1

PARTNERING WITH AN ONLINE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT PROVIDER TO

IMPLEMENT AN ONLINE MBA PROGRAM: A CASE STUDY

A thesis presented

by

Scott Springer

to

The School of Education

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Education

In the field of

Education

College of Professional Studies

Northeastern University

Boston, Massachusetts

May 2016

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Abstract

Colleges and universities continue to add online programs. One method a higher

education institution may launch an online program is through a partnership with an online

program management (OPM) provider, a third-party company that provides services such as

market/lead generation, enrollment management, student services, and course development. This

qualitative case study explored how a private university in the Western United States partnered

with an OPM provider to launch an online MBA program. Data was collected through interviews

with eight individuals from the university who had direct experience of the partnership with the

OPM provider. Additional data was collected from documents pertaining to the online MBA

program and to the OPM provider. The data revealed four themes pertaining to the partnership:

(a) Decision Making, (b) Aligning Expectations (between the university and the OPM provider),

(c), Collaboration (among university faculty and instructional designers from the OPM provider),

and (d) Accountability. This research is significant because it sheds light on the nature of OPM

provider/university partnerships in the development and administration of online programs. The

knowledge gained from this study is expected to inform college and university administrators

who plan to launch one or more online programs at their respective institutions. Several

recommendations for practice are provided.

Keywords: online program, online program management provider, OPM provider, MBA,

partnership, vendor

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Dedication

I dedicate this thesis to my wife, Ann, who has served as a cheerleader and a voice of

reason through many hours of research, writing, and revising. I also dedicate it to our three

fantastic daughters, whose prayers and support carried not only me through my studies but also

Ann through hers, as she and I both completed graduate degrees at the same time.

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Acknowledgements

I owe sincere gratitude to several people for their assistance and support. First, I could

not have completed this thesis without the guidance of my doctoral research chair, Dr. Shannon

Alpert, who always brought out the best in me and steered me in the right direction. I also

express appreciation to Dr. Tova Sanders and Dr. Dax Jacobson for serving on my doctoral

defense committee and providing valuable feedback. Finally, I extend my gratitude to the

participants of this study who gave of their time and their insights to help me better understand

this topic. Without them, this research never would have happened.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 2

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 3

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ 5

Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 8

Context and Background............................................................................................................. 8

Statement of the Problem ............................................................................................................ 9

Rationale and Significance ....................................................................................................... 12

Research Question .................................................................................................................... 13

Definition of Key Terminology ................................................................................................ 13

Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 14

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 17

Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 18

Outsourcing in Higher Education ............................................................................................. 19

Barriers to Online Program Implementation............................................................................. 24

Concerns about Online Education ........................................................................................ 25

Cost Factors .......................................................................................................................... 26

Technological Issues ............................................................................................................. 27

Retention of Online Students ................................................................................................ 29

Implications........................................................................................................................... 31

Decisions Regarding Online Program Implementation ............................................................ 32

Distance Education Offerings ............................................................................................... 33

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Faculty Considerations and Incentives ................................................................................. 35

Student Considerations ......................................................................................................... 38

Resources and External Support ........................................................................................... 38

Costs and Lack of Funding ................................................................................................... 40

Administrative Characteristics and Considerations .............................................................. 41

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 42

Chapter 3: Research Design .......................................................................................................... 44

Research Approach ................................................................................................................... 44

Participants and Access............................................................................................................. 47

The Participants ........................................................................................................................ 48

The Data Collection Process ..................................................................................................... 50

Data Storage .............................................................................................................................. 53

Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 54

Trustworthiness and Verification .............................................................................................. 55

Protection of Human Subjects .................................................................................................. 55

Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 58

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 59

Chapter 4: Findings and Analysis ................................................................................................. 60

Chronology of the Program ...................................................................................................... 60

Findings from the Study............................................................................................................ 61

Theme 1: Decision Making ................................................................................................... 62

Theme 2: Aligning Expectations .......................................................................................... 74

Theme 3: Collaboration ........................................................................................................ 80

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Theme 4: Accountability....................................................................................................... 84

In Reflection.............................................................................................................................. 92

Looking Ahead...................................................................................................................... 92

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 94

Chapter 5: Discussion and Recommendations for Practice .......................................................... 95

Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 95

Theoretical Propositions ........................................................................................................... 98

Theme 1: Decision Making ..................................................................................................... 100

Theme 2: Aligning Expectations ............................................................................................ 102

Theme 3: Collaboration .......................................................................................................... 105

Theme 4: Accountability......................................................................................................... 107

Recommendations for Practice ............................................................................................... 109

Recommendations for Future Research .................................................................................. 112

Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 113

References ................................................................................................................................... 116

Appendix A: Interview Protocol and Questions ......................................................................... 130

Appendix B: Informed Consent Document ................................................................................ 133

Appendix C: Expectations of the Partnership ............................................................................. 138

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Partnering With an Online Program Management Provider to Implement an Online MBA

Program: A Case Study

Chapter 1: Introduction

The purpose of this case study was to explore how a university partners with an online

program management (OPM) provider, also referred to as a vendor or an enabler, to conceive,

design, market, launch, and administer an online master of business administration (MBA)

program. The knowledge gained from this study was expected to inform college and university

administrators who plan to launch one or more online programs at their respective institutions by

providing additional information about the nature of a partnership with an OPM provider. The

case study methodology was used for this research and relied on multiple means of data

gathering, including semi-structured interviews and analysis of documents to convey the

perspective of the university in a university/OPM provider partnership.

This chapter begins with a brief overview of the growth of online learning in higher

education. The rationale and significance of the study is explained next, followed by a statement

of the research problem, the research questions, and definitions of key terms. The theoretical

framework that provided the lens through which this study was conducted, the resource-based

theory of strategic alliances, is discussed at the conclusion of this chapter.

Context and Background

Face-to-face instruction remains, at least for now, the primary method of teaching at the

higher education level. But this is changing. Online enrollments in higher education are growing

at a faster rate than traditional enrollments (Gibson & Dunning, 2012). The growth of online

education in the United States has been rapid, exploding throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In

2009, 30 percent of adult undergraduate courses and 27 percent of adult graduate courses were

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facilitated online, amounting to 2.14 million students enrolled in online courses, a 20 percent

increase over 2008 (Hoskins, 2011). By 2009, as many as 300,000 higher education instructors

taught online, with up to 100,000 of these being adjunct (Mayadas, Bourne, & Bacsich, 2009).

Institutions continue to add fully online and blended (hybrid) courses to meet the demand for

online education (Hoskins, 2011). A major reason for the surge in online enrollment is the

increase in adult students enrolled in higher education. Roughly 50 percent of American college

students are fully employed or going back to school after having first entered the workforce

(Hiltz & Turoff, 2005). These student demographics are increasingly evident at public, four-year

institutions and private, non-profit, four-year institutions, the two higher education settings

witnessing the largest growth in online enrollment (Allen & Seaman, 2015).

The online education rate of growth is slowing somewhat, however, after experiencing

tremendous increases for two decades. The number of students in 2014 who took at least one

online course rose just 3.7 percent over 2013, the slowest year-to-year growth in a decade. Even

still, online education accounted for three-quarters of the growth in higher education in 2014

(Allen & Seaman, 2015). As online learning continues to take root within the higher education

system, university and college administrators are increasingly choosing to develop and

implement online programs to keep up with the growing demand.

Statement of the Problem

As the statistics illustrate, online education is a major component of the present and

future of higher education instruction. University administrators are increasingly faced with

determining what role online learning should play in the educational missions of their

institutions. Once the decision is made to add an online program to the academic offerings of a

college or university, the administrators of that institution must decide how the logistics of the

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implementation will be carried out. One option is to rely on internal resources and personnel,

asking full-time and part-time faculty and staff to carry out the steps involved and to launch the

program. Many university administrators determine this option is unrealistic due to the

substantial investment required (Hillman & Corkery, 2010). A second option is to contract with a

third-party company that specializes in the development and implementation of online programs.

Officially called online program management providers but often referred to as vendors or

enablers, these for-profit companies typically invest some or all of the necessary capital up front

to create the infrastructure for an online program, and then provide various services related to

online program management for the partnering college or university in exchange for a cut of the

revenue generated from the program (Hillman & Corkery, 2010; Hoffman, 2012; Russell, 2010).

More than 30 companies have emerged in the past two decades that offer these services. Some of

these OPM providers require as much as 60 percent of the generated tuition of the online

programs they help develop with their partnering institutions (Levine, Bassett, & Garrett, 2012).

The higher education consulting company Eduventures categorized the existing OPM

providers into three broad groups (Lederman, 2015): (a) the Big Five, (b) the Middle Market, and

(c) the Niche Players. The Big Five are composed of 2U, a Landover, MD, company that

employs the use of live online courses to create the sense of a class with no “back row” students

(2U.com, n.d.); Academic Partnerships, based in Dallas, TX, which promotes a “university-

centric model” of collaboration with their partnering institutions (academicpartnerships.com,

n.d.); Bisk, a Tampa, FL, company with a business model based on “6 principles of excellence”

that lead to student success (bisk.com, n.d.); Pearson Embanet, an early entrant into the OPM

provider industry that was purchased by academic publishing giant Pearson in 2012; and Wiley

Education Services, an arm of the academic publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc., with corporate

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headquarters in Hoboken, NJ. The Middle Market includes 20 companies, most of which are

based in the United States, and all of which offer some variation of the same services provided

by the Big Five. The five companies that comprise the category of Niche Players specialize in a

particular area of online program management such as healthcare (Ledermen, 2015).

In a typical partnership, an OPM provider offers help in four core service areas:

market/lead generation, enrollment management, student services, and course development and

delivery (Levine et al., 2012). The OPM provider typically recruits students to the online

program, provides training and support to faculty and students, provides technological expertise,

offers academic advising services to the students until graduation, and collaborates with the

faculty from the university or college to convert on-campus courses to the online environment

(Levine et al., 2012). The partnership may also include assistance from the vendor in the form of

developing marketing strategies to promote the growth of the online program and further the

university’s brand and securing regulatory approvals related to online education (Levine et al.,

2012).

Critics of partnerships between universities and OPM providers note that the vendors

often saddle the institutions with contracts that extend for up to a decade, and that these

companies push their partnering institutions into preferred models of online program

development rather than tailoring their processes to match the universities’ missions (Levine et

al., 2012). In response to these criticisms and to stand out from among the competition, some

OPM providers allow universities greater ability to retain some services internally, in an a la

carte model. Other OPM providers drop the requirement of a long-term contract in favor of a

much shorter time commitment, or are moving to a fee-for-service arrangement (Levine et al.,

2012).

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Rationale and Significance

As it is expected that online course enrollment will continue to outpace on-campus

enrollment (Allen & Seaman, 2015), universities and colleges will develop additional online

programs to meet this demand. Universities that choose to partner with OPM providers to help

launch these programs need additional information about what to expect in the relationship in

which they are about to enter, especially given the long-term nature of some of these contractual

relationships. The primary rationale for this study was to provide information for college and

university administrators about the nature of these partnerships with OPM providers. It is

anticipated that the findings from this study will assist a college or university with selecting an

OPM provider and managing the partnership with that provider. The challenges and barriers

overcome by the university in this study provide a model for other institutions to follow.

A second rationale for this study was to add to the body of knowledge in the literature

regarding the partnership between an OPM provider and a university in the launch, development,

and administration of an online program in higher education. Many empirical studies have

identified the primary challenges and barriers of implementing online higher education courses

including faculty resistance (Wiesenberg & Stacey, 2005), effective course design (Kanuka,

Rourke, & Laflamme, 2006), the lack of a sense of community amongst the online students

(Wegmann & McCauley, 2009), and ongoing faculty training in online instruction (Mayne &

Qiang, 2011). Other literature have researched online program implementation from a broader

view, looking at the various steps holistically and focusing on the entire implementation process

(i.e. Christofferson, Christensen, LeBlanc, & Bunch, 2012; Combe, 2005; McClure & Woolum,

2006; Warschauer, 1998). Increasingly, online program implementation is the subject of

dissertation research (i.e. Donnelly, 2014; Macy, 2006; Saul, 2012). Likewise, a growing number

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of articles in the literature analyze outsourcing within higher education, including the

outsourcing of functions related to online program implementation (Conradson, 2014; Phipps &

Merisotis, 2005; Quigley & Pereira, 2011; Ross, 2008). What is not investigated in the literature,

however, is the partnership between a university and an OPM provider in an online program

implementation. This study seeks to add additional knowledge on that topic.

Research Question

The purpose of this study was to explore how a university partnered with an OPM

provider to help plan, develop, launch, and administer its online MBA program. As the focus of

the study was on the partnership between the university and the OPM provider, the primary

research question was this: How does a university partner with an online program management

provider to design, launch, and administer an online MBA program?

Definition of Key Terminology

To understand the context of online and distance education, several definitions of key

terms must be made:

A “traditional” university: The model of a university featuring a residential student body

from which the majority of the students are drawn from a geographical service area is a

“traditional” university (Meyer, 2009). The traditional model also features full-time faculty

members, a physical library, nonprofit financial status, and “an orientation to evaluation that

stresses inputs (such as incoming student characteristics, library holdings, and faculty-student

ratios) rather than outputs (such as student learning)” (Meyer, 2009, pp. 11-12).

Distance education: Distance education encapsulates all forms of education delivered

outside of the traditional classroom including correspondence courses, physical mail, audio

recordings, video recordings, synchronous and asynchronous group communications,

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multimedia, immersive simulations, asynchronous learning networks, and the Internet (Hiltz &

Turoff, 2005).

An online course: Online education is one component of distance education. An online

course features most, if not all, of the instruction delivered online. Bejerano (2008) gave three

distinguishing characteristics of an online course: (a) it is delivered using computer-mediated

interaction, (b) it is independent of a location, and (c) it is time flexible, delivered either through

synchronous or asynchronous means.

An online program management provider: Often referred to as an enabler or a vendor, an

online program management provider typically invests the capital up front to create the

infrastructure needed to create an online program and then provides help in four core service

areas: market/lead generation, enrollment management, student services, and course

development and delivery (Levine et al., 2012).

Theoretical Framework

Choosing the right theoretical framework for a case study is critical because it provides

new insights into the phenomenon of study by giving broader understanding to the topic (Anfara

& Mertz, 2006). However, because a case study entails a small sample size, statistical

generalizations cannot be made from the research. Rather, analytic generalizations—the lessons

learned from the case study—become the focus of the research (Yin, 2014). The theoretical

framework upon which the study is based forms the foundation upon which analytic

generalizations can occur (Yin, 2014).

The theoretical framework for this study was the resource-based theory of strategic

alliances from Das and Teng (2000), a theory that expands upon the resource-based view of the

firm (i.e. Barney, 1991; Miller & Shamsie, 1996; Peteraf, 1993; Wernerfelt, 1984) by explaining

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the role that an organization’s resources play in the formation of a strategic alliance. The theory

argues that two organizations combine their resources in a strategic alliance for the purpose of

adding value to both partners. Defining a partnership between a university and an OPM provider

as a strategic alliance is appropriate because strategic alliances are “voluntary cooperative inter-

firm agreements aimed at achieving competitive advantage for the partners” (Das & Teng, 2000,

p. 33).

The resource-based theory of strategic alliances covers four factors about an alliance: (a)

Rationale, (b) Formation, (c) Structural Preference, and (d) Assessment (Das & Teng, 2000).

(Das & Teng, 2000). The theory is applicable to this study because these four elements address

the full spectrum of the partnership between a university and an OPM provider, from the initial

discussions between the two organizations to the ongoing assessment of the partnership

arrangement.

Two reasons that organizations form a strategic alliance emerge in the first factor of the

theory, the rationale behind the strategic alliance. These two areas are to obtain resources and

know-how possessed by the partnering organization, or to retain resources and know-how in

one’s own organization (Kogut, 1989). Regardless of the rationale for entering the alliance,

sufficient value must be realized by the partnering organizations to join forces rather than to

enter the market alone (Das & Teng, 2000).

The second element of the resource-based theory of strategic alliances deals with the

formation of the alliance. According to the theory, the likelihood of the formation of the alliance

is directly correlated to the possession of resources deemed critical by the partnering

organizations (Das & Teng, 2000). The attractiveness of an organization’s resources depends on

how mobile, imitable, and substitutable they are. If resources can be easily moved from one

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organization to another (mobility), easily copied and generated by others (imitability), or easily

substituted for like resources (substitutability), the strategic alliance is unlikely to occur (Das &

Teng, 2000). Likewise, if one organization only offers financial capital without other resources, a

different arrangement other than a strategic alliance will take place (Das & Teng, 2000).

An important factor in a strategic alliance is the structure of the partnership, the third

element of the theory. Four structural options exist: (a) joint ventures, (b) minority equity

alliances, (c) bilateral contract-based alliances, and (d) unilateral contract-based alliances (Das &

Teng, 2000). The structure of a given alliance is determined by the resource types each partner

offers. Miller and Shamsie (1996) classified all resources broadly into two categories: property-

based resources (those legally owned by an organization such as patents, contracts, physical

resources, and human resources) and knowledge-based resources (the organization’s know-how

and skill set including technological resources, management, and organizational culture). A

bilateral contract-based alliance most closely resembles that of the university/OPM provider

partnership analyzed in this study because it requires both parties to work together closely and

constantly throughout the duration of the alliance (Mowery, Oxley, & Silverman, 1996).

The fourth and final element of the resource-based theory of strategic alliances is the

assessment of the alliance’s performance. This is achieved by evaluating the alignment of the

resources brought by each partner into the arrangement (Das & Teng, 2000). Supplementary

resource alignment occurs when the resources contributed by the partnering organizations are

similar in nature. Complementary resource alignment occurs when the contributed resources by

both partners are dissimilar in nature; thus, eliminating resource redundancy. Das and Teng

(2000) argued that both supplementary and complementary alignments are positively correlated

to alliance performance, assuming the contributed resources are well utilized in the alliance, the

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resources contributed by both parties become collective strengths for the partnerships, and inter-

organization conflicts are minimized.

What sets the resource-based theory of strategic alliances apart from other scholarly

theories and models of alliances is that it recognizes that an organization enters a strategic

alliance primarily to gain access to the resources of the other organization (Das & Teng, 2000).

