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Focus
Distance Ed and Institutional Performance
7/20/2006
Scenario #1—Capacity challenges. Two-and four-year public institutions in high-growth states and communities often face capacity-of-access challenges and related program accountability and learning accountability obligations. Some institutions react as though they are being forced to:
- Cap enrollments among existing and would-be students in high-enrollment, required and elective general education and developmental courses, and also in required courses in high-demand majors. Such courses are “common courses” taught at most institutions around content and learning objectives that vary little from institution to institution.
- Turn away qualified applicants to nursing, teacher education, and other professional and workforce programs aimed at producing the graduates most needed for the societal and economic advancement of states and communities.
Scenario #2—Program and learning accountability. Two-and four-year public institutions in a number of states and communities face learning accountability and program accountability obligations. For example, some are being asked to:
- Improve the college-going rate among high school graduates
- Improve retention rates
- Increase the proportion of degree-holders in the citizenry
- Help students who stopped short of a degree complete their degrees
- Increase the supply of graduates in programs aimed at workforce and economic development goals—nurses, teachers, science and technology professionals, and so on
Scenario #3—Countering declining enrollment; boosting profitable enrollment. A number of private and public institutions are facing declining enrollments and/or are looking for innovative ways to increase “profitable” enrollments in high-demand niche markets in order to:
- Survive/grow as a tuition-dependent, private institution
- Retain—or increase—the current level of FTE-based public funding
- Increase out-of-state or other profitable tuition revenues as a public institution
Flex Strategy for eLearning
My inaugural column in these pages (“Academic Computing: Order the Change, and Change the Order,” November 2004) describes “flex program and service redesign” and “common course redesign” strategies and how they can be used to address six “institutional performance obligations: convenience of access, capacity for access, affordability of access, expense accountability, program accountability, and learning accountability.” The flex strategy— when applied to services, and selectively to common courses and high-demand programs—increases (obviously) convenience of access and, with it, student options and satisfaction. It can reduce or eliminate the need for new classroom capital expenses and reduce the capacity strain on the existing classroom plant, thereby improving the capacity for access and the unit-cost basis for expense accountability. It also can improve: a) the affordability of access (for students) by eliminating or reducing any on-campus living expenses and travel expenses, and b) program accountability, because much of the most pressing program demand and access need is from flex students who can’t or won’t participate in traditional instruction.
When combined with the flex program strategy, the common course redesign strategy can measurably improve learning, thus, learning accountability, while simultaneously increasing the faculty dimension of capacity (student-toinstructor ratios), thereby directly reducing per-enrollment costs to improve expense accountability and the affordability of access. So, all six of the above institutional performance obligations can be addressed by the flex program and service redesign strategy, with reinforcing help from the common course redesign strategy. A number of institutions are doing just this.
Recommended Reading
- CT Industry
- CT Solutions
- Cut to the Core
- DAM-ing the Digital Flood
- Get The Word Out
The market’s teeming with products to help you alert your campus community on any number of fronts. Now you just have to pick the right ones and get everyone signed up.
- Thwarting the Copycats
New tools are helping colleges and universities counter burgeoning paper mill sites, pervasive internet content, and persistent student ingenuity.
