Description
Partnering with Online Program Managers for Distance Education offers fresh insights into the practice, implications, and outcomes of partnerships between higher education institutions and for-profit online program managers (OPMs). As colleges and universities race to build effective, sustainable distance education programs, higher education administrators often rely on third-party OPMs for marketing and student recruitment, student support from orientation to graduation, course design and delivery, and other fee-based services. This edited collection provides a global knowledge base for understanding academic quality, policy, and management in university-OPM partnerships along with actionable strategies and frameworks for selection, evaluation, and improvement. Leaders, administrators, developers, and accreditors of digital distance learning programs in higher education will come away with evidence-based guidance and realistic perspectives into the opportunities and challenges of this fast-emerging resource.
Table of Contents
1. An introduction to online program management (OPM): Evolving approaches by OPM providers and higher education institutions to drive success, innovation, and remain relevant Section One: Lessons learned from long term university-OPM partnerships 2. A Playbook for Success: How codifying ways of working can enable others to onboard and offboard Online Program Managers 3. Building a Successful Partnership: The Case of the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and Noodle Section Two: Navigating conflict and criticism within university–OPM partnerships 4. We don’t work that way. Aligning the ways of working between a Higher Education Institution and an OPM provider 5. The OPM Industry from Divergent Perspectives Section Three: University–OPM case studies specific to learning design 6. Successes and failures of Online Program Management in Asia: A case study of faculty experience of the transition to online learning 7. Locating Academic Quality for Online Learning in Higher Education: Perspectives from Learning Design Section Four: Evaluating the capabilities of a university or OPM learning design function 8. Proposing a competency-based tool for assessing the capability of university and OPM learning designers and learning design teams 9. Early Quality Indicators of Performance tool (EQUIP): A tool to evaluate the work of OPM learning design teams and their outputs Section Five: University–OPM case studies specific to faculty teaching 10. Critical reflections of the university faculty experience in OPM partnerships 11. Unbundling the approach to teaching in online Australian higher education Section Six: Future considerations for OPM–university partnerships including innovation and risks 12. Online transnational education (TNE) delivery: A case study of OPM partnership to drive quality and scale in international market 13. The ‘Make or Buy’ Decision for Universities: Negotiating strategic relationships with OPMs