Some research on a resource-based view of strategic alliances has appeared in the literature (i.e.

Blodgett, 1991; Eisenhardt & Schoonhoven, 1996; Kogut, 1989; Lyles & Salk, 1997) but Das

and Teng (2000) produced a more general resource-based theory of strategic alliances with

application to multiple industries. The heavily cited 2000 article upon which the theory is based

was just one of several articles the authors co-wrote on the topic of strategic alliances (Das &

Teng, 1998; 1999; 2001).

Conclusion

This chapter provided a high-level review of the subject of online education in higher

education and established the rationale and significance of the study. Also discussed were the

research problem, the research question, and the theoretical framework. The following chapter

will review the literature about online program implementation and outsourcing in higher

education.

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Chapter 2: Literature Review

This literature review summarizes and analyzes the literature surrounding online program

implementation at the higher education level. The inclusion of the literature review in this

doctoral thesis proposal supported the study topic of how a university partnered with an OPM

provider to conceive, design, market, launch, and administer an online MBA program.

Universities are increasingly adding online programs as a means of reaching underserved

student populations, increasing institutional enrollments, offering learning opportunities for

students who prefer the e-learning modality, and lowering educational costs (Hummer, Sims,

Wooditch, & Salley, 2010). Online learning is also scalable, allowing programs to quickly grow

in size to meet enrollment without worrying about the physical constraints of buildings or space

(Bartley & Golek, 2004). Online students enjoy the control the online environment offers to them

because they are able to complete their assignments at various times per day, especially in an

asynchronous learning model (Bartley & Golek, 2004). This flexibility often leads to cost

savings for students, as well. Even when tuition and fees are equivalent for online courses,

students save money by not incurring transportation costs in traveling to class while other

students avoid expenses related to room and board (Christofferson et al., 2012). In addition,

some students save on expenses by avoiding child care expenses they would normally incur by

attending class in person.

University administrators who decide to add online programs must determine whether to

develop the program internally using existing resources and personnel or to rely on the help of an

OPM provider that specializes in the launch and implementation of online programs (Hillman &

Corkery, 2010; Hoffman, 2012; Russell, 2010). The rationale for this study was to add to the

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literature on online program implementation by investigating the relationship between an OPM

provider and a university in the launch and development of an MBA online program.

The results of this study must be understood in context of what has already been studied

and written regarding online program implementation. The literature review in this chapter

provides that context. Literature in three main areas is reviewed in this chapter: (a) the role of

outsourcing in higher education, (b) common barriers to online program implementation, and (c)

decisions administrators must consider when implementing online programs. The literature

review concludes with a discussion about the implications and recommendations for practice.

Outsourcing in Higher Education

A study of the partnership between an online program management (OPM) company and

a higher education institution seeking to develop an online program must begin with a review of

the literature about outsourcing in higher education because such a partnership is a form of

outsourcing. Outsourcing has become increasingly common in higher education in the past two

decades (Quigley & Pereira, 2011).

First, definitions must be made of key terms. The term outsourcing is often interchanged

with offshoring, but these are distinct terms. Outsourcing refers to a “higher education

institution’s decision to contract with an external organization to provide a traditional campus

function or service” (Phipps & Merisotis, 2005, p. 1). The term outsourcing is used extensively

in the business sector and increasingly within higher education as college and university

administrators seek new methods to reduce expenditures. The term offshoring, on the other hand,

generally refers to the relocation or establishment of select services outside of the United States.

Most commonly, when offshoring is highlighted in the literature, the intended meaning is that of

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U.S.-based institutions establishing academic programs overseas (Armstrong, 2007; Edwards,

Crosling, & Edwards, 2010; Ross, 2008).

The reasons for outsourcing in higher education are many, but some advantages are

consistent in the literature. A primary argument given by outsourcing advocates is that

outsourcing certain campus functions allows an institution to focus on those educational areas

tied to the core mission of the institution (Gupta, Herath, & Mikouiza, 2005). However, scholars

do not agree on what campus activities constitute the core activities of a college or university that

should remain internal (Glickman, Holm, Keating, Pannait, & White, 2007). Another often-cited

advantage to outsourcing is the potential for cost savings, especially when the service or function

is performed internally only periodically and proves financially unsustainable (Gupta et al.,

2005). Other advantages to outsourcing include the ability to free up resources for other purposes

and to gain access to resources unavailable through other means (Palm, 2001). In their study of

middle- and senior-level management at universities and colleges in the District of Columbia,

Maryland, and Virginia, Quigley and Pereira (2011) found that the quality of service offered

through outside partnerships was the top reason higher education institutions pursued

outsourcing. Another key finding of that study was that outsourcing typically does not lead to job

loss at an institution because outsourcing is most often used to add new services rather than

replace existing employees (Quigley & Pereira, 2011). The primary limitation of this study was

its geographically specific location. It is possible that such findings would differ in another

region of the United States.

Outsourcing in higher education is not an entirely new concept. Certain campus services

such as food services, vending, bookstore operations, and laundry services have been outsourced

to third-party vendors for decades (Glickman et al., 2007; Quigley & Pereira, 2011). Other

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campus functions, primarily in the arena of student services, are also being increasingly

outsourced. These functions include alumni services, counseling services, facilities management,

health services, security, and legal services (Palm, 2001; Phipps & Merisotis, 2005). There does

appear to be a breaking point at which outsourcing is no longer viewed as a favorable option,

however. Many higher education administrators express concern about outsourcing functions

that are tied to proprietary institutional information, such as human resources, finance, and

accounting (Phipps & Merisotis, 2005). Regardless of which services are given to vendors to

handle, the decision to outsource a higher education function does not occur quickly. The

barriers to outsourcing, including complex state regulations, fear of failure, decentralized

systems, resistance to change, and loss of control, often slow down the process (Phipps &

Merisotis, 2005). Another barrier to outsourcing is the lead time to implement an outsourcing

strategy. Campus decision makers may take months or even years to determine whether

outsourcing is right for their campus (Phipps & Merisotis, 2005).

While most outsourcing efforts in higher education have been focused on student

services, more recently the focus has turned to the outsourcing of academic programs and

instruction. However, the outsourcing of an entire academic program to a third-party company is

risky because the vendor may not understand nor reflect the brand and mission of the institution,

reflecting the university poorly to the wider campus community (Phipps & Merisotis, 2005).

Moore (2002) emphasized the need for these corporate partnerships to be two-way, with each

partner adding value to the relationship while at the same time relinquishing some degree of

control. The importance of selecting the right partner with whom to launch an online program

cannot be overstated because many institutions have found that they must bring services back

internally after failed outsourcing ventures (Quigley & Pereira, 2011).

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Ultimately, the questions that higher education administrators must ask themselves when

they consider outsourcing an online program are the same questions they face when outsourcing

any campus function: Can this service be handled within the institution at the same quality and

cost as an external provider? If the answer is no, outsourcing the development of the online

program becomes a real possibility. The specialized segment of higher education outsourcing

that pertained to this doctoral study—that of partnering with an online program management

provider—has received little attention in the literature. One of the few published articles on this

topic is from Hoffman (2012), who focused on the process of selecting the vendor. Using the

case study methodology, Hoffman (2012) profiled the process taken by a private, liberal arts

institution in the northeastern region of the United States to select a partner for its online

program. The experiences of the academic administration at the institution in Hoffman’s (2012)

study generated several significant recommendations regarding the vendor selection process.

Hoffman (2012) recommended that university or college administrators carefully define the

criteria they seek in a partner, solicit feedback from other institutions who have used the

vendor’s services previously, query the vendor for feedback about the institution itself (a source

of free professional advice), and build the appropriate decision-making team who will make the

final call. Even though these recommendations are directed toward the vendor selection process,

they also apply to the ongoing assessment of the partnership with an OPM provider.

Aspects of the instructional function have been outsourced for years with mixed results.

Some companies such as Smarthinking offer online tutoring and academic support while other

companies, often located overseas, perform course grading for a fee (Russell, 2010). The

potential advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing instruction mirror closely those of

outsourcing in general. The advantages may include cost effectiveness, added skills otherwise

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unavailable, technological expertise, and customer service (Russell, 2010). The disadvantages

include the conflicting cultures of an educational institution and a for-profit company,

diminished faculty roles, a threat to job security, the risk of the institution’s mission being altered

or misunderstood by the vendor, and unclear financial benefits (Russell, 2010). Nevertheless, the

possibility of gaining revenue from a new online program by partnering with an OPM provider is

often enough to lure an institution into the arrangement despite the risks, even though such an

arrangement may in fact be a Trojan horse, “a seemingly attractive gift disguising a perilous

core” (Baines & Chiarelott, 2010, p. 159). One of the key arguments toward a Trojan horse view

of an OPM provider/university partnership is that the vendor expects some element of control of

the partnership when the contract is signed.

Another option to the partnership between an institution and an OPM provider is an ala

carte approach. Institutions with expertise in some areas of online program management may

choose to retain those functions while outsourcing other functions that require particular

expertise not found on campus (Hillman & Corkery, 2010). Marketing and recruitment may be

suitable for outsourcing if the institution’s desire is to establish a global brand because a vendor

may be able to help the institution attract students from regions of the world previously untapped

(Hillman & Corkery, 2010). This expertise is unlikely to be found with existing campus

personnel more accustomed to a traditional, established marketing strategy.

Based on the literature about higher education outsourcing, it can be concluded that

university and college administrators have barely scratched the surface of the potential that

outsourcing offers. Even though higher education places a heavy emphasis on tradition, the

benefits of outsourcing is becoming clear to the leaders of many institutions who are taking

greater risks in this area. The business world may view outsourcing primarily as a means of cost

24

savings, but university and college leaders must look past this one-sided viewpoint of

outsourcing and instead view it as a means to obtain skills available through third-party vendors

and companies. As large and diverse as some college and university campuses are, it is not

reasonable to expect that expertise in launching, developing, marketing, and evaluating online

programs with existing internal personnel alone is always feasible. The expertise of an OPM

provider can open up these opportunities to expand into online education, but the selection and

partnership with an OPM provider is a decision that must be made after careful consideration on

all levels of the institution.

Studies about higher education partnerships are few and far between in the literature. It

must be noted, too, that much of the literature on outsourcing in higher education was published

in the early- to mid-2000s when the number of OPM providers in the industry was much smaller

than it is today. It can be inferred that the growth in the OPM market in the past decade reflects,

at least in part, a growing acceptance of these partnerships in the online program marketplace.

Given the increased number of OPM providers and institutions taking advantage of their

services, additional studies on these partnerships are likely to be published in the future.

Barriers to Online Program Implementation

Implementing an online program at a university, regardless of whether it is done

internally or through the help of an OPM provider, requires that certain online education barriers

be overcome. Administrators must consider these barriers because any one of them could

become an impediment that prevents the program from succeeding. The following section of this

chapter reviews literature about a few of the most common barriers that impede the

implementation of an online program within higher education. Literature was retrieved from

online databases using keyword terms such as “barriers,” “implementation,” “online education,”

25

“e-learning,” “online program management,” “online program,” “develop,” and “concerns.” The

barriers listed in this section are not intended to be a comprehensive list of all barriers institutions

may face. But those discussed here are those most commonly found in the literature. This section

of the literature review forms a bridge between the previous analysis of higher education

outsourcing and the third and final section of the literature review that reports on the decisions

that administrators must make in implementing online programs.

Concerns about online education. A major barrier to the implementation of online

programs in higher education is apathy and/or distrust toward online education by some

administrators and faculty. Successful implementation of online courses depends in part upon

how e-learning is perceived (Journell, 2010). Concerns and misconceptions about online

education fade further each year as online learning expands across higher education; however,

some falsehoods continue to exist, even though research continues to support the notion that

online education can be as effective as on-campus education (Ginn & Hammond, 2012; Ward,

Peters, & Shelley, 2010). Among these lingering concerns is the idea that online instruction is

not a rigorous as face-to-face instruction (Wickersham & McElhany, 2010). Some administrators

question whether certain courses or programs can be successfully implemented online, and some

faculty wonder why moving traditional education online is online is necessary at all

(Wickersham & McElhany, 2010).

The majority of faculty agree that quality standards are needed to assess online courses

but neither faculty members nor administrators can agree whether the quality assessment should

reside at the department level or the institution level (Wickersham & McElhany, 2010). The lack

of a clear standard of quality can impede some faculty from participating in online education

(Al-Salman, 2011). One proposed means of establishing clearly defined quality standards is the

26

organization of an institution-level quality standards committee composed of administrators,

department heads, faculty who teach online, faculty who do not teach online, students, and

instructional technology personnel (Wickersham & McElhany, 2010). As Wickersham and

McElhany (2010) reminded, “Quality takes on multiple forms and meanings” (p. 8). This

philosophy of quality must then permeate every aspect of faculty recruitment and training, course

design, organizational structuring, and all other decisions involving online education.

Cost factors. A significant barrier to online program implementation is the cost involved.

Expenses include technology infrastructure, marketing, recruitment, student advising, course

development, ongoing technical support for students and faculty, and the hiring and training of

faculty to teach online (Bartley & Golek, 2004; Hoffman, 2012; Moloney & Oakley, 2010;

Neely & Tucker, 2010). Colleges and universities struggling to find alternative revenue sources

may be tempted to move programs online as a quick means to increase revenue during tight

budgetary times. However, a quick move to e-learning should be avoided because the investment

required in an online program is significant (Journell, 2012).

Meyer (2005) answered the question of whether online learning can be cost effective in

two words: “It depends” (p. 29). It depends on the type of students the institution serves, the

willingness of the faculty to teach online, how well course design is supported by policy, the type

of infrastructure the institution has that supports online growth, and to what extend the university

has developed a vision for online education (Meyer, 2005). A major hindrance in the

implementation of online programs is determining the cost effectiveness of online learning.

Because online learning does not carry with it many of the facilities costs associated with

traditional, brick-and-mortar instruction, determining the true cost of instruction can be difficult.

One definitive model for determining the cost-effectiveness of online learning has yet to be

27

adopted throughout the higher education system. Several researchers have attempted to create a

definitive model (Arroyo, 2014; Crawford, Gould, King, & Parker, 2010; Gordon, He, &

Abhous, 2009; Neely & Tucker, 2010). One commonality in these studies is that economies of

scale are the major driving factor behind cost effectiveness in online learning. When an online

program can be sufficiently scaled to increase enrollment, operational costs drop and the

program becomes more cost effective (Ginn & Hammond, 2012; Morris, 2008). Programs with

lower student enrollments run the risk of reducing the quality of online instruction due to the

high costs involved in time, personnel, and the upkeep of technology (Ginn & Hammond, 2012).

It is recommended that university and college administrators seek to expand their online course

offerings strategically in order to take advantage of the cost savings made possible through

economy of scale.

Technological issues. One significant barrier to successful implementation of an online

program is the high cost of procuring, installing, and maintaining new technological tools (Bhati,

Mercer, Rankin, & Thomas, 2009). The selection of a well-functioning learning management

system (LMS) is chief among these tools. As the technological backbone of the online courses,

the LMS must serve the needs of administration, faculty, and students alike. A university may

choose to develop a proprietary LMS, but this is a costly and time-consuming approach

(McClure & Woolum, 2006). Another option is to choose among several commercial products

such as Blackboard or Moodle that provide the structure and the hosting capability for online

courses.

Once the LMS is in place and the program is running, students must have a means by

which their technical questions can be immediately addressed, since most questions that students

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have about online learning involve the technical logistics of the courses, not about the course

content itself (McClure & Woolum, 2006). These technical issues form a barrier for some

students, and an obstacle to implementing online program. Many students enroll in online

programs unprepared for the technological rigors the online environment demands. They must be

instructed in the minimum technology required for their courses including Internet speed and

software (Wickersham & McElhany, 2010). Students from rural areas of the country may need

great technical assistance because of slower connection speeds, older telephone lines, and

outdated computer hardware and software (Mayfield-Johnson, Mohn, Mitra, Young, &

McCullers, 2014; Mellon & Kester, 2004).

Technology can also be a barrier for faculty, some of whom are not as skilled in technical

issues as their students (Regan, et al., 2011). A classroom instructor often times does not need to

be well versed in technology to be effective; this is not true for the online environment (Al-

Salman, 2011). The online instructor is often the first line of defense in fielding questions from

students needing technical assistance. This may intimidate some potential faculty from teaching

online. The fear that students will not be able to access course material due to technical

challenges is a related fear reported by some faculty members (Haber & Mills, 2008). Relief

from this fear comes from the help of technical staff to answer questions for faculty and students

alike (Haber & Mills, 2008).

In addition to being on the front line of ongoing technical problems, other faculty report

that the time involved in learning the technology required in online education is a source of stress

for them in teaching online (Regan, et al., 2011). Stress was just one of five categories of

emotions experienced by instructors in online environments that Regan et al. (2011) identified in

29

their qualitative study of six full-time faculty members at George Mason University. The other

four categories were (a) restricted, (b) devalued, (c) validated, and (d) rejuvenated. The authors

concluded that experience and technology expertise may not be enough to help instructors

overcome these emotions. Other strategies include holding synchronous office hours, phoning

students, and embracing the shift of the online instructor’s role from imparter of knowledge to

knowledge facilitator (Regan et al., 2011). The primary limitation of this study was its narrow

focus. Only six faculty members from a single institution were queried.

Retention of online students. Online programs cannot sustain themselves without

sufficient student enrollment and retention. The establishment of adequate marketing to increase

student applications and the implementation of effective student services that guide to students

along their educational journeys until graduation are other barriers to online program

implementation (Moloney & Oakley, 2010).

Successful distance education students who persist in their programs to graduation tend to

be self-directed and self-motivated (Ginn & Hammond, 2012; Lee & Busch, 2005). Motivated

students take a more active role in their own education and contribute more actively in their own

education than do lesser motivated students (Drouin, 2008; Wighting, Liu, & Rovai, 2008).

Online students demonstrate more willingness to tackle difficult tasks and to engage in higher-

order thinking skills than do their counterparts in face-to-face courses, and they seek autonomy

in the learning process (Wighting et al., 2008). It can be assumed, therefore, that students who

lack self-motivation will not do well as well in the online environment. Institutions would be

well served to seek after and encourage applications from motivated, self-driven students who

can succeed online. Some college and university staff and administrators may not know how to

30

market to and entice such students to their online programs, especially if they are accustomed to

marketing exclusively to on-campus students.

