I will put forth a sort of manifesto about the business ofeducation.We need first to define business and then explore whether a university meets the definition. MiltonFreidman argues that the primary responsibility of a business is to maximize its profits [2]. In contrast,Derek Bok outlines the social responsibilities of a modern university to make two points: “universities areconcerned with education,” [3] and “like churches, universities experience the constant tensions thatresult from embracing transcendent goals and ideals while having to exist and be of service in a practical,imperfect world” [3]. Henry Hannsmann explores the rationale for exempting nonprofit organizationsfrom corporate income tax on the basis of the public good [4]. Hank Levin has written about theinefficiencies of teaching and learning [5]. Although many have argued eloquently that Freidman’s notionis not a good fit for universities because we are different from businesses, yet we feel compelled to talkabout the “business” of online learning as if to justify our existence.At the 2003Association for Continuing Higher Education annual conference, the central focus of the townmeeting was the “attack” on adult education [6]. Ortman notes that while nonprofit colleges are closing,for-profit education is on the rise [7]. Simultaneously, there is a rise in corporate universities [8], andmore recently we have learned that these entities are applying for accreditation and that fourteen canalready confer degrees [9]. Despite research from economists that consistently demonstrates the value ofhigher education, we sense that non-profits are under the gun to justify our existence and the public’sallocation of resources to our institutions.To paraphrase Langston Hughes, to prevent dreams from being deferred, we need to redefine who we areand what we mean. We are accountable to many more stakeholders than Friedman’s shareholders, and asBok notes, we serve many purposes, thus he uses the term multiversity [3]. The service a business offersis a means to an end, which is profit. For higher education, education is seen as an end in itself. There arelogical reasons for having universities behave like universities rather than corporations.In higher education, what we really mean when we refer to the value of business principles is more in linewith the notion of entrepreneurship, a notion more closely analogous with champion than with business.Because the public entrusts us with its resources and because we are concerned with providing the besteducation to the broadest number of people given the constraints both of our mission and our budgets, it istime for us to explore where we might apply some business principles in creative ways that help uschampion and maximize our mission rather than our profits.When using the business analogy, online educators should note that we have already solved the biggestissue faced by business: collectively, we have created a new way of learning, a new production function.That is the most valuable contribution we have made, and quality should continue to be our central focus.A wide body of literature exists that helps us think of learning in economic terms. Researchers such as184
Success Versus Value: What Do We Mean by the Business of Online Education?Hank Levin have promoted the idea of conceptualizing learning in terms of economic production [10].Educators take a host of inputs and create an output or outputs. For a long time, there was only one way toteach, and the primary driving force on what we could do was really budget constraints—that is, what wecould afford to pay faculty and how small we could afford to make class size. Online learning has enabledus to conceive and deliver learning using a new “business” production process that combines the essentialelements of learning in a different way. Putting aside costs for a moment, educators are more advancedthan we realize because we have the right product from an educational standpoint. We know that there areno significant learning outcome differences between face-to-face and online learning; we have a goodproduct. Now we must figure out how we can convey the importance of that product and sustain itsimpact outside our walls.To continue the analogy, the business principles we want to explore can be thought of as skill sets thatmap to any college’s MBA curriculum. A fundamental part of the MBA curriculum is the admissionprocess, where students opt to study business; the choice implies interest as well as talent, or what wemight call acumen. The history and culture of higher education is based on the notion of conservation andpreservation, which is squarely juxtaposed to the history and culture of business. Educators need tomaintain our values and also cultivate a sense of urgency and a child’s sense of both tenacity and wonder,all traits that make for the successful entrepreneur. Although suggestions for cultivating these talents andvalues are beyond the scope of this paper, I believe that without them, honing business skills will do littleto change the shape of higher education.Before I explore the skills that will help us do more with less, I want to comment briefly on structuringfor purposeful innovation. The first is structure, and I will only mention it in passing because anotherpaper in this book will explore the issue at length. New York University has a structure that facilitatesentrepreneurship; the way the school is set up allows NYU’s School of Continuing and ProfessionalStudies to be the incubator of new ideas within the university. More important, though, the dean embodiesentrepreneurship, and having a leader who “gets it” is more important than any structure. Nonetheless, weneed to rethink how we organize ourselves in ways that allow us to meet students’ needs. Whether youlike the term market or are more comfortable with being student-centered, we should explorerestructuring ourselves in order to respond better to student (market) needs.The downside to innovative structure, however, is the risk of marginalization. We need to ensure thatwhen we restructure ourselves in order to be nimble and innovative, we don’t cut ourselves off from thecore mission of the university. While it may be bureaucratic and inefficient, we need to be tethered to theuniversity in order to maintain our relevance; we must take on the much harder task of pushing ouragenda through the current structure. We should be concerned when colleges, in the name of flexibility,distance themselves from their online programs by creating separate institutions in which to house them.A final word of caution in our journey toward innovation: we must keep the “why” in mind in whateverwe do, and we must also be moral in the “how” of what we do. In these tough times, and particularly ineducation with its focus on outcomes, we must remember that the process by which we do things must bein line with our mission and have inherent value. Corporations are learning that the exclusive focus onoutcomes advocated by Friedman and others is not viable and that doing the wrong thing (for example,polluting or manipulating numbers) in order to increase shareholder value is simply the wrong thing todo—people lose jobs and life savings, and people go to jail. The lesson is that we should not do the wrongthing simply because it will allow us to reach more students. I mention this because I see so muchoutsourcing of what I would view as core competencies (teaching and learning). What do I mean? Anumber of schools offer educational “product”—faculty, content, platform, and so forth—sold by avendor that simply rebranded for that particular school’s audience. This trend should worry us deeply.185
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Elements of Quality Online Educatio
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IntroductionINTRODUCTIONFrank Mayad
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Introductionworkshops and publicati
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How can Online Pedagogy Improveon F
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A Constructivist Model for Thinking
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Engagement in Online Learning Commu
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