Moore and Kearsley online learning frameworks and theory

Moore & Kearsley

Strategic planning involves defining an organization's vision and a mission, goals, and objectives and perhaps most importantly of all, how to achieve those goals. For a distance learning course, the organizational leadership in its strategic planning needs to be explicit about who the organization is attempting to serve, with what means, how, and why, particularly given the recent proliferation of online venues to take classes. Like with any product, there must be a niche of demand for the specific educational product provided by the institution, and it must differentiate itself in terms of customer segmentation, cost, or the method of delivery. In terms of the last element, when creating the venue, 'the means of production' must be clearly defined, namely the method of technology design and way of teaching the course. Excelling in the area of technology is not enough -- the achieving excellence in the human element of teaching is required, as is competent and caring staff to make the course run smoothly. Finally, the degree to which the different components of the university will be balanced -- for example, in brick-and-mortar institutions with online courses, will there be a 'real world' as well as an online component -- must be answered before proceeding.

Administering a distance education program encompasses everything from deciding what courses to offer, selecting and training support and academic staff members, advising students, admissions, and technologically-related supervision and trouble-shooting. A great deal of administrative energy may be required because most online educational staff members are part-time employees. Adjunct instructors are popular to use amongst distance educational institutions because the schools operate on a low-overhead model. It is cheaper to hire part-time online instructors, without benefits, than full-time online instructors. While part-time instructors are common to most higher educational settings, they are particularly common in distance learning formats, where students may value interaction less and have lower expectations about faculty-student bonding. Still, continued training, quality control, and other measures to ensure the competency of the academic instructors is vital to ensure that the online university is functioning as it should. So is monitoring the equipment that is an integral part of the pedagogical process. For institutions with off-site components, setting up and maintaining learning centers for audio-or video teleconferences and other tasks may be required. Ensuring the support of an accessible library online is critical, and an online library may be deemed to be a necessity for any distance course.

Budgeting and cost-effectiveness is an inevitable concern for a for-profit institution. Economic resources are scarce, and a balance must be struck between money spent on developing new courses, buying new technology, hiring academic staff, paying for student support services, running learning centers, running the administration, and marketing their program. When prioritizing the allocation of money between institutional, departmental, programmatic, and individual courses, power struggles may arise. There is no formula to fall back on when trying to address the real needs and perceived needs of various elements in the organizational hierarchy: hence the challenge for the administrator.

The administrative budget is often the aspect of the online learning environment most tempting to "skimp" upon, given that administrative savings are supposed to be one of the benefits of the online environment, "Good management means extensive planning and this needs market research and other studies which are more difficult to justify to the faculty for the public than creating new courses, hiring more academics staff, or buying new technology." But scheduling constantly overlapping semesters of students and teachers, distributing dates for course registration and tuition payments; completion of the course assignments, examinations, and graduation procedures are required for the university to work as it should, and to maintain a high-quality reputation. Scrutinizing the quality of instruction in a realistic and timely fashion also requires strong administrative procedures and a staff willing to implement them effectively.

Online courses have come under criticism because of the "discrepancy between the literature cited and the actual practice of the institutions surveyed and concluded" and a lack of real educational design and student support. Students complain about the gap between their actual academic experience and that which is advertised in company literature.

Accreditation agencies, however, on the state, regional organization, or federal levels can provide some quality control. "If, for example, in institution has a policy agreed to with its staff that there will be a certain ratio of full-time to part-time teachers hired at that institution, distance education administrators know the limits of the options open to them in planning the human resources needed for the delivery of new courses." However, there has been a legislative lag, for the most part, between legislation and the increased popularity of distance education.