Students withdraw from online courses for a variety of reasons. Among these are

personal reasons such as life or work commitments and program reasons, which include a

dislike of the online learning style, and/or evolving career aspirations (Perry, Boman, Care,

Edwards, & Park, 2008). Students who engage more actively in online activities by posting to

discussion boards, viewing other students’ posts, and viewing content pages are more likely to

complete their courses and stay enrolled in the program (Morris, Finnegan, & Wu, 2005).

Presumably little can be done by university administrators to combat personal reasons for

withdrawal, but increased effort by administrators and instructors to retain students may increase

the motivation to stay enrolled.

Research indicates that a lack of social interaction is perceived by students to be the

biggest barrier of online education (Muilenburg & Berge, 2005). Consequently, social interaction

was related to the enjoyment of the online learning environment, the effectiveness of learning,

and the likelihood that the online student would stay enrolled in the program (Muilenburg &

Berge, 2005). Reilly, Gallagher-Lepak, and Killion (2012) identified that online students

generally experience aloneness, anonymity, a desire for nonverbal communication, trepidation,

and the fear of the unknown. The researchers came to this conclusion after holding telephone

focus groups with 18 registered nurses taking courses through the Wisconsin state university

system for an RN-BSN completion program. The authors argued that instructors need to

acknowledge that students’ emotional responses to online learning play a significant role in their

retention, and strategies should put in place to counteract the emotions that may lead to student

withdrawal. Such strategies include posting pictures or using video to simulate face-to-face

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interaction and maintaining regular contact with students during the first few weeks of a new

semester (Reilly et al., 2012). The study is limited by its inclusion of only female, white students,

so additional research with greater gender and ethnic diversity is warranted.

Other strategies for retaining students in online courses include making course

expectations very clear at the beginning of the courses, sending welcome letters to students,

providing detailed syllabi, and offering regular course announcements (Frey, Alman, Barron, &

Steffens, 2004). Instructors set the tone for the course in the first couple of weeks and students

are apt to follow the example set for them (Frey et al., 2004). Students’ persistence in an online

program is positively affected by the degree of encouragement and support they received from

faculty, especially in the absence of academic advisers (Ivankova & Stick, 2007).

Accompanying the efforts made by faculty is the need for student advising in an online

program. Student advisors help struggling students stay enrolled in distance education programs

by providing assistance with academic problems and offering personal encouragement (Ivankova

& Stick, 2007). Institutions must be willing to hire or contract with student managers (or a

related position) to help combat the feelings of isolation experienced by online students. A

student manager handles administrative work of advising and processing student forms but also

acts as a consistent voice for students who do not visit campus. Student feedback consistently

mentions the importance of this human contact in their persistence in the program (Mellon &

Kester, 2004).

Implications. The literature about the barriers of online program implementation is

diverse and extensive. Much has been studied and written since online learning began in the mid-

1990s, and many recommendations have been given for overcoming these barriers. It can be

32

concluded that overcoming the common barriers discussed in this section —concerns about

online education, cost factors, technology issues, and online student retention—can be

accomplished in a number of means and with the assistance of a large number of campus

personnel. However, the importance of planning ahead cannot be overstated. Anticipating the

concerns of the campus community regarding online education can help prepare administrators

for dealing with questions and resistance. Planning for and anticipating the costs involved in the

implementation of an online program may help sustain the program’s financial success, but

perhaps more importantly, it may assist online program leaders on campus to gain momentum

with the new endeavor. This planning could lead to further growth in online education at the

institution. To continue with this idea, anticipating the technology needs of the faculty and

students could help prevent frustration and keep the institution current in the face of ever-

changing technology. And fully researching the reasons behind student withdrawal from online

programs and planning accordingly could go a long way in stabilizing and then growing online

enrollment.

Decisions Regarding Online Program Implementation

The barriers associated with online program implementation give context to the many

decisions that must be made by higher education administrators who desire to develop online

programs at their institutions. The following section outlines some of the most critical questions

and considerations that must be addressed. This section builds upon the barriers to successful

online implementation previously discussed, as there is obvious overlap between overcoming the

barriers to online program implementation and the decisions upon which an online program is

built.

33

Few articles in the literature are devoted entirely to an analysis of the decisions required;

nevertheless, many relevant questions can be inferred from the literature about online education.

This section is divided into six categories of decisions that administrators must make when

implementing distance education programs, as identified by Styron, Wang, and Styron (2009).

The six are as follows: (a) distance education offerings, (b) faculty considerations and incentives,

(c) student considerations, (d) resources and external support, (e) costs and lack of funding, and

(f) administrative characteristics and considerations. These six are explained in greater detail in

the following section and supported by additional literature. The literature discussed in this

section does not directly relate to outsourcing or the use of an OPM provider to launch an online

program. Literature specific to partnerships with OPM providers was reviewed in the first section

of this chapter.

Distance education offerings. Decisions in the category of distance education offerings

lay the groundwork for the online program. These decisions include how the online program fits

into the mission of the institution, how online education should be organized structurally on

campus, how courses will be designed, and which LMS will be used.

One of the first determinations administrators must make is how online learning fits into

the broader mission and focus of the institution. Online education is most likely to succeed at an

institution where distance education is a clear component of its mission and vision and support is

evident on all levels, from the department heads all the way to the board of trustees (Moloney &

Oakley, 2010). Once online learning has a firm place in the institution’s mission and vision,

administrators must decide how quickly to scale it up. Moloney and Oakley (2010) advocated

that institutions be methodical and disciplined in launching online programs by responding to

market demands. Another common motivation for starting an online program is to counteract

34

slipping enrollment in a face-to-face program (Jones, Warren, Ennis-Cole, Knezek, Lin, &

Norris, 2014).

Once the determination is made that online learning fits into the vision of the college or

university, administrators must then determine whether a market need exists for a given program.

This can be done by investigating the programs offered by competitors and ascertaining whether

a gap exists in the market. Organizing a campus task force to accomplish is market analysis may

be in order (Hillman & Corkery, 2010). Determining the right members of this task force is

important, as the internal approval process for a new distance education program can be lengthy

(Styron et al., 2009). Another determination early on the process is what the timeline for

completion and the estimated costs of development will be (Hughes, Bowers, Mitchell, Curtiss,

& Ebata, 2012). Online leaders on campus should be cautious not to move too quickly, though.

Jones et al. (2014) recommended allowing a year to implement the program and starting small,

ideally with 10 or fewer students who will pilot the program.

A second consideration administrators must make is how online learning will alter the

organization structure of the campus. Hughes et al. (2012) recommended that administrators

develop a staffing plan that assesses essential staffing positions and the roles and responsibilities

for each position. Planning for staffing should begin early because failure to hire enough support

staff can put undue pressure on faculty later on (Jones et al., 2014). Once positions are

established, the hierarchal structure must be determined. One way to organize online course

offerings at an institution is to allow an individual academic department to launch and manage

the program alone. A second option is to create a centralized campus structure wherein all online

programs are housed under one division (Moloney & Oakley, 2010). This separate division

might also house campus technology support staff whose responsibilities include overseeing the

35

operation of the LMS, help desk personnel, and instructional designers (McClure & Woolum,

2006).

Another key decision in this category is that of course design. For course design to

achieve its purpose, alignment must exist with the learning objectives for the course, the tools by

which the course information will be presented, and the method used to assess and measure

student outcomes in the course (Gibson & Dunning, 2012). It must also be determined whether

courses will be asynchronous, synchronous, or a combination of the two approaches (Meyer,

2005). Closely tied to the decisions about course design is the decision of which LMS to use for

the courses and whether all online instructors across the institution will be required to use the

platform. Students report being confused when some instructors opt to use websites other than

the university-endorsed LMS for course instruction (Little-Wiles & Naimi, 2011). A standard,

established design for each course may help students navigate the LMS and save money in

faculty and student training.

Faculty considerations and incentives. A number of decisions must be made by higher

education administrators regarding faculty. For example, how will online teaching affect tenure

and promotion policies (Meyer, 2005)? How will faculty be recognized for their efforts in online

course development and teaching (Hummer et al., 2010)? How will faculty be compensated for

online teaching (Shea, 2007)? How involved will faculty be in the creation of online learning

policies and decisions (Wickersham & McElhany, 2010)? How will faculty members ensure

academic integrity and originality of the material submitted by online students (Haber & Mills,

2008)?

Creating faculty buy-in for an online program is a key component to successful

implementation (Styron et al., 2009) because a major characteristic of successful online

36

programs is the development of incentives to faculty and department leaders to grow online

enrollment (Moloney & Oakley, 2010). To achieve this buy-in, faculty must have a voice in

course development and help ascertain their effectiveness. Administration must set standards for

course payments, royalty payments, teaching workloads, and class sizes (Moller, Foshay, &

Huett, 2008). In addition, faculty must be assured that academic pursuits within online education

carry the same value as on-campus pursuits and will be weighed equally in promotion and tenure

decisions (Moller, et al., 2008).

Failing to make decisions that generate faculty buy-in can lead to high faculty turnover

(Betts & Sikorski, 2008). This can be detrimental to the ongoing success of an online program.

The single most important factor in an institution successfully scaling its online programs is the

ability to recruit and train adjunct faculty to support the programs (Moloney & Oakley, 2010).

Constantly rehiring new instructors adds costs for recruitment, training, coaching, and additional

course materials; thus, online administrators need to foster loyalty within their faculty (Dolan,

2011). Betts and Sikorski (2008) estimated that the financial bottom line of replacing online

adjuncts may be 10 times greater than the actual salary due to direct costs (fixed and variable

costs related to hiring, salary, and training), opportunity costs (those related to the loss of

business and/or decreased service due to faculty turnover), and indirect costs (those related to

productivity, morale, and climate).

Dolan (2011) sought to understand whether periodic face-to-face meetings between

academic administrators at a university and its online adjunct faculty would foster a stronger

relationship between faculty and academic management. To do this, the researcher interviewed

28 adjunct faculty members at the same institution, all chosen at random, after asking them first

37

to complete an open-ended questionnaire. The intent of the study was to inductively derive a

theory from the data gathered. The researcher found that adjunct faculty members are primarily

concerned with infrequent communication with department administrators, leading to a sense of

isolation; with the lack of recognition they receive for the work they do; and with the lack of

opportunities for skill development (Dolan, 2011). All of these frustrations can lead to faculty

turnover. The researcher concluded that the absence of face-to-face meetings with university

management does not diminish adjunct faculty loyalty and motivation but having such meetings

would likely increase loyalty and motivation. It must be noted, though, that the study was

conducted with adjunct faculty at a single institution who were all actively teaching at the time

they were interviewed. A broader participant base, including former adjunct members who were

no longer teaching at the time of the study, may have produced different findings.

Another key policy decision regarding faculty pertains to intellectual property rights.

Administrators must determine how ownership of course material created by institutional faculty

will be assessed. This has been a source of conflict on some campuses without clear policies in

place (Blanchard, 2010; McIsaac & Rowe, 1997). What complicates this issue is that an online

course is rarely created by just one person (Kranch, 2008). More often, an online course comes

together through the combined efforts of instructional designers, full-time faculty members,

technologists, and sometimes adjunct online instructors. With so many people involved,

determining ownership is rarely easy to determine and may depend on how much involvement

each party had in the final product (Hardy & Bower, 2004). The matter becomes stickier still

when the online course generates revenue. Into whose hands should the money go? A formal

policy is critical to resolving these questions. But it is important that all members of the

academic community agree on the chosen policy (Johnstone, 2004).

38

Student considerations. Decisions involving students include marketing strategies and

creating opportunities to network. Marketing is often overlooked at institutions and does not

receive the financial backing it deserves (Moloney & Oakley, 2010) even though marketing

strategies are vital in creating a pipeline of interested, engaged students in the program. Different

approaches to marketing online programs exist. Ebata and Dennis (2011) stated that two most

common means are direct marketing to the target audience (such as parents) and indirect

marketing to secondary audiences that provide services to the primary audience (such as

businesses and agencies that serve parents).

Making sure students have a way to network with peers and faculty is another decision

that must be made involving students (Styron et al., 2009). How this is addressed has a large

impact on retaining online students, which is one of the identified barriers to successful online

program implementation (Muilenburg & Berge, 2005). Campus leaders may choose to invest in

synchronous videoconferencing tools and make these available to online students as a way to

encourage greater interaction and sense of community (Bhati et al., 2009; Styron et al., 2009).

Purchasing electronic gadgets does not necessarily create value for the students or the institution,

however. Technology should be added only when it improves the educational objectives of the

program (Lightfoot, 2005). Administrators and faculty designing online courses also should be

cognizant of the fact that while students in rural areas may have access to the Internet, some

students are restricted to computers in public places such as libraries and may deal with time

constraints and problems downloading or viewing files (Mayfield-Johnson et al., 2014).

Resources and external support. Some of the decisions involving resources and

external support include faculty training and student and faculty technical support.

Administrators must determine how faculty members will receive proper training in online

39

pedagogy and in the use of the LMS (Ginn & Hammond, 2012). Training faculty and staff on the

LMS and the other software tools may prove to be more difficult than training students on the

same tools (Combe, 2005). This training must include the establishment of expectations

regarding student and faculty interactions (Wittkopf, 2003). If the aim is a constructivist or

student-based course, faculty must ensure timely feedback to students and provide regular

communication directly with students, either in synchronous or asynchronous fashion (Wittkopf,

2003). The training goes beyond formal instruction, as well. Wiesenberg and Stacey (2005)

noted online faculty also need to develop an online “theory of practice” through self-reflection,

conversing with other online instructors, gathering feedback from students, and feeling

administrative support to experiment with new techniques (p. 398). Campus leaders should also

decide whether faculty development programs will be continuous and not just one-time trainings.

The faculty members at one university considered themselves competent to teach online after

teaching one online course, not after completing online training. This suggest the importance of

continuous faculty support (Ali et al., 2005).

The institution must also provide support to faculty in course development and to

students in technical issues (Wickersham & McElhany, 2010). A proper technology

infrastructure includes technical support as well as the instructional design resources to build,

test, maintain, and upkeep the online courses (Wittkopf, 2003). Administrators also must

determine whether they will continually invest in technology upgrades. This extends beyond new

computers—it also includes amenities such as cameras, microphones, and software (Wickersham

& McElhany, 2010). They must also determine what level of technical support from a help desk

is required. Online students need prompt attention to phone calls and emails to answer their

questions because they can experience significant stress and anxiety (Christofferson et al., 2012).

40

Finally, administrators have the opportunity to establish expectations for communication

between departments that deal with online learning. Combe (2005) found that one lingering

problem in the implementation of the doctoral program he studied was the lack of

communication between the managers of the program and the IT support staff of the university.

Users were frequently frustrated when no advanced notice was given to upgrades of the LMS.

Costs and lack of funding. Decisions involving costs carry major implications for higher

education administrators seeking to expand online learning at their institutions. Whether to

partner with an OPM provider in the launch and delivery of a program is a significant decision

that has implications in many aspects of the program. It also has major implications on overall

program costs because an OPM provider can charge between 20 and 60 percent of an

institution’s gross tuition revenue for use of the LMS (Hoffman, 2012). As addressed in the

previous chapter, this decision must be made through careful analysis of the features offered by

the various companies and how well each product would integrate into the university’s

infrastructure.

Meyer (2005) identified at least three policy decisions that administrators must make that

affect the profitability of an online program. The first is whether to charge out-of-state tuition for

those online students who don’t reside in the state in which the institution is located. The second

issue is to determine what impact state and institutional subsidies will have, if any, on the

financial health of the program. The third issue is whether the institution will seek out and use

open access course content available online, thus lowering the overall cost of development.

Even though they are cleanly categorized by Styron et al. (2009) into six distinct areas of

consideration, all decisions involving online program implementation typically have some

bearing on funding and costs. Examples of these crossover decisions include marketing

41

expenses, investments in equipment and technology for faculty and students, the number of

online support staff to be hired, how many adjunct faculty to hire, and compensation policies for

all faculty who teach online.

Administrative characteristics and considerations. Administrative considerations form

the sixth and final category of decisions to be made involving online program implementation.

Administrative considerations include how the online program will change the culture of the

department and/or the institution and how the program will be assessed and evaluated.

Implementing an online program can influence the culture of a department or an entire

institution. Faculty may assume new roles as facilitators rather than teachers or instructors,

expectations for instructing on-campus vs. online courses may differ, and faculty contracts may

need to revised (Garza Mitchell, 2009). Online learning may alter the student demographics, too,

bringing students of differing backgrounds into the student body that may otherwise not be found

on campus (Garza Mitchell, 2009). The culture for the institution’s student services divisions

will also change, as they will now be serving students at a distance. Because of these cultural

changes, everyone involved in the launch process, including senior management, should be

versed in change theory and how change theory applies to their respective institutions (Wallace,

2002). Team-building efforts to increase collaboration among faculty and staff may help with the

transition to an online learning culture, but mentoring and support services should be offered to

those who struggle with the transition (Wallace, 2002).

Closely connected to the other decisions administrators must make in the planning stages

is how the program will be evaluated and evaluated. This begins with administrators deciding

what outcomes they expect from the program, how feedback will be gathered, how often the

42

program will be assessed, who will perform the assessment and evaluation, and how

improvements will be implemented (Hughes et al., 2012).

Conclusion

It is clear from the literature on online program implementation that success or failure of

the program does not reside on the shoulders of one decision alone. Nevertheless, a common

thread runs through all of the decisions: communication. Communication at all levels of online

learning is paramount for successful implementation. Decisions cannot be made by

administration behind the confines of the university boardroom without consulting the faculty,

the very people who form the lifeblood of the institution (Dolan, 2011). It is vital that

administrators take seriously the recommendations given them from faculty for improvements to

the online program. Clearly, objections will arise, but skilled communication from administrators

will allow them to address any resistance and resentment through open dialogue and debate. The

literature makes it clear that online program implementation depends on a shared vision of

excellence, a vision that cannot be created without active faculty input and involvement. This

shared vision of excellence creates good faith and trust in administration (Wickersham &

McElhany, 2010).

The decisions that university administrators must address regarding online education are

numerous and challenging. Nevertheless, successful online program implementation must begin

with a clear vision of online learning at the institution (Meyer, 2005; Moloney & Oakley, 2010).

Administrators who desire to expand distance education must not only incorporate it into the

vision statement of the department or institution but must also make it a prominent and defining

component of the plan, due to the likelihood that online education will alter the existing culture

43

(Garza Mitchell, 2009). The tone for online learning is set at the top of the organizational chart

of the institution, by the senior leaders. Without the support, guidance, and vision of university

administration, an online program cannot fully thrive. Apathetic (or indifferent) administrators

are unlikely to invest the resources necessary to upgrade technology, properly train and develop

faculty, hire sufficient instructional designers and instructional support staff, or collaborate with

faculty on creating intellectual property policies that serve the greater community (Al-Salman,

2011; McClure & Woolum, 2006). Vision-minded administrators are in a better position to

motivate reluctant faculty to embark in teaching online, to discover and implement cutting-edge

marketing strategies that increase enrollment, adequately recognize faculty members for the

work they do with online course development and instruction, and appropriately staff the online

division of the institution. Despite the importance of collaboration in implementing online

programs, the literature is scant in the area of how faculty members and administrators

collaborate to shape and define the online program at an institution. This is an area of further

research.

This chapter reviewed the literature associated with online program implementation. It

followed the previous chapter that summarized the problem of practice and provided the

rationale for the proposed study. The subsequent chapter will address the research methodology

to be used in this study, including the participants and setting; how data will be collected and

analyzed; and the steps that will be ensure trustworthiness, validity, and the protection of human

participants.

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Chapter 3: Research Design

The purpose of this study was to explore how a university partnered with an OPM

provider to help plan, develop, launch, and administer its online MBA program. Having

established the background and rationale for the study in Chapter 1 and having reviewed the

literature surrounding the issue in Chapter 2, this chapter will now detail the methodology used

in this study. Sections in this chapter address the specific research method chosen for this study;

the participants in the study; the data collection, data storage, and analysis procedures;

trustworthiness; the protection of human participants; potential researcher biases; and possible

limitations of the study.

Research Approach

To answer the question posed in this study, the qualitative research approach was used.

Qualitative research emphasizes the “socially constructed nature of reality” and seeks to give

meaning to how social experiences are created (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, p. 8). Other

characteristics of qualitative data are that it is collected in the natural setting in which it occurred

and that the data collection and methods are flexible, allowing the researcher to create a picture

of how the participants understand the phenomenon in their own environments (Miles,

Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014).

The case study methodology was used for this study because the case study approach is

particularly relevant when a researcher seeks to answer a “how” or “why” research question and

when the social phenomenon being studied is a contemporary set of events over which the

researcher has little or no influence (Yin, 2014). The primary research question for this study

was a “how” question that reads as follows: How does a university partner with an online

program management provider to design, launch, and administer an online MBA program? The

45

event and issue that was studied—an online MBA program in a higher education setting—was

contemporary and current, and the researcher had no control over the outcome or success of the

online program. For this study the researcher largely played the role of program evaluator and

interpreter (Stake, 1995). The case study in this doctoral thesis served as an instrumental case

study, one that investigated a particular case in order to understand the broader issue of how

these partnerships between higher education institutions and OPM provider operate (Stake,

1995).

The case study approach was also chosen for this study because online program

implementation is an event or a program with definable start and end dates; thus, the

implementation of the online MBA program was a case that could be bounded (Yin, 2014). The

start date for this case study was the planning stages of the online MBA program, including the

initial conversations between university leadership and the leadership of the OPM provider with

whom the university partnered. The end date for the case was the present day. The study looked

at the growth and progress of the online MBA program to date, especially as it related to the

partnership with the OPM provider.

The history of the case study as a qualitative methodology is unknown; however, case

studies have existed for as long as recorded history and today are prevalent in many disciplines

(Flyvbjerg, 2011). The case study approach fell out of favor with researchers for several decades,

possibly due to the rise in popularity of participant-observation in social science research (Platt,

1992). The field of case study methodology began to be explored again in the 1980s, led by a key

theorist in case study research, Robert K. Yin. Several journal articles written by Yin preceded

the first edition of his seminal text, Case Study Research, in 1981, now in its fifth edition.

Another key theorist, Robert E. Stake, published his classic book, The Art of Case Study

46

Research, in 1995. Both Yin and Stake published several other texts about case study research in

the 1990s and 2000s and the approach appeared with greater frequency in general texts about

qualitative research. Other prominent qualitative research theorists such as Howard S. Becker

(1986; 1998), C. C. Ragin (1987), Michael Bassey (1999), Sharan Merriam (1998), and Bent

Flyvjberg (2006; 2011) have expanded upon the current definitions and practices of case study

research in the past decade, furthering the acceptance of the case study as an accepted

methodological approach. Today, even though some social scientists believe that case study

research is appropriate only as an exploratory method of research (Yin, 2014) it is commonly

found in general texts on research along with other well-known qualitative approaches such as

phenomenology, ethnography, grounded theory, and narrative analysis (Marshall & Rossman,

2016).

Although they are considered two of the most prominent theorists in case study research

today, Stake and Yin approach the methodology from different philosophical standpoints. Yin’s

research tends to be postpositivist while Stake’s tends to be constructivist (Boblin, Ireland,

Kirkpatrick, & Robertson, 2013). Briefly explained, postpositivism focuses on empirical

observation and measurement, is value-free, and seeks a single reality. On the contrary,

constructivism seeks multiple realities and encompasses value-bound research (Yin, 2016). A

constructivist view allows readers to draw their own conclusions by providing them with plenty

of detail and description of the case under investigation (Stake, 1995). Rather than being

discovered through research, knowledge is constructed. This differs from postpositivism, which

professes that knowledge is found through logical, empirical steps (Yin, 2016). Most qualitative

research aligns with constructivism or pragmatism because of the flexibility required in the

47

research (Yin, 2016). This study of the partnership of an OPM provider and a university

launching an online MBA program most closely aligned with constructivism.

One of the hallmarks of case study research is the ability the researcher has to redefine

the case after initial data is collected (Yin, 2012). As a result, this may mean the research

questions change, the type and number of participants change, or the research site itself changes

throughout the data collection process. A key term in case study research is triangulation,

although Stake (1995) and Yin (2014) recommend triangulation for different reasons. According

to Stake (1995), multiple viewpoints are gathered to understand the phenomenon from a holistic

view, with many opinions taken into consideration, some of which diverge from each other. On

the flip side, Yin (2014) sees triangulation as a way to find congruence in the findings.

Participants and Access

Determining the research site for this study was one of the first decisions to be made in

the research design. The chosen research site was a private, doctoral-granting university in the

Western United States. Founded in the early 20th century, Esteemed University (pseudonym) has

five schools and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees at its main campus and through

several regional campuses. The university launched an online MBA program after years of

teaching MBA courses in a traditional, face-to-face format. Prior to starting an online MBA

program, Esteemed offered some courses through a blended learning format (a mix of on-campus

and online instruction) but did not offer any programs fully online. Esteemed’s online MBA

program was chosen as the online program of analysis for this study because it was created

through a partnership with one OPM provider, Learning Academy (pseudonym), one of the

many such providers in the market.

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Formal letters were sent by email to the Dean of the School of Business & Management

and to the Director of Online Programs seeking permission to study Esteemed’s online MBA

program for this doctoral study. Formal letters were sent because gaining access to a research site

often requires time and patience, and access is best achieved through a formal letter sent to key

constituents (Marshall & Rossman, 2016), Permission was granted by both the Dean and the

Director of Online Programs to study the program and to interview both of them individually for

the study. Additional participants for the study were chosen using maximum variation sampling,

an approach that encourages the selection of participants from a variety of backgrounds in order

to collect a diverse sample of perspectives (Yin, 2016). The precise list of participants was not

known at the outset of the study, but it was expected that the total number of participants in the

study would range between 5 and 12. Thus, a snowball sampling strategy, which identifies

potential participants through the recommendations of those already interviewed, was employed

during data collection (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Use of the snowball strategy allowed the list

of participants to take shape organically as key participants were identified and contacted.

The Participants

Eight participants were interviewed for this study. The participants were administrators,

staff members, and/or faculty members at Esteemed who had experience with the creation and

launch of the program and the establishment of the partnership with Learning Academy, or who

were involved in some way with the administration and delivery of the program. The experience

each participant had with Esteemed’s online MBA program varied, but participants were sought

who could speak to either a historical or current viewpoint of the program’s implementation and

the partnership with Learning Academy in order to provide multiple perspectives. The

participants were informed why the study was taking place and they were assured their identities

49

and the name of the institution would remain anonymous in the dissertation. Incentives were not

offered to participants. Each participant was thoroughly briefed on the purposes of the research

study and was required to sign an informed consent document before participating to ensure the

highest standards of ethical research were followed. Participants were welcome to opt out of the

study at any time.

A brief summary of the background of each participant follows. Pseudonyms are used for

all participants. Summaries are presented in alphabetical order by the participants’ pseudonyms.

Andrew: Online faculty. Andrew coordinates the business simulations for the on-

campus and online MBA programs at Esteemed and teaches courses in business strategy. He

served on the initial committees for the online MBA program.

Cynthia: Online faculty. Cynthia joined the Esteemed faculty after a successful business

career in marketing. At Esteemed she teaches in the fully employed, full-time, and online MBA

programs and is the lead faculty for one of the online MBA marketing courses.

James: Director of Online Programs. James held director-level positions in online

program administration for two other universities before joining Esteemed as the Director of

Online Programs within the School of Business & Management.

Kathryn: Director of eLearning. As the Director of eLearning for Esteemed, Kathryn is

often called upon to provide instructional design expertise for the online MBA program,

particularly as it relates to the partnership with Learning Academy.

Michelle: Online faculty. Michelle operates a business marketing consulting firm and

teaches marketing courses for Esteemed in the fully online and blended learning formats. She is a

voting member of Esteemed’s online MBA committee.

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Patrick: Assistant Director of Online Programs. As Assistant Director of Online

Programs, Patrick assists with the day-to-day operations of the online MBA program and the

management of the partnership with Learning Academy. He also teaches online courses in

economics for the online and on-campus MBA programs.

Tom: Dean of the School of Business & Management. Tom was the primary faculty

and administration champion behind the creation of the online MBA program. He led the efforts

to select Learning Academy as the OPM provider partner and to sign the initial contract with

Learning Academy.

William: Online faculty. William was among the Esteemed faculty members who

served on a working group to discuss the creation of the online MBA program within the School

of Business & Management. He teaches management courses in the MBA programs for

Esteemed.

The Data Collection Process

Data for this case study about the launch and development of Esteemed’s online MBA

program were collected from various sources. The main source of data for this study was in-

depth interviews with the eight participants described earlier. Potential participants were

contacted initially by email to gauge their willingness to participate in the study. Mutual times

for the interviews were arranged with those who agreed to be interviewed, with every effort

made to accommodate the schedules and availability of the interviewees (Yin, 2014). The

interviews were semi-structured in nature, resembling Yin’s (2014) “guided conversations.”

They were also “responsive interviews” in that the researcher sought to move through the

questions at the pace the interviewees desired (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). As needed, probes were

given to the participants to invite them to elaborate on their answers and provide further

51

descriptions (Yin, 2016). This style of responsive interviewing was flexible in nature, and

follow-up questions were asked that focused on the experiences and knowledge of each

individual participant (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). The goal of these interviews was to discover the

history, context, and contending points of view of the participants through vivid descriptions.

These responsive interviews generated themes for later analysis (Rubin & Rubin, 2012).

A list of possible questions was prepared in advance of the interviews. The questions

focused on the launch, design, and administration of the online MBA program, especially as it

related to the partnership with Learning Academy and were grouped into 7 categories: (a)

Participant Background, (b) Decision Making, (c) Financial Implications, (d) Course Design and

Faculty, (e) Measures of Success, (f) Reflections, and (g) Future Considerations. (The list of

questions is found in Appendix A).

The eight participants were asked most, if not all, of the prepared questions, although

some individuals declined to answer certain questions. This was especially true with those

faculty members who lacked an historical perspective on the partnership with Learning Academy

and the creation of the online MBA program, or who were not privy to financial information

about the partnership. The four administrators who were interviewed addressed most of the

questions in all of the categories. All of the participants frequently answered questions out of the

order outlined in the interview protocol. For example, responses to the question, “What ongoing

challenges do you face today in the administration of the program?” were not contained to the

Reflections section only. Most participants discussed challenges in the administration of the

program throughout their entire interviews.

Some of the prepared interview questions did not cover adequately all aspects of the

launch, design, and administration of the online MBA program and the partnership with

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Learning Academy. Follow-up questions by the researcher were necessary throughout the

interviews to gather sufficient data. This was especially true with the Course Design and Faculty

category. The three planned questions in that section did not encapsulate fully the processes of

converting on-campus content to an online environment and selecting the faculty who taught

online. Other prepared interview questions did not prove to be as valuable in the study as initially

projected. One example was the question in the Financial Implications section that reads, “How

does the cost per student in the online MBA program compare to the cost per student in the on-

campus MBA programs?” The administrators and faculty did not have access to all of the

financial figures for Esteemed’s on-campus programs, thus making the comparison difficult.

The interviews were conducted by phone and recorded on two devices. The interviews

ranged in length from 25 minutes to 95 minutes, with most lasting about an hour. The initial plan

for the study was to conduct the interviews face to face, probably in the place of employment of

the participants. However, arranging in-person interviews became impractical due to scheduling

constraints. Therefore, phone interviews were arranged. While advantageous from a practicality

standpoint, phone interviews did not allow for participant observation of the research site or of

the participants themselves.

In addition to the interviews, data about Learning Academy’s services and how

Esteemed’s online MBA program was promoted and marketed to potential students was

collected from websites and other marketing material from Esteemed and Learning Academy, as

well as news accounts of the launch of Esteemed’s online MBA. Including data from these

documents in this research study was in line with Yin’s (2014) five possible sources of data in

case studies: (a) documents, (b) archival records, (c) direct (or personal) observation, (d)

participant-observation, and (e) physical artifacts. To maintain the anonymities of the research

53

site and the OPM provider, this study does not contain direct quotations from these documents,

nor are they included in the list of references.

It was expected that data also would be retrieved from documents and records related to

the partnership with Learning Academy that were proprietary to Esteemed, such as the original

contract signed by both organizations, the pro-forma documents that outlined enrollment and

revenue projections, and emails, meeting notes, memoranda, budget records, enrollment records,

and student demographic data that pertained to Esteemed’s online MBA. However, the request

for access to these proprietary documents and records was denied by Esteemed administrators on

the advice of Esteemed’s legal counsel. Therefore, the accuracy of facts and figures from these

proprietary documents could only be confirmed by the participants themselves; first-hand

verification by the researcher was not possible. Also, personal observation, participant-

observation, and the collection of field notes were not applicable to the data collection of this

study (Marshall & Rossman, 2016).

Data Storage

After it was collected, the data was properly secured. To this end, computer files were

backed up, a file was maintained to locate and decipher gathered information, and anonymity

was ensured by disguising the name of the institution studied and the participants who were

interviewed (Stake, 2010).

Interviews were transcribed verbatim, with an emphasis on capturing accurately what the

participants stated (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). The interviews were transcribed manually; a

transcription service was not needed (Marshall & Rossman, 2016). The true identities of the

participants were not evident in the transcribed interviews. To preserve anonymity, pseudonyms

54

were used in the transcriptions and the identities of those interviewed were stored in a separate

document.

All transcribed interviews, collected documents, permissions from interviewees, and the

document identifying the true names of participants were preserved in a case study database

(Yin, 2014). The purpose of this database was to keep all pertinent documents and material from

the case study in one location for easy inspection or review at a later time. The database will be

secured in a locked drawer at the residence of the student researcher for at least 3 years. After

transcriptions, the recorded interviews were deleted from the electronic devices from which they

were recorded. All data and documents will be destroyed after 3 years.

Data Analysis

There was no exact moment when data analysis began in this case study, and analysis

was not viewed as an activity separate from data collection (Stake, 1995). Specifically, a

qualitative researcher looks for meanings in individual instances as well as the collective

aggregate of instances, often finding them in patterns (Stake, 1995). Critics of the case study

method insist that case study research has a bias toward verification in which researchers seek

data that confirm their preconceived notions. However, Flyvjberg (2006) argued that

falsification, not verification, is the driving analytic characteristic of a case study.

Yin (2014) recommended a highly structured approach to data analysis which contrasts

with Stake’s (1995) constructivist approach. Stake’s approach is less structured and more open-

ended, providing guidance without restricting the researcher’s ability to navigate the data. The

researchers in one study credited Stake’s approach as allowing new ideas and themes to emerge

throughout data analysis, an outcome unlikely to occur with Yin’s approach (Boblin, et al.,

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2013). Stake’s approach was employed for this doctoral study about the partnership between

Learning Academy and Esteemed.

After transcribing the interviews, the first step was coding the data. The data first was

coded using the Descriptive Coding method and then analyzed closely through second-coding

methods (Saldaña, 2013). Using the method of triangulation, coded data then was analyzed and

patterns and themes sought to find congruence (Yin, 2014) and to understand the case from

multiple perspectives (Stake, 1995). To organize the codes as they were used, a codebook was

created that identified the codes and provided examples of each for reference (Saldaña, 2013).

Trustworthiness and Verification

A concern in any qualitative study is trustworthiness. Steps that were taken to maintain

the trustworthiness and validity of this study were prolonged engagement and triangulation.

Prolonged engagement was achieved as the researcher sought to gain the trust of the participants

and to better understand the culture in which they worked (Yin, 2016). This was accomplished in

phone conversations that occurred between the researcher and the participants and through email.

Second, triangulation resulted from the review of multiple sources of data for the research. As

described earlier, these multiple data sources included information from websites, marketing

material, and news sources that described the launch of the online MBA program. In fact, a

major strength of case study research is the use of multiple sources of evidence, which sets this

methodology apart from other research methods such as experiments and surveys (Yin, 2014).

These multiple lines of evidence created what Yin (2014) called “converging lines of inquiry” (p.

120).

Protection of Human Subjects

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To protect the human subjects involved in this study, several steps were taken. First,

approval was obtained from the institutional review boards (IRBs) of both Northeastern

University (the institution that supported this doctoral study and where the student researcher

attended) and Esteemed University prior to the collection of any data (Marshall & Rossman,

2016). Second, participants signed an informed consent document that granted them the right to

voluntarily withdraw from the study at any time. This consent document explained the central

purpose of the study, the methods used in collecting the data, the known risks of the study, and

benefits the participants could expect by participating in the study (Yin, 2016). A copy of the

informed consent document is included in Appendix B.

Third, all interviews were recorded and transcribed, as previously explained. Fourth, only

the thesis advisor and the thesis committee of this study have had access to the complete data of

this study. As described previously in this chapter, all data was stored in a case study database.

And fifth, the participants were not identified by name in the study; rather, pseudonyms were

employed to ensure anonymity. A pseudonym for the university where the study was conducted

was also used.

In every step of the research process, efforts were made to practice the moral principles

of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice (Marshall & Rossman, 2016). In other words, the

study was not conducted as a means to an end, the researcher strove to ensure that no harm was

done to human participants, and considerations were made to acknowledge those who benefitted

and those who did not benefit from the study (Marshall & Rossman, 2016).

Potential Research Bias

I recognize that as the researcher of this study I carried biases that had the potential to

affect how the study was carried out and how data was analyzed and interpreted. I acknowledge

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that I was influenced by my educational, economic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. I am a

white male in my 40s. I hold degrees in journalism and business administration. I am religious

and conservative. I am married and a father of three. I was taught by my parents to take

advantage of education and stay engaged in my own education.

My perspective of online education is rooted in my experiences as an online instructor

and as an online doctoral student. I have taught online courses for several higher education

institutions, and I completed my doctoral coursework online. I believe online learning is a

significant element of the present and future of higher education. I believe online programs,

when effectively implemented, can be cost effective and can expand higher education to students

who might otherwise not have the opportunity to attend a college or university. I also do not see

online education as a second-class option to face-to-face instruction; rather, I view online

teaching and face-to-face teaching as distinct modalities with unique strengths and weaknesses.

Also, my perspective of outsourcing has been shaped by my professional background. In

my full-time employment I have engaged in partnerships with outside vendors that have

provided services to my employer. These partnerships largely were positive in nature and have

shaped my generally favorable view of outsourcing. I believe outsourcing can work well when a

suitable outsourcing partner is selected and when capable personnel oversee the relationship with

the external company.

My preconceptions and points of view were both strengths and weaknesses to my

research. I considered it a strength that I was able to conceptualize the work involved in

launching an online program due to my own experience as an online student and an online

faculty member. But it was also a weakness because I viewed the research through my own lens

of how an online program should be established and organized. My challenge was to remain

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open-minded and skeptical as I engaged in this study. To minimize my biases, I sought to

recognize the separation between insight gained from the data I collected and the knowledge I

have gained through own experiences with online education. I allowed others who know me well

to review my research questions in advance of data collection in order to seek evidence of bias or

slant. Finally, I sought to avoid making statements in the interviews I conducted that reflected

my personal opinions, as I knew these comments could have swayed the data gathered from the

participants.

Limitations

The intent of this study was to investigate the partnership between a university and an

OPM provider in the development and launch of an online MBA program in order provide

greater context to the nature of these partnerships within higher education. The study was not

without limitations. First, this was a single-site study. It gathered the perspectives and

experiences of individuals at one higher education institution who partnered with one online

program management company to launch one online program. The perspectives of those

interviewed for this study in this partnership may not parallel the perspectives of individuals at

other institutions that have launched online programs using OPM providers. Relatedly, the

methods and approaches used by Learning Academy may not mirror those used by the more than

two dozen other OPM providers in the marketplace. This being said, the findings of case study

research can be transferrable (Marshall & Rossman, 2016). Flyvjberg (2006) argued that social

science should not be restricted to research that focuses only on large, random samples or entire

populations, an approach commonly used in quantitative research. Case study research, and its

emphasis on the individual case, also has a place in social science research because “good

science is problem driven and not methodology driven” (Flyvjberg, 2006, p. 242).

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Second, the four factors of the theoretical framework selected for this research, the

resource-based theory of strategic alliances, did not describe every aspect of the partnership

between Esteemed and Learning Academy. As explained in Chapter 1, the resource-based theory

of strategic alliances covers four factors about an alliance: (a) Rationale, (b) Formation, (c)

Structural Preferences, and (d) Assessment (Das & Teng, 2000). While these four aspects of an

alliance or partnership are quite broad, the findings revealed that they did not address every

component of a university/OPM provider partnership.

A third shortcoming of this doctoral study was the inability of the researcher to gain

access to the signed agreements between Esteemed and Learning Academy due to the advice of

Esteemed’s legal counsel. Not viewing the documents first hand rendered it impossible for a full

analysis to take place of how well Learning Academy and Esteemed spelled out their

expectations contractually.

Conclusion

This chapter has focused on the research design behind this study of the partnership

between Esteemed University and Learning Academy in the planning, design, launch, and

administration of Esteemed’s online MBA program. This chapter addressed the specific research

method chosen for this study; the participants in the study; the data collection, data storage, and

analysis procedures; trustworthiness; the protection of human participants; potential researcher

biases; and possible limitations of the study. This chapter accompanies the rationale and

background of the study, as outlined in Chapter 1, and the literature review in Chapter 2. The

findings from the study are presented in the following chapter.

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Chapter 4: Findings and Analysis

The purpose of this study was to explore how a university partnered with an OPM

provider to plan, develop, and launch an online MBA program. The first three chapters addressed

the background and rationale for this study, the review of literature, and the research

methodology. This chapter reports on the findings that surfaced during the data collection phase

of the study. The chapter begins with a chronology of the implementation of Esteemed’s online

MBA program is given. The findings from the study are reported thereafter.

Chronology of the Program

The research site for this study was Esteemed University, a private, doctoral-granting

university in the Western United States. The chronology of the design and launch of Esteemed

University’s online MBA program includes these milestones:

Year 1: Conversations began within the School of Business & Management about starting

an online MBA program. Initial projections and analysis were conducted.

Year 2: Feedback and support was gathered from School of Business & Management

faculty, staff, and alumni to start the online MBA. The decision was made to not launch

the program internally but rather to find an OPM provider that could assist with aspects

of the launch process. Visits were made to the university by several OPM providers.

Year 3, January: The contract was signed with one OPM provider, Learning Academy

(pseudonym), to offer marketing, recruitment, and course development for the online

MBA program.

Year 3: The first two courses of the online MBA program (Organizational Behavior and

Accounting) were designed through the collaborative efforts of Esteemed faculty and

administrators and the Learning Academy instructional design team.

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Year 3, October: A full-time Director of Online Learning was hired at Esteemed to

oversee all online learning efforts within the School of Business & Management,

including the online MBA program.

Year 4, January: The online MBA program launched with two courses.

Year 4, March: A full-time Assistant Director of Online Learning was hired at Esteemed

to help manage the day-to-day operation of the online MBA program and oversee the

partnership with Learning Academy.

Year 5, August: A full-time Director of eLearning was hired at Esteemed to provide in-

house course development expertise.

Year 6: Esteemed’s online MBA program was ranked one of the best online MBA

programs in the United States by a major publication.

Findings from the Study

The findings from the study are summarized in the following four themes related to the

partnership between Esteemed University and Learning Academy: (a) Decision Making, (b)

Aligning Expectations (between Esteemed and Learning Academy), (c), Collaboration (among

Esteemed faculty and Learning Academy instructional designers), and (d) Accountability.

Woven into the description of each theme is relevant narrative and chronology of the online

MBA program’s origin, the details of the financial and contractual arrangements between both

Esteemed and Learning Academy, information about Esteemed and Learning Academy gathered

from websites and other marketing material, and anecdotes that illustrate the ongoing challenges

of administering the program in a university/OPM provider partnership. Often, direct quotations

from participants are included.

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Theme 1: Decision making. The first theme that emerged from the study’s data was that

of decision making. The creation, launch, and administration of Esteemed’s online MBA

program required many decisions to be made by Esteemed administrators and faculty as they

partnered with Learning Academy staff.

The first decision Esteemed administrators had to make was whether to start an online

MBA at all. Tom, the Dean of the School of Business & Management, said he and his colleagues

noted a growing trend toward the creation of online MBA programs. “We felt there was a certain

inevitability for us be in the space and we thought it might be better to get it a little bit earlier to

develop some kind of niche market for us” (personal communication, December 16, 2015).

Cynthia, an online faculty member, echoed this sense of inevitability toward online learning. She

recalled that early faculty supporters of the launch of the online MBA argued that “it’s not if it’s

when” that Esteemed embraced online learning. These faculty members adopted the charge that

“we’re late to the party, so let’s go on strong, let’s hit this hard, and let’s build the best we can

online” (personal communication, January 20, 2016). The online MBA also represented an

additional revenue stream to the School of Business & Management. James, the Director of

Online Programs, stated that although Esteemed is a not-for-profit institution, it relies on tuition

revenue for financial sustenance. The online MBA “was a way to tap into additional revenue

streams that would not be available to us in the in-person classroom format” (personal

communication, December 2, 2015).

Launching the online MBA required the support of the Esteemed community. To gain

this support, meetings and discussions were held with faculty groups, alumni groups, senior

university administrators, and Esteemed’s board of regents. The creation of the online MBA

program “was seen as an important strategic shift” for Esteemed because it would be the first

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fully online program at the university (Tom, personal communication, December 16, 2015).

Some Esteemed MBA alumni were concerned about the “value” of their degrees if the university

created an online MBA program (Tom, personal communication, December 16, 2015). Some

faculty members opposed the idea of an online MBA, too, because they said it would “cheapen

the brand” and “stigmatize the program,” said Andrew, a faculty member who teaches online.

Andrew told of a “seminal event” in which he and several other Esteemed faculty and

administrators participated in a panel discussion with business school faculty to debate the merits

of launching an online MBA. At the “contentious” and “heated” meeting, “the faculty pounded

questions” at the panel members about why an online program was necessary. As one of the

panel members, Andrew cited the example of Kodak from the business world to illustrate his

argument to why the university needed to add an online MBA:

I teach strategy, and one of things we talk about with Kodak is that they invented

digital photography and ignored it and became marginalized. So in this discussion

to the whole group I said, “Do we want to become Kodak where we will be

marginalized?” Because in my view, if we didn’t have an online presence, 5 years

out or so we would become marginalized (personal communication, January 22,

2016).

These early discussions led to a foundational decision: The online MBA would use the

fully employed MBA as a “benchmark” and would feature the “same cost, the same admission

standards, and the same faculty” as the fully employed program (Tom, personal communication,

December 16, 2015). The School of Business & Management “didn’t want to create a program

that was seen as lesser,” according to Patrick, the Assistant Director of Online Programs

(personal communication, December 10, 2015). After all, asked Kathryn, the Director of

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eLearning, “Why should there be any differences? Why would we change it based on the

delivery mode? So it’s the exact same” (personal communication, December 15, 2015). While

the programs are essentially equal, slight differences do exist. One example is the choice of

emphases for the MBA. Although Esteemed online MBA students must complete the same

number of credits for graduation as their on-campus counterparts, the fully employed program

offers more than twice the number of concentration areas.

Some opponents to the online MBA argued that adding an online MBA would, in

essence, be “cannibalizing” enrollment of the fully employed MBA program because it would

attract students who would otherwise enroll in on-campus courses in the evenings and on the

weekends in one of Esteemed’s five regional campuses. But this has not been the case. The

online MBA students consistently report that they cannot attend on-campus courses “because of

life circumstances that do not allow them to come to evening classes, even if they are only 5 or

10 miles away from campus” (James, personal communication, December 2, 2015).

Another important decision that Esteemed leadership made with the online MBA was to

identify a target demographic for the program. Like the on-campus, fully employed MBA

program, this target demographic is the working professional seeking to apply course concepts

immediately into the workplace. This target audience was clearly identified in national news

stories and in Esteemed-produced marketing material announcing the launch of the Esteemed

online MBA. The program is considered a fully online MBA even though two on-campus

residency workshops are required of all students. Each workshop lasts one weekend in duration.

The first residency workshop occurs during the first semester of the 2-year program; the second

residency weekend takes place during the student’s second year.

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Choosing Learning Academy. Once the decision was made to launch the online MBA

program at Esteemed, the next question was to determine how to do it. Should it launch

internally with existing university personnel, or should the School of Business & Management

look outside to partner with an online program management provider that would provide

recruitment, marketing, and course design expertise in exchange for a cut of the revenue? After a

“tremendous amount of discussion about the pros and cons about doing it internally versus going

with an outside provider,” a major reason for choosing the partnership with the OPM provider

was that “we wanted to get to market very quickly” (James, personal communication, December

2, 2015). This view was shared by Michelle, an online faculty member, who said the university

moved into the online learning space “blind” and needed the “knowledge and the resources” of

an OPM provider to “come up to speed quickly” (personal communication, December 21, 2015).

Kathryn commented that the primary motivation for Esteemed to partner with an OPM

provider was to obtain the expertise the vendor would provide to the university. Esteemed’s

marketing department had been “decimated” due to attrition, the university did not employ a

recruiter for the online programs, and Esteemed had not built a course development team in

house, “so we really had to look outside for a partner that had those services” (Kathryn, personal

communication, December 15, 2015). Partnering with an OPM provider also helped

administrators and faculty better understand the online education market. Even though Esteemed

had decades of experience in business education, teaching business in the online space was a new

venture. The partnership “allowed us to move forward in a more efficient manner instead of

getting bogged down in the smaller details of the program” (Tom, personal communication,

December 16, 2015).

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The decision makers within the School of Business & Management had no shortage of

options as they selected an OPM provider. As described in Chapter 1, more than 30 such

companies exist in the United States. As champion of the online MBA program within the

School of Business & Management, Tom identified several OPM provider options and reached

out to the universities with whom those providers partnered. He then invited senior leaders from

those OPM providers to come to the Esteemed campus and present their visions for

implementing Esteemed’s online MBA program. The presenters from Learning Academy “were

the ones who were most interested in us” (Tom, personal communication, December 16, 2015).

The other OPM providers who presented desired to partner with institutions seeking to start

large-scale online programs with many students. However, Learning Academy was interested in

Esteemed because of “our smaller-scale plans and program of 300ish students at full capacity”

(Tom, personal communication, December 16, 2015). Andrew was among the 15 or 20 people

who participated in the presentations from the 3 or 4 different OPM provider finalists, including

Learning Academy. He remarked that some of the presentations “lacked substance.” Learning

Academy stood above the crowd, however. “They sent a number of people and they were clearly

the people we were going to go with, if we were going to go with someone” (personal

communication, January 22, 2016).

It did not hurt that Learning Academy had a well-established reputation within the

industry. “We liked the list of universities they were partnering with” (Tom, personal

communication, December 16, 2015). Tom spoke with individuals from some of Learning

Academy’s partner institutions and they gave “generally a favorable response” to partnering with

Learning Academy, James noted. Had the responses not been so positive, “I think we may not

have gone with” Learning Academy (personal communication, December 2, 2015). Learning

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Academy’s website claims the company partners with more than 40 academic institutions and

supports more than 200 online degree programs. Another reason Esteemed leadership honed in

on Learning Academy was that Learning Academy offered to front the money required to start

the program. In fact, Learning Academy did not earn any revenue from the partnership until after

the first cohort of students paid their tuition at the start of Year 3. This was about a year after the

contract was signed, and after Learning Academy had incurred costs in recruitment, marketing,

and course development. Andrew explained that this financial arrangement provided a “low-risk

alternative” for Esteemed to move into online education with minimal financial investment—a

good fit for what he called the university’s “very conservative” and “risk adverse” culture

(personal communication, January 22, 2016).

Signing the contract. Once they had selected Learning Academy as the OPM provider

that would help launch their online MBA program, the next task for School of Business &

Management decision makers was to sign the partnership agreement. The contract that Esteemed

and Learning Academy leaders settled on after much debate extended for 7 years, with an opt-out

clause that allows Esteemed to exit the arrangement after 5 years if after the fourth year the

online MBA fails to reach 251 active, enrolled students. Learning Academy agreed to supply the

startup capital for marketing, recruitment, and course development, while Esteemed would pay

for faculty and technology support. In exchange for these services, Esteemed agreed to pay 55%

of the tuition paid by each online MBA student to Learning Academy, after the cost of the

scholarships the university covers on behalf of the student was excluded. “To an outside person,

[giving away 55%] may seem kind of crazy, but actually at that time it was quite good in terms

of revenue sharing” (James, personal communication, December 2, 2015). James reported that he

knows of contracts in which the OPM providers earn 80 or 85% of the tuition revenue. So

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negotiating the 55/45 split did not come easily (personal communication, December 2, 2015).

“We fought them on the revenue share. We fought them for an extra 5% at the end. I felt we

negotiated really hard” (Tom, personal communication, December 16, 2015).

Giving way more than half of the earned revenue to Learning Academy is “a relatively

lucrative arrangement based on their expenses and us not having those expenses to have the

program up and running and be successful” (James, personal communication, December 2,

2015). But the contract is not without flaws, Patrick commented. The contract requires 55% to

paid out to Learning Academy, even if an online student who enrolls in the online MBA program

comes to Esteemed by way of referral, by means of the program’s website, or even is “the son of

the president” (Patrick, personal communication, December 10, 2015). Patrick added: “I didn’t

write the contract but that has been an issue with perceived fairness” (personal communication,

December 10, 2015). Another issue of perceived fairness has been the stipulation in which

Learning Academy earns 20% of the tuition revenue from a fully employed MBA student who

chooses to enroll in an online MBA class even though Learning Academy had nothing to do with

the recruitment of that student. “We’re seeing an increase in demand from fully employed

students” (Patrick, personal communication, December 10, 2015). School of Business &

Management administrators and faculty expect this demand to continue to grow because of the

flexibility Esteemed offers its MBA students to toggle freely between the on-campus and online

programs as their schedules demand.

The strengths of each partner. Both Esteemed and Learning Academy brought unique

strengths to the partnership in launching the online MBA program. Both organizations needed to

identify those strengths and determine how to use them most advantageously in the partnership.

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Most participants in the study mentioned that Esteemed’s strengths include a strong brand

and reputation. Michelle, an online faculty member, credited the university administration in

upholding the Esteemed brand in the creation of the program. “They were very involved in

creating the online program so it really did have our brand associated with it. We didn’t stamp

our brand name and throw out some courses. It was very, very closely monitored and thought

through” (personal communication, December 21, 2015). This deep involvement in creating the

program reflected “a demand, a requirement, an absolute focus on the quality on the program”

that the online program office and faculty jointly shared (James, personal communication,

December 2, 2015).

Among other assets Esteemed brought to the partnership were the faculty members who

have taught in the online MBA program. According to Cynthia, these faculty members were not

only “experts in their domains and content areas” but also offered the program the “structure and

commitment” it needed to succeed (personal communication, January 20, 2016). Andrew called

them “core faculty that were willing to work together and work hard to help the program come to

fruition” (personal communication, January 22, 2016). The faculty members who designed the

courses and taught in the new online MBA program were “patient and pretty critical and very

thoughtful about what it would look like” to teach courses such as accounting and organizational

behavior online, said William, an online faculty member (personal communication, January 21,

2016). Some faculty members already had experience using online teaching tools such as Adobe

Connect and Camtasia Relay, which also helped (William, personal communication, January 21,

2016).

Most of the participants labeled Esteemed’s student-centered approach to instruction with

terms such as “high-touch environment,” “personal touch,” “personal attention,” and “student

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experience,” and described Esteemed’s online MBA as a “boutique and not a factory.” William

stated that “we certainly have such a central belief in student-centered learning. The idea of

going into an online space carried with it a lot more weight than it would in a program at a

school with a different philosophy” (personal communication, January 21, 2016).

Learning Academy’s greatest strengths in the launch and development of the program,

according to the participants, were the same reasons Esteemed chose to partner with the

company: its business model, infrastructure, financial investment, and expertise in course

development, marketing, and recruitment. Andrew emphasized the financial resources that

Learning Academy brought to the partnership. “They were willing to put up cash up front to

have the infrastructure and the staff for the implementation of the program. That, to me, was the

thing that made it possible” (personal communication, January 22, 2016). Cynthia added this

insight:

The fact that they had instructional designers and had a management structure and

built-in tutorials that they could bring to bear was huge. We didn’t have the ability

to round up an entire instructional design department and team on the fly to the

scale that was needed to launch this program. They can bring that to you. That’s

really why you ask for them (personal communication, January 20, 2016).

Learning Academy provided a system that established consistency and uniformity.

Michelle noted that this infrastructure and emphasis on standardization was an asset to the

partnership because Esteemed’s blended learning courses, created internally in the years prior to

the partnership with Learning Academy, had not been created with a uniform vision in mind.

These hybrid courses do not feature the same similarity and consistency as do the courses

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engineered by Learning Academy’s instructional design team (personal communication,

December 21, 2015).

This infrastructure was an asset to the partnership not only from the standpoint of

instructional design but also in scale. Tom cited one example: Because of their size in the

industry, Learning Academy has received assistance and guidance from Google in structuring

online search terms (personal communication, December 16, 2015). “When you are walking into

the unknown, to have someone who has been there before by your side or in front of you is a

huge strength” (Cynthia, personal communication, January 20, 2016).

Building a base of online faculty. Other major decision Esteemed administrators made at

the onset of the partnership was choosing who would teach the online MBA courses and how the

faculty members would be compensated. Because the blueprint for the online MBA was the on-

campus, fully employed MBA program, the logical instructors for the online MBA courses were

the faculty members teaching in the fully employed program. Tom said he “really wanted us to

create the best possible online MBA program” so he personally recruited the strongest group of

initial faculty he could, especially those instructors “who were interested in technology and

trying something different. And those who were a little entrepreneurial” (personal

communication, December 16, 2015). Kathryn said she likes the way Esteemed recruited the

initial faculty to develop the online courses because they were “invested in it.” She referred to

them as “early adopters” of technology, or at least those who were “comfortable doing online

courses” (personal communication, December 15, 2015). Cynthia said the requirements to

become a lead faculty member included a desire to teach online and a willingness to engage in

online training and self-development. And, “obviously you had to be a full-time faculty member

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in good standing and an expert in your teaching area” (personal communication, January 20,

2016).

Because students begin Esteemed’s online MBA during three different points of the

academic year, the core courses in the program also are offered three times per year. With a

maximum class size of 25 students, a lead faculty member may not be able to teach all sections

of the course. So some part-time instructors and adjuncts are used to teach overflow sections of

courses, but “in 90% of the cases, it’s the exact same faculty who teach in the in-person

program” (James, personal communication, December 2, 2015). Of the 20 MBA faculty

members who teach online, 16 hold terminal degrees, and 10 of the 20 are tenure-track or

tenured. All of them teach in the on-ground, in person, campus-based MBA programs.

Each MBA faculty member who agreed to teach online was paid $15,000 to create the

initial online course. “It was a very generous stipend. And because of that I think the quality was

really amplified. If you’re not getting paid to put together an online course you’re not going to

put as much effort into it” (Michelle, personal communication, December 21, 2015). Additional

stipends were paid to teach overload sections, to maintain the course each trimester, and to

supervise supporting faculty members teaching the course, if applicable. Cynthia called the

$15,000 stipend to develop the course “a significant amount of financial incentive,” but she

added that money alone cannot build a strong team of online faculty members who are

committed to the success of the program. A commitment to online learning must be present. She

said,

If you don’t like it, if you don’t buy into it, if you didn’t drink the Kool Aid, if

you don’t believe in the efficacy of this delivery format, if you’re not confident in

your ability to manage through the ambiguity of online teaching, if you can’t

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manifest a social presence in a virtual environment, or if you just flat out hate

social media and all things virtual, this is not going to be the stage for you. It

doesn’t matter how much we pay someone, it just won’t fly (personal

communication, January 20, 2016).

Due to the early resistance in creating an online MBA program, there were some faculty

“naysayers” in the beginning, Tom said, but “I think we made some progress to help them

understand that online was coming and it could still be a high-touch element. It didn’t have to be

implemented like the for-profit schools were implementing it” (personal communication,

December 16, 2015). After two unpleasant experiences teaching online for other universities,

Michelle said her experience teaching online in Esteemed’s online MBA program has been

positive. Esteemed administrators have succeeded in “aligning professionals to help the

professors make it an effective and enjoyable experience” (personal communication, December

21, 2015).

The learning management system. Another of the early decisions in the launch of the

online MBA program was the determination of which learning management system (LMS)

would be used. Esteemed’s online MBA courses are hosted on the Sakai LMS, but Sakai was not

selected by the School of Business & Management for the online MBA because of its unique

features. Rather, it was chosen by default because Esteemed University had made a multiyear

commitment to Sakai a few years prior for all programs that required an LMS. The School of

Business & Management chose to use Sakai rather than use a different LMS in order to create

“an element of uniformity” between the blended courses offered in the on-ground program and

the new, fully online MBA program. This would also provide “an element of flexibility for our

students” (Tom, personal communication, December 16, 2015). Also, it meant the School did not

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bear the financial costs of leasing and supporting a different platform. Learning Academy works

with any LMS a university brings to a partnership, so Learning Academy did not influence this

decision.

Sakai is not the ideal platform for the online MBA program, Kathryn stated. Because it’s

an open source platform, it doesn’t have the company backing or the support that other LMSs do.

Those who update Sakai are software developers acting on a volunteer basis. When she first

arrived at Esteemed, Kathryn pushed for the School of Business & Management to change LMS

platforms but she eventually abandoned her quest because she realized that she would become

the default administrative support for the new LMS, were one to be adopted, because Esteemed’s

IT department does not employ an LMS administrator. “I can’t think of an institution that

doesn’t have an LMS administrator. It’s just such an anomaly” (Kathryn, personal

communication, December 15, 2015). The lack of IT support behind the LMS translates means

Esteemed cannot integrate technology tools into Sakai without the expertise of a computer

programmer. “The university is so exceedingly conservative, in multiple respects. But in this

case with educational technology, we are 15 years behind most other universities in this realm”

(Kathryn, personal communication, December 15, 2015).

Theme 2: Aligning expectations. The second theme that emerged in the study was the

need to align expectations between Learning Academy and Esteemed University in their

partnership as they collaborated in the launch and administration of Esteemed’s online MBA

program. Among the expectations that the two organizations worked to align for the online MBA

were revenue and enrollment projections, marketing and branding strategies, the performance of

the Learning Academy staff assigned to the Esteemed account, and the schedule for the release

of the courses. Several participants stated that success in the partnership largely depended on

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how well these expectations were identified and accepted. William typified these comments

when he said that “roles and responsibilities really need to be carved out very, very clearly—as

explicitly as possible—and have really strong agreement” in order for an OPM

provider/university relationship to thrive (personal communication, January 21, 2016).

Revenue projections. New to online education, Esteemed administrators trusted the

enrollment predictions given by Learning Academy. Tom said he and others in the School of

Business & Management planned for about 300 online MBA students at full capacity, each

paying around $75,000 in tuition over the duration of the 2-year program. After the revenue

share, these estimates would equate to an expected 12 or 13 percent return for Esteemed from the

online MBA program. “This was based on their research. They felt we could get to 300 students

with a pretty quick ramp up. It was an educated guess, based on what we thought we could

achieve” (Tom, personal communication, December 16, 2015). Learning Academy

representatives spoke confidently about reaching these projections. “They said, ‘We can do this.

We can bring in X number of students, and based on the number of credits the students will be

taking, X number of dollars will be generated and your portion will be 45% of those dollars’”

(James, personal communication, December 2, 2015).

Marketing and branding strategies. Even before the contract was formalized, Esteemed

took steps to align the marketing and branding strategies of the partnering organizations.

Learning Academy leaders created a branding vision document and they discussed it with

Esteemed decision makers. Learning Academy staff also visited Esteemed’s main campus.

According to the Learning Academy website, these are typical steps Learning Academy takes to

create marketing material that matches the vision and brand of a partnering institution. These

steps did help to align the marketing and branding strategies, but “when it came to

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implementation, there were challenges in terms of them straying from our brand” (Tom, personal

communication, December 16, 2015). Documents retrieved for this study that describe Learning

Academy’s marketing efforts reported that the company uses a variety of marketing channels to

reach potential online students, including internet and print advertising, direct mail, and

professional organizations. In addition, a Learning Academy marketing manager is assigned to

each account and communicates regularly with the staff of the partnering institution to update the

marketing plan, as needed. The process is described in these documents as collaborative.

Almost from the beginning, Esteemed administrators realized they would need to closely

monitor the marketing efforts of Learning Academy to ensure the material sent on behalf of

Esteemed reflected the level of quality they expected to see. Individuals from Esteemed’s online

programs department and marketing departments reviewed every marketing message sent by

Learning Academy. Their reviews caught mistakes in grammar and spelling as well as

misinformation. When he joined the online programs team, Patrick signed up to receive the

marketing material as if he were a prospective online MBA student. His experiment revealed

various errors and typos. “It was sloppy. We made a policy that we needed to review everything

before we sent it out to everyone. We’ve had to micromanage that part of the business” (Patrick,

personal communication, December 10, 2015). The mistakes caught by individuals from the

School of Business & Management extended beyond typos. James related one occasion when

Learning Academy used an infographic in a brochure about Esteemed’s online MBA program

that he found offensive. “I found it to be almost racist in the messaging. It could have been a

disaster if they had released that infographic” (personal communication, December 2, 2015).

Hiring a full-time marketing person at Esteemed to focus on aligning Esteemed’s

branding and marketing strategies with those of Learning Academy has helped create

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consistency in the external messaging and has strengthened the university’s marketing efforts for

the online MBA (James, personal communication, December 2, 2015). So, too, has requiring

online students to come to the main campus for two residency weekends. “When they come to

campus there is a great spirit of comradery” (Andrew, personal communication, January 22,

2016). Perhaps the most effective marketing for the online MBA program has come in the form

of national rankings. After its third year with enrolled students, a major publication ranked

Esteemed’s program as one of the best online MBA programs in the United States. “You can

have all the advertising out there, but I would say that 99% of the people, before they apply to

the program, look at how it is ranked” (Andrew, personal communication, January 22, 2016).

Learning Academy staff. Learning Academy and Esteemed differed in their perspectives

of how the personnel at Learning Academy assigned to the Esteemed account were performing.

Some of Learning Academy’s recruiters were “ineffective, or worse, they did damage to the

program” with their methods of communicating with potential Esteemed students (James,

personal communication, December 2, 2015). One particular recruiter created a “fair amount” of

problems, and only after repeated complaints by Esteemed staff was the recruiter moved off the

Esteemed account. “Her judgment was incredibly poor in how she dealt with prospective

students” (James, personal communication, December 2, 2015). This “dissonance” between

Esteemed and Learning Academy regarding recruitment was evident from the beginning,

Andrew reported. “When you have a boutique program, and when someone inquires about the

program, you give that person a lot of attention. It’s very high touch” (personal communication,

January 22, 2016). Learning Academy assigned “lower-level-skilled people” as the point of

contact for prospective students, and often they could not address the questions the prospective

students asked. Patrick and others from Esteemed were then tasked with calling these persons

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and answering the questions Learning Academy’s staff could not (Andrew, personal

communication, January 22, 2016). Esteemed’s experience with Learning Academy’s recruiters

and student specialists differed from the claims Learning Academy makes in its own marketing

material. The company claims its recruiters provide personalized attention to all online students

in its online programs, including answering student queries and concerns.

Course release dates. Esteemed and Learning Academy have differed in their

expectations of how and when the online MBA courses should be released to the online MBA

students. Kathryn stated that Learning Academy releases courses before a term begins in a

“clandestine” and “random” manner. Even though the Online Programs staff at Esteemed asks

that courses be published on an established schedule—such as the Saturday prior to the course

start—this schedule is rarely met. Occasionally the courses are completed days or weeks early,

and other times they will go live at the last minute (personal communication, December 15,

2015). William said he would prefer that each online course open a week prior to the start of

each term so students could explore the syllabus and the first lesson and ask questions (personal

communication, January 21, 2016).

The missions of the organizations. The areas of conflict in aligning expectations

between Esteemed and Learning Academy can be traced to the business models of the two

organizations, according to the participants. As Patrick stated, “The partnership is going to be

successful when the business models and philosophies align” (personal communication,

December 10, 2015). Signs were apparent from the onset of the partnership that the business

models and philosophies of both organizations were not in sync. Several participants called the

Learning Academy business model “cookie cutter.” James said Learning Academy is “a

business, so their focus is on efficiencies, standardization, and limiting resource allocation”

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(personal communication, December 2, 2015). Learning Academy employs standardized

approaches to course development, marketing, and student recruitment, and allows for minimal

innovation or flexibility. James commented that this is especially difficult for a university such

as Esteemed that places a high emphasis on the student experience (personal communication,

December 2, 2015). Andrew explained Learning Academy’s model as one that uses “certain

templates” and is “factory oriented.” This approach enables multiple sections of one course to

look and feel consistent to the students, regardless of who teaches them, but it also can also be

“cumbersome” (personal communication, January 22, 2016). Andrew cited the example of the

required business simulation course in the online MBA that he teaches. The course requires

students to come to campus to navigate challenges posed by a computerized business simulation

program while working in groups. Its unusual format fell outside Learning Academy’s comfort

zone in instructional design. “That was one we pretty much developed ourselves because that

simulation is not a cookie-cutter course in a typical MBA program. That was one that we

developed in spite of them. I don’t see that they provided any help. In fact, they slowed us down”

(personal communication, January 22, 2016).

Tom said there is little visibility into how much Learning Academy spends in any aspect

of the partnership, and Learning Academy staff members rarely answer direct questions on such

matters (personal communication, December 16, 2015). Patrick lamented that Esteemed has less

control over certain marketing and hiring decisions than university personnel would like

(personal communication, December 10, 2015). Tom said he believes the source of the strain in

the partnership is a misalignment of goals between the two organizations. He stated,

These are challenging partnerships to maintain because we’re in an environment

where they are making decisions about resources and we’re not completely

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aligned on our goals. Yes we want more students, but they will compromise the

brand standards to achieve that. We don’t want to compromise our brand

standards. It’s too important to us. That’s a long-run look. The OPM has more of

a short-run view of things. … We want to provide an excellent experience for the

students. We want to provide a consistent vision and mission and branding

message. And so, that’s tricky. There is conflict in those goals (personal

communication, December 16, 2015).

Patrick concurred that the missions of Esteemed and Learning Academy are often

misaligned. In his mind, Esteemed’s mission is quality focused while Learning Academy’s is

quantity focused. Patrick said he believes Learning Academy leaders took a “promise the moon”

approach to win the contract with Esteemed, assuming they would find a way later to reach the

projections they had made. “It’s a misleading strategy they are using. I just don’t think that’s a

successful way to go into a partnership” (personal communication, December 10, 2015).

Theme 3: Collaboration. Collaboration among Esteemed faculty who taught the online

MBA courses and Learning Academy instructional designers who helped convert the on-campus

courses to the online environment was the third theme that emerged in the study.

The collaboration began months before any courses were developed with stages of

planning and preparation. Tom mentioned that “best practices and guidelines for developing

courses” were established early on which included the number of face-to-face touch points the

faculty needed to have in each course (personal communication, December 16, 2015). He

summarized the course development process in these terms:

As a group we sat down, and we had some guidance from an elearning specialist

in terms of what made sense and what was best in terms of the general market and

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best practices, and we decided how it fit what we do and what we’re good at and

what our mission is. And at intersection of those two things, we created courses in

this general kind of framework (Tom, personal communication, December 16,

2015).

The course development process. Breaking it down further, prospective online faculty

first underwent months of training in online pedagogy. Afterward, each lead faculty member

from Esteemed was assigned to work with an instructional designer from Learning Academy to

help the faculty member translate his or her on-campus course into the online environment.

These instructional designers became the “interface” the faculty members had with Learning

Academy (William, personal communication, January 21, 2016). This close collaboration took

place the trimester before the students enrolled in the course, usually about 4 or 5 months in

advance. The faculty members had a “blank slate” from which to work, but always used their on-

campus course as the starting point and the foundation for conceptualizing the online counterpart

(Patrick, personal communication, December 10, 2015). “Their idea was to show us how we

could take the same subject matter and deliver it in a way that would take advantageous of the

technology” (Andrew, personal communication, January 22, 2016). Michelle offered this

summation:

They taught us how to create course learning objectives and to take those course

learning objectives and create session learning objectives. From those session

learning objectives, we learned to create the curriculum in the course and to

determine what evaluations we would use to ensure the students learned it

(personal communication, December 21, 2015).

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Learning Academy reveals few specifics about the course development process in the

marketing material it prepares for prospective university partners. These documents describe the

process generally, stating that Learning Academy instructional designers work closely with

faculty members to convert their material to the online environment and provide logistical

support to faculty where necessary. The documents do offer a few examples of the course

activities and multimedia elements added by Learning Academy designers for various online

programs but the steps of quality assurance taken by Learning Academy throughout the course

development process is not detailed.

The faculty member’s task of building an online course was “daunting” because it

involved “thinking about every minute of learning, and chunking the content back to ensure that

I was communicating the content back in a means that proved to be interactive and dynamic”

(Cynthia, personal communication, January 20, 2016). Put simply, the process required each

faculty members to understand the capabilities of Learning Academy’s instructional design staff

and to determine the most effective design for each piece of content for the course. The process

required “hundreds and hundreds of hours” for each faculty member (Cynthia, personal

communication, January 20, 2016). Part of the challenge for faculty members was realistically

assessing the time commitment needed to incorporate certain technologies and tools such as rich

media assets. “You don’t really think that it would take 60 hours for you to write, rewrite, reedit,

review, and do. And no one told you that in the beginning. It was a black hole” (Cynthia,

personal communication, January 20, 2016).

Striking a work/home balance during the months of course development was very

difficult. Cynthia observed that lead faculty members engaged in the process “were supposed to

produce second work weeks. Or change the fact that there are 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a

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week.” She called this time “some of the most challenging work days in developing course

content that I’ve ever had” because “I was working 24/7 work weeks” (personal communication,

January 20, 2016). Another challenge was mastering the logistics of teaching in the online

modality. According to Andrew, “teaching an online course isn’t a slam dunk.” Rather, it is a big

time commitment due to the steady receipt of emails and questions from students throughout the

week (personal communication, January 22, 2016).

The courses for the online MBA program were developed and designed in the order in

which the students in the original cohort enrolled in them. This course design process is typical

for a new online program. “You don’t build every course from the beginning and have them

ready. You build them the trimester in advance so when the next trimester comes up, those

courses will be ready for those students moving through the program” (James, personal

communication, December 2, 2015). The first courses designed were 4-credit courses in

organizational behavior and accounting, along with a 1-credit leadership development workshop.

These were followed by a 4-credit quantitative analysis course and a 4-credit economics course,

taught in the second trimester. The rest of the curriculum was designed and rolled out on the

same schedule as the fully employed MBA, with the intent of students completing the program in

2 years.

Feedback on the collaboration process. Opinions from the participants about the process

of collaborating with Learning Academy instructional designers varied. William reported that his

on-campus course translated to the online space “reasonably well,” although he saw “things that

you would likely do less of or more of in other ways to interface and support students” (personal

communication, January 21, 2016). Overall, however, he said he is “satisfied with the execution

of the course and students basically walking away with the learning experience that they should

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have” (personal communication, January 21, 2016). Cynthia said that Learning Academy’s

infrastructure and experienced instructional design team was well suited for helping first-time

online instructors convert their courses to the new learning environment because they taught the

“best practices for accomplishing it” (personal communication, January 20, 2016). William

stated that the instructional designer assigned to him was “certainly well intentioned. He was

very responsive. If I had a question, or a comment, or just a need, he would respond” (personal

communication, January 21, 2016). Michelle stated that Learning Academy’s plan for course

development featured “a pretty good, solid timeline” and, “for the most part, they did deliver

something when they said they would deliver it” (personal communication, December 21, 2015).

She also praised Learning Academy’s ideas for interactive activities.

Other comments mentioned challenges and frustrations experienced by faculty and

administrators. Patrick said that the courses aren’t as “cutting edge” as they could be. “We

thought there would be more spectacular multimedia in the courses” (personal communication,

December 10, 2015). Efforts to increase the multimedia in the courses have resulted in push back

from Learning Academy due to the development time required. “It’s been a disappointment”

(Patrick, personal communication, December 10, 2015). William desired greater assistance from

Learning Academy in selecting technology tools to use in his online course, such as software for

recording lectures and short videos. Learning Academy’s approach was to give 4 or 5 product

options to faculty members but not to endorse any of them. This may work for some faculty who

enjoy testing different software, William said, but “I would have preferred something a bit more

prescriptive” (personal communication, January 21, 2016).

Theme 4: Accountability. The fourth and final theme that emerged from the findings of

the study was the need for accountability in the partnership. To hold Learning Academy

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accountable for performance in the partnership, Esteemed administrators and faculty have used

several metrics. The metrics correlate closely to the expectations Esteemed administrators and

faculty had going into the partnership. These metrics include the following: (a) total student

enrollment, (b) the quality of the online students recruited by Learning Academy, (c) student

retention, (d) student satisfaction, and (e) course development quality. A visual representation of

Esteemed’s expectations of the partnership and Esteemed’s perceptions of the partnership is

found in Appendix C.

Total student enrollment. One of the most important metrics that School of Business &

Management administrators employ to assess the performance of their OPM provider partner is

that of enrollment and revenue projections. Learning Academy fell short of these projections

from the beginning of the partnership. Even though Learning Academy asserts in its marketing

material that recruitment efforts ensure a steady flow of enrolling students into each online

program it administers, this was not the case for Esteemed’s online MBA. Learning Academy’s

estimates had enrollment ramping up steadily to as many as 70 new students per term, but only

about 50% of these original projections were met. “There was one cohort in which they brought

in only 9 students. And they were calling for 50 or so. So they were crashing and burning in the

early stages” (Patrick, personal communication, December 10, 2015). And even though Learning

Academy drew up revised projections several trimesters into the existence of the program, those

numbers have also not been met. “They kind of sold us a bill of goods, making it sound like pie

in the sky and this kind of revenue will occur” (James, personal communication, December 2,

2015). Patrick said Esteemed administrators believed marketing was one of Learning Academy’s

core competencies and that Learning Academy “could turn a knob and they could increase

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students when they wanted, but that hasn’t been the case” (personal communication, December

10, 2015).

Enrollment in Esteemed’s online MBA program is “steadily improving,” Patrick said, but

the primary reason has less to do with Learning Academy’s recruitment efforts and more to do

with changes the university made on its end to boost enrollment (personal communication,

December 10, 2015). Recognizing the seriousness of the enrollment situation, the online MBA

committee, on Tom’s request, proposed the elimination of the requirement that new applicants

submit scores on the GMAT exam by instead offering alternatives to taking the GMAT. These

GMAT changes were subsequently reviewed and adopted by the fully employed MBA

committee as well, so both programs today have the same admission requirements. “The change

in the GMAT options has made an 80-90% change in enrollments in the positive. It’s huge. It

can’t be overemphasized how significant the GMAT alternatives have been on increasing

enrollments across both programs” (James, personal communication, December 2, 2015).

Enrollment also increased when Esteemed “greatly increased” the availability of merit

scholarships in the MBA programs. “We were losing some of the best students on paper to

competitors. We even had a campaign that said to the high-achieving students, ‘Let’s not make

money the issue that you can’t come here’” (James, personal communication, December 2,

2015). Patrick observed that it was Esteemed’s changes to the requirements that “have created

this environment of success and not necessarily [Learning Academy’s] marketing know-how”

(personal communication, December 10, 2015)

Had these GMAT and scholarship changes not been made by Esteemed, “we would

basically be dead in the water at this point” (James, personal communication, December 2,

2015). A major frustration with the revenue and enrollment numbers, according to James and

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Patrick, is that Learning Academy administrators made excuses for not hitting their numbers

even though they knew and accepted Esteemed’s GPA and GMAT requirements for applicants

when the partnership began. “They completely changed their tune when things weren’t working

by saying, ‘Well, you’ve got this barrier and that barrier’” (James, personal communication,

December 2, 2015). Another barrier stated by Learning Academy leaders was the high cost of

Esteemed’s online MBA program. James stated,

They knew what our cost was from Day 1. And they knew that tuition would be

going up, as it has, 3 or 4 percent per year. They knew the reality and they started

making excuses for why they couldn’t achieve their goals (personal

communication, December 2, 2015).

Tom offered several possible explanations of why Learning Academy has failed to meet

Esteemed’s expectations in total student enrollment. First, he theorized that Learning Academy

overestimated their potential to recruit new students “in order to make the numbers look more

attractive.” Second, he said Learning Academy may have “underestimated the momentum of

other OPM providers getting into the online space” around the time that Esteemed’s online MBA

launched. Third, Learning Academy may have overestimated Esteemed’s brand beyond the state

in which it is located, thus reducing its national appeal (personal communication, December 16,

2015).

Student quality, retention, and satisfaction. Despite falling short in total student

enrollment, the quality of students that Learning Academy has recruited has been high. “I’ve

been happy with the quality of students. This is one area that we don’t have complaints about”

(Tom, personal communication, December 16, 2015). One contributing factor to satisfaction

with the online student body may be the way in which online MBA students are accepted into the

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program. Although Learning Academy markets to and recruits potential online MBA students,

the admission committee members are the “gatekeepers,” James said, because they decide who is

admitted and who is not. This doesn’t stop Learning Academy staff from advocating on behalf of

certain students they want to have accepted, however. “They do push for people to be accepted.

They say, “This guy got in and he’s the same as this person,” and we look at it and we say, “No,

he’s really not the same’” (James, personal communication, December 2, 2015). Expectations

about student retention also have been achieved, with a retention rate of about 95%. Expectations

have also been met in student satisfaction, as measured by a survey administered to Esteemed’s

online MBA students on behalf of the Office of Institutional Effectiveness. “The satisfaction

levels are comparable to our fully employed program” (Tom, personal communication,

December 16, 2015).

Course development quality. All participants in the study—administrators and faculty

alike—commented on the poor quality control performed on the courses designed by Learning

Academy. Esteemed’s expectations in the area of course development quality have not been met.

James stated that Learning Academy’s quality assurance practices “have failed with every launch

of the new trimester,” from the first term in Year 4 to the most current term (personal

communication, December 2, 2015). When courses went live, they were full of broken links,

missing documents, inaccurate information, and activities that did not work. James said faculty

had to “review their courses with a fine-toothed comb and spend hours and hours on them” to

correct the errors. “It was a disaster” (personal communication, December 2, 2015).

Michelle experienced this first hand. The first trimester she taught her marketing course,

she drafted a 30-page document to list the mistakes created by Learning Academy staff. “It

appeared to me that there was no one doing quality control” (personal communication, December

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21, 2015). The errors included typos, videos embedded into other videos, and a video that was

not edited properly. “Their quality assurance was nonexistent” (Michelle, personal

communication, December 21, 2015). Patrick said “there is a certain quality that we expect,

given our tuition cost point.” That expectation included having Learning Academy find and fix

typos and other errors rather than expecting Esteemed faculty to perform this work. “We want

our faculty to be researching and teaching. Not going over copy to find errors” (personal

communication, December 10, 2015).

Cynthia was not the only faculty member who used the term “black hole” to describe an

aspect of the course development process. William called Learning Academy’s quality assurance

a “black hole” because the process was “really quite elusive, in terms of exactly what was going

on” (personal communication, January 21, 2016). William praised his experience collaborating

with the Learning Academy instructional designer, “but ultimately what matters is execution. If

the course is not set up to operate smoothly, that hamstrings the faculty member and you’re

basically stuck there of having to kind of put out fires” (personal communication, January 21,

2016). What added to the frustration was that faculty members were caught off guard by the

extra work they needed to perform. “The expectation was not communicated to us as professors

that we were required to do an intensive quality assurance. And if you’re not used to doing it,

and you’re not detailed oriented, it gets you into a lot of trouble” (Michelle, personal

communication, December 21, 2015). William acknowledged that Learning Academy’s task of

developing the courses was difficult due to the dozens of files, presentations, and exercises that

needed to be incorporated into each week’s online lesson. But “as a faculty member, we

basically had the expectation that the design we put on paper would actually be executed once

the course launched” (personal communication, January 21, 2016).

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Because Kathryn served as Director of eLearning, faculty members often took their

course development problems to her even though she and her team did not develop the online

MBA courses. “The bottom line is I’m going to help them out if something is going on”

(personal communication, December 15, 2015). When she discovered a problem in a course—

such as an entire module not being visible—she and James would report the problem to Learning

Academy, only to commonly a receive the answer from Learning Academy that, due to company

policy, the problem would not be fixed until the course was scheduled to be updated. “What?

No! You don’t let a mistake float around out there for a year. It’s totally unacceptable, in my

mind. Their philosophy for course development is just so different than the way I would look at

it” (Kathryn, personal communication, December 15, 2015). James voiced the same frustration

with Learning Academy’s policy:

I said to them quite bluntly, ‘If there are mistakes in that course, you are going to

go into it and fix them. Period. I don’t care what your policy is. We aren’t going

to have mistakes to be fixed remain in the course just because that’s your policy’

(personal communication, December 2, 2015).

Patrick said he believes the lack of quality control is a result of Learning Academy’s

business model that is based on “quantity and efficiencies” and not on the “quality that a

university has” (personal communication, December 10, 2015). The inconsistent quality in the

courses has impacted the credibility of the program. Some faculty members insisted they would

not continue teaching in the program if quality did not improve. “It was a disaster. It is no longer

a disaster with the course launches—it’s just more annoying that [Learning Academy] still

haven’t been able to get their act together” (James, personal communication, December 2, 2015).

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The quality concerns with course development have taught William that online faculty

members must double check everything and perform quality control themselves. “You have to be

ultimately responsible for whatever content is designed as a part of your course” (personal

communication, January 21, 2016). Andrew shared similar thoughts. “You can’t assume they

will do anything right. And even if they do it right in one iteration, you come up to the next

iteration and stuff may have crept in” (personal communication, January 22, 2016). One lesson

Cynthia has learned is that success in a university/OPM provider partnership requires a long-

term vision. “It will take time. Partners aren’t perfect. I would never say that [Learning

Academy] or anyone else would be perfect” (personal communication, January 20, 2016).

The evolution of the metrics. James said he doesn’t think the metrics have changed over

the duration of the partnership with Learning Academy. “We have been very constant in terms of

making sure our courses are in the best possible shape that they can be, and that the students

have the most positive experience possible” (personal communication, December 2, 2015). Tom

said one change he’s seen in the metrics is that the Esteemed team has begun keeping track of the

errors in course design that were introduced by Learning Academy’s course development

specialists. Adding this metric was not anticipated at the start of the partnership but it became

necessary “because a lot of our challenges were in course design elements” (personal

communication, December 16, 2015). Patrick observed, “In the beginning we were a bit more

forgiving [toward Learning Academy] but now we are not. So the metric has changed regarding

attitude” (personal communication, December 10, 2015).

The staff and faculty of the School of Business & Management entered the partnership

with the belief that Learning Academy would deliver as promised in recruitment, marketing, and

course development. Yet, “they’ve failed in all three of the core competencies that we felt they

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had going into the agreement” (Patrick, personal communication, December 10, 2015). Tom

responded in similar manner. “I would say our expectations have not been well met. We have

been in good communication with them about that fact and we’re still having struggles and

challenges” (personal communication, December 16, 2015). James commented, “Our

expectations were that they were going to deliver what they promised: a program with super high

quality, high enrollment, and top students. An absolutely positive experience. And how well

have these expectations been met? They have not been met. They have achieved, in my opinion,

mediocrity” (personal communication, December 2, 2015).

In Reflection

All challenges aside, Tom said the decision to partner with Learning Academy was the

right one, “based on the information we had” at the launch of the program. “I think it would have

been very hard to get the program off the ground without an OPM because it was our first foray,

and we didn’t have the capability to do it ourselves, at that time.” Tom added that Esteemed

might have waited to launch the online MBA program until it had developed the needed

capabilities internally, but that did not seem a realistic alternative. “Here is the long and short of

it: I don’t know that we would have changed anything. Because we negotiated really hard on the

elements, and I think with the financial expectations they had, we wanted to get a deal done”

(personal communication, December 16, 2015). Andrew shared similar views: “To me, the key

thing was, will [Esteemed] give us the money to do it internally? And the answer was, probably

not. All things considered, we would probably do much the same” (personal communication,

January 22, 2016).

Looking ahead. Even though a partnership with Learning Academy may have been the

right decision, Esteemed likely will not continue to operate its online MBA program indefinitely

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in partnership with Learning Academy. According to Tom, “I think it’s very unlikely that we

will renew our contract. We are looking very carefully at our potential exit strategy because of

our dissatisfaction and their inability to meet the contractual obligations” (Tom, personal

communication, December 16, 2015). This being said, Tom also cautioned, “We are in danger of

making a knee-jerk reaction in assuming we can do all this internally and do it better.” He

predicted that Esteemed will manage certain aspects of the program internally but may outsource

some of the work. However, if Esteemed does employ vendors for certain aspects of the

program’s administration, “those people will work for us. It would not be a revenue share; it

would be an agreement” (personal communication, December 16, 2015).

James commented that he is confident that Esteemed could successfully manage the

online MBA program internally, partially or entirely, because of “we know what needs to happen

to be able to take it on ourselves” (personal communication, December 2, 2015). Patrick said of

the three core competencies Learning Academy provides in the partnership—marketing,

recruitment, and course development—the only one he believes Esteemed may struggle in

managing internally is marketing. “I think that’s the biggest mystery to us. We have a marketing

department and I don’t think they have the skill set for this.” However, this lack of expertise in

marketing online programs is not impossible to overcome. “There might be some initial drops in

enrollment but we’ll get it. There are smart people here. I think that hiring right would fix that

issue” (personal communication, December 10, 2015). James also stated that hiring externally in

the marketing department would be inevitable. “Our marketing department has never marketed

an online program, but there are people who have done that out there that we would need to

bring into the mix” (personal communication, December 2, 2015).

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By hiring Kathryn in Year 5, Esteemed significantly increased its internal capabilities in

course development. Presumably, Kathryn and her team would take on much of the workload of

designing and updating course sites if the online MBA program were managed internally.

Kathryn said she believes her team is capable of this task “as long as we plan ahead and put the

resources in place.” This planning includes the execution of a 77-page “breakup plan” with

Learning Academy that provides a year-long ramp-up period for the day the university walks

away from its partnership with the OPM provider. “It’s not like tomorrow we’ll be ready to take

on a fully online MBA program, even with the courses being developed,” she said. “There has to

be a ramp-up period. I’ve said this since Day 1” (personal communication, December 15, 2015).

Conclusion

This chapter presented four themes that emerged from the findings from the eight

interviews with administrators and faculty from Esteemed University who had first-hand

experience with the launch and/or administration of the online MBA program and the partnership

with Learning Academy. While the comments from the participants did vary, the interviews

revealed considerable unity. All eight individuals expressed similar opinions about the strengths

that Esteemed and Learning Academy brought to the partnership, and all participants shared

serious reservations about certain components of the work performed by the Learning Academy

staff. Overall, several of Esteemed’s expectations of the partnership with Learning Academy

have not been met. Most notable among these unmet expectations is total student enrollment in

the online MBA program, a function performed by Learning Academy recruiters, and the quality

control process that followed course development. These unmet expectations have caused

Esteemed faculty and staff to look toward the future—a future that likely does not include a

partnership with Learning Academy in administering the online MBA program.

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Chapter 5: Discussion and Recommendations for Practice

This qualitative study investigated the launch, development, and administration of the

online MBA program at Esteemed University (pseudonym) through a partnership with the for-

profit online program management provider Learning Academy (pseudonym). The research

question at the heart of this study was the following: How does a university partner with an

online program management provider to design, launch, and administer an online MBA

program? The case study methodology was used to answer this research question. More

specifically, this single-site case study of the partnership between one university and one OPM

provider acted as an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) to shed light on the broader issue of

how these institution/vendor partnerships operate in higher education.

This chapter begins with an analysis of how the findings presented in Chapter 4 relate to

the theoretical framework and to the theoretical propositions outlined in Chapters 1 and 2. Each

of the four themes of the findings is then discussed individually, with an emphasis on how each

theme relates to the literature. These sections are then followed by Recommendations for

Practice, Recommendations for Future Research, and the Conclusion.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework at the foundation of this study was the resource-based theory

of strategic alliances from Das and Teng (2000). As explained in Chapter 1, the partnership

between a university and an OPM provider was considered a strategic alliance for this study

because strategic alliances are “voluntary cooperative inter-firm agreements aimed at achieving

competitive advantage for the partners” (Das & Teng, 2000, p. 33). The theory features four

factors about an alliance: (a) Rationale, (b) Formation, (c) Structural Preference, and (d)

Assessment (Das & Teng, 2000).

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As Kogut (1989) stipulated, organizations typically enter alliances for one of two

reasons: (a) to obtain resources and know-how from a partnering organization, or (b) to retain

resources and know-how in one’s own organization. As the findings of the study revealed,

Esteemed administrators and faculty chose to partner with Learning Academy to obtain the

resources and know-how that Learning Academy possessed. School of Business & Management

leadership believed Esteemed did not have the internal capability or resources to recruit online

MBA students, market an online MBA program, and build the online courses. The second half of

Kogut’s (1989) explanation of why alliances occur did not apply to the Esteemed/Learning

Academy partnership. Esteemed did not enter the partnership to retain internal resources or

know-how.

Das and Teng (2000) stated that “only if a firm cannot efficiently get needed resources

from elsewhere—except by a sharing agreement with its owners—will it be willing to form a

strategic alliance” (p. 40). The participants of this study revealed that it was unlikely that

Esteemed’s conservative senior leadership would fund an online MBA program at a cost of

several million dollars. Agreeing to partner with Learning Academy likely was the only means

by which the program could quickly get to market. Developing this expertise internally would

have cost the university and the School of Business & Management considerable time, and some

individuals believed Esteemed already lagged behind its competitors by not offering an online

MBA program.

The third element of the resource-based theory of strategic alliances is the structure of the

alliance. The structure of the strategic alliance itself depends on what resources the partnering

organizations bring. Of the four alliance structures outlined by Das and Teng (2000)—joint

ventures, minority equity alliances, bilateral contract-based alliances, and unilateral contract-

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based alliances—the one that most closely typifies an OPM provider/university partnership is

that of a bilateral contract-based alliance, one in which both organizations work closely and

constantly throughout the duration of the alliance (Mowery et al., 1996). However, by definition,

a bilateral contract-based alliance is one in which both partner organizations offer knowledge-

based resources to the partnership (Das & Teng, 2000). This breakdown of property-based

resources (those legally owned by a firm such as patents, contracts, physical resources, and

human resources) and knowledge-based resources (the organization’s know-how and skill set,

including technological resources, management, and organizational culture) was first theorized

by Miller and Shamsie (1996) and was explained in Chapter 1. As the findings from this study

revealed, Esteemed and Learning Academy each provided knowledge-based and property-based

resources in their partnership in order to develop and launch Esteemed’s online MBA program.

This was evident in the responses from the study participants about the strengths and assets that

Esteemed and Learning Academy each brought to the partnership. The property-based resources

that Esteemed brought to the partnership included its accreditation, its learning management

system, and its faculty. The knowledge-based resources included its reputation and its student-

centered approach to education. Among Learning Academy’s property-based resources was the

start-up capital needed to fund the program, and among its knowledge-based resources was

expertise in instructional design, recruitment, and marketing.

The fourth and final element of the resource-based theory of strategic alliances is the

performance of the alliance. Das and Teng (2000) argued that the most efficient means to assess

a strategic alliance is “the degree to which agreed objectives of an alliance are achieved” (p. 48).

The resources brought by Esteemed and Learning Academy to their partnership at the onset of

their partnership were complementary in nature, meaning they were non-redundant and distinct.

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This contrasts to partnerships in which the partnering organizations bring supplementary (or

largely similar) resources to their alliance (Das & Teng, 2000). When the contract was signed,

Esteemed did not possess the instructional design expertise to develop and maintain online MBA

courses. As the participants revealed in Chapter 4, Esteemed gained this expertise steadily over

the first two years of the contractual agreement with Learning Academy, particularly with the

hiring of Kathryn as the Director of eLearning. Other comments from participants signaled a

desire by Esteemed to build additional internal expertise in online program marketing. Adding

this internal expertise would render these resources as redundant, and would make Esteemed less

dependent on Learning Academy’s resources.

A component of the fourth element of the resource-based theory of strategic alliances is

the possibility of inter-organizational conflicts in the partnership. Das and Teng (2000) theorized

that conflicts tend to arise most often when partner organizations possess “different and

competing interests in the alliance,” or when the organizations possess “different and

incompatible organizational cultures and operational practices” (p. 52). The findings from this

study exposed significant conflicts between Esteemed and Learning Academy regarding the

administration of the online MBA. These conflicts were centered primarily in a misalignment in

expected outcomes from the partnership in the areas of student enrollment (and, thus, revenue

generation) and course development quality. The study’s findings did not show evidence of

“different and competing interests” in the partnership, but they did suggest “different and

incompatible organizational cultures and operational practices” surrounding the level of quality

and customer service expected by Esteemed, given its high tuition and its reputation within the

higher education sector.

Theoretical Propositions

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The correlation between the findings and the theoretical framework of this study has been

explained. A correlation also exists between the theoretical propositions made in Chapter 2 (the

literature review) and the findings from this study. As concluded in Chapter 2, a common thread

throughout the decisions involved in online program implementation is communication among

administration and faculty. This study’s findings substantiated this proposition, as decision

makers within the School of Business & Management needed to secure faculty buy-in before the

online MBA program could get off the ground, especially because existing full-time business

school faculty would be asked to teach the online courses. What was not addressed in Chapter

2’s theoretical propositions, however, was the necessity of communication between the

partnering organizations. From the data it can be concluded that insufficient communication

played a key role in the conflicts experienced by Learning Academy and Esteemed in the

creation of marketing and branding strategies for the online MBA, and in outlining expectations

surrounding course development quality.

Perhaps both of these major areas of inter-partner conflict in the partnership can be traced

to a misalignment of the missions and visions of the two organizations for the online MBA

program—an area that will be discussed in greater detail later in this chapter. But what is clear

from the findings of the study is that the senior leadership of the School of Business &

Management at Esteemed that operate the online MBA program share a unified vision for the

online MBA program. The necessity of this unified vision was the second theoretical proposition

in Chapter 2’s literature review. The findings in Chapter 4 revealed that Esteemed’s leadership

maintained a focus on high quality for the online MBA program from the beginning, and that this

emphasis was further strengthened by the additions of other core members of Esteemed’s online

program administration team such as James, Patrick, and Kathryn.

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Theme 1: Decision Making

A major portion of the literature review in Chapter 2 addressed areas of decision

making—those decisions that university administers must consider when implementing online

programs at their institutions. These decisions correlate closely with the first theme from the

findings of this study, that of decision making. Successfully implementing the online MBA

program at Esteemed required School of Business & Management administrators and faculty to

make myriad decisions that established the course of the program and the eventual partnership

with Learning Academy.

Esteemed’s reasons for partnering with an OPM provider to launch its online MBA

program mirrored those indicated in the literature. The School of Business & Management saw

the program as a source of additional revenue and as a way to compete in the online MBA

market (Hillman & Corkery, 2010). Esteemed’s decision makers—called a task force by Hillman

and Corkery (2010)—knew the expertise in online recruitment, marketing, and course

development was not to be found internally, and they sought these skills from an outside partner

(Palm, 2001). Partnering with a vendor allowed Esteemed’s faculty and administration to focus

on its core mission—educating students—while an industry leader carried out many

administrative details (Gupta, et al., 2005).

Led by Tom, currently the Dean of the School of Business & Management, the task force

selected Learning Academy as the OPM provider to launch Esteemed’s online MBA program.

Esteemed followed a process similar to that outlined by Hoffman (2012) in selecting Learning

Academy. The Esteemed team identified several possible vendor partners, sought the experience

from other institutions that had partnered with the OPM providers, sought vendor feedback

through onsite visits and presentations, and involved key personnel to make the final selection.

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The participants indicated that the decision to partner with Learning Academy over other OPM

providers was a clear choice after viewing the presentations from several vendors. Interest in

each party was mutual. Optimism was high, as Learning Academy leaders promised to deliver

enrollment numbers that matched Esteemed’s goals for its program. The responsibilities of

launching the program appeared to be cleanly split between the two partners: Esteemed would

supply the course content and the faculty, and Learning Academy would offer its industry

expertise in marketing, recruitment, and course development.

Matters of decision making also involved faculty. Because some faculty members felt the

online MBA would “cheapen the brand” (Andrew, personal communication, January 22, 2016),

considerable effort was extended to gain faculty support for the online MBA and to overcome

faculty resistance. Such faculty resistance is not unique to Esteemed. Mitchell, Parlamis, and

Claiborne (2015) stated that possible sources of faculty resistance to online teaching include the

following: (a) cultural assumptions and values, (b) fear of the unknown and/or fear of loss, (c)

fear of the disruption of interpersonal relationships, and (d) concerns about external impact of the

change. Because the participants for this study were those who helped launch the online MBA—

and, by implication, those who support online learning—the perspectives of the faculty

opponents within the business school were not gathered. Therefore, Mitchell et al.’s (2015)

sources of faculty resistance cannot be fully evaluated against the study’s findings. However,

concerns about online learning’s impact on the quality of Esteemed’s on-campus MBA programs

are presumably indications of a fear of the external impact of the change, as Mitchell et al.

(2015) stated.

Those faculty members interviewed for this study were among the cheerleaders of

Esteemed’s transition to online learning. William’s involvement began early on, as he was as

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member of the task force that selected Learning Academy. Michelle, Cynthia, and Andrew each

spoke openly of the obstacles they overcame as some of the first online faculty members to teach

Esteemed’s MBA courses online, but each endorsed the university’s decision to create the online

MBA program. The “generous stipend” (Michelle, personal communication, December 21,

2015) offered by Esteemed certainly motivated faculty to invest the time required to develop and

teach the new online courses (Haber & Mills, 2008; Shea, 2007).

The focus of this study is on the partnership between Esteemed and Learning Academy.

However, Esteemed administrators needed to make many decisions specific to the online MBA

program, regardless of which OPM provider would have become Esteemed’s partner. These

decisions included determining how large the program should be at full enrollment, establishing

the timeline of launching the program, and choosing the LMS to host the courses. Participant

comments revealed some dissatisfaction with Sakai as the chosen LMS platform, yet there was

no evidence from the data that the use of Sakai has significantly compromised the success of the

online MBA program or has had a notable negative impact on student satisfaction. By using

Sakai, the School of Business & Management is not forced to support a unique LMS or fund the

development of a proprietary LMS. Doing so would be expensive and time consuming (McClure

& Woolum, 2006). Notably, the topic of technological problems did not come up often in the

participant interviews. Conclusions can be drawn, therefore, that the training and support that

Esteemed faculty received prior to the online program launch helped offset the typical

technological fears experienced by new online faculty (Haber & Mills, 2008; Regan et al., 2011).

Efforts by Tom and others to select faculty members with a certain level of comfort with

technology probably also contributed to the reduced concerns with technology.

Theme 2: Aligning Expectations

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Aligning expectations for the partnership was the second theme that emerged from the

findings. The contract between Learning Academy, an industry leader in the OPM provider

market, and Esteemed University, a private institution with a strong brand and reputation (and a

high tuition price tag), called out a number of the key deliverables that Learning Academy would

be required to produce. Following a “pretty quick ramp up” (Tom, personal communication,

December 16, 2015), enrollment was expected to reach the intended target of 300 students, and

Esteemed expected to generate a 12 or 13 percent return from the program after paying out the

required amount of 55 percent of the tuition revenue to Learning Academy. Enrollment figures

were expected to be reached through the marketing and recruitment outreach efforts spearheaded

by Learning Academy, although Esteemed would retain final word on which students would be

admitted into the program. Esteemed expected to provide incentives to its full-time MBA faculty

to train in online pedagogy and to collaborate closely with Learning Academy instructional

designers to translate the MBA content into the online environment.

Both parties agreed to these primary areas of responsibility in the partnership. However,

the participants revealed in their comments that despite the cleanly divided list of tasks, the two

partnering organizations possessed “incompatible organizational cultures and operational

practices” (Das & Teng, 2000, p. 52). In other words, the business models of Esteemed and

Learning Academy remain vastly different, and this has been a constant source of conflict

between Esteemed and Learning Academy staff. Esteemed’s personal, high-touch approach to

student learning runs contrary to Learning Academy’s “cookie cutter” philosophy of online

program marketing, development, and management. This mismatch in business philosophies

helps explain Tom’s comment that Learning Academy was “straying from our brand” (personal

communication, December 16, 2015).

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This problem of two partnering organizations possessing incompatible missions is not

uncommon, as the literature reveals. Russell (2010) mentioned that one of the key arguments

against outsourcing in higher education is the potential for conflict in organizational cultures due

to the for-profit motive of the vendor partner. When this conflict in culture occurs, the

“institutional mission may inadvertently be changed” (Russell, 2010, p. 6). When outside

vendors fail to understand the mission and culture of their partner institutions, negative impacts

are created which “directly influence students, faculty, and staff’s experience” (Phipps &

Merisotis, 2005, p. 4). The intention in a healthy partnership is for both parties to relinquish

some degree of control for the good of the relationship (Moore, 2002), but resolving these

cultural differences may become insurmountable. The participants in the study openly admitted

that Esteemed is unlikely to sign a new contract with Learning Academy when the agreement

expires.

Disagreements in expectations were particularly pertinent in the marketing of Esteemed’s

online MBA program, as the participants shared in the interviews. An important component of

any successful online program implementation is the creation of marketing initiatives that reach

their intended audiences (Moloney & Oakley, 2010). Those universities that successfully

implement online programs invest “significant financial and human resources” into marketing

(Moloney & Oakley, 2010, p. 87). Recognizing the need to establish name recognition for its

online MBA program, School of Business & Management leadership leaned on Learning

Academy’s years of experience in the online education sector to build brand awareness. Almost

immediately, problems arose. The data from the study contained several comments criticizing

Learning Academy’s lack of attention to detail when producing marketing material. Patrick

summarized Esteemed’s disappointment in the marketing results with his statement that

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Esteemed administrators believed Learning Academy could “turn a knob” and produce the

promised enrollment figures (personal communication, December 10, 2015).

The literature advocates for the addition of opt-out clauses in contracts to give the

partnering organizations the opportunity to part ways (Phipps & Merisotis, 2005). Learning

Academy and Esteemed did include an out-clause in their agreement, but the clause does not

engage until after the fourth year, assuming that the requisite enrollment of 251 active students is

not met. Other expectations of the partnership between Learning Academy and Esteemed, such

as the process by which errors would be corrected in the online courses and the persons

responsible for fixing these errors, were not spelled out contractually. The literature about

vendor-employer partnerships often recommend that such expectations be clearly clarified. Meek

and Kuraitis (2001) advocated that decision makers from the two partnering organizations meet

in a dedicated session early in their working relationship to clarify roles, expectations,

accountabilities, and timelines. Failure to do so often means “outcomes are sub-optimized” (p.

429). These expectations should be revisited often, in the event that services need to be brought

in house and the outsourcing relationship ended (Quigley & Pereira, 2011). In all, outsourcing

contracts should reflect the mutual interests of both parties (Power, Bonifazi, & Desouza, 2004).

Theme 3: Collaboration

The literature also supports the findings from the third theme of the study, that of

collaboration among Esteemed faculty and Learning Academy instructional designers. The

collaborative process that resulted in the creation of the online MBA courses was no small

undertaking. Before any course design could occur, Esteemed faculty underwent training in

online pedagogy and learned how to break down course content into measurable objectives

(Michelle, personal communication, December 21, 2015). This training and preparation was

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essential to creating effective course content, according to the literature. Humphries (2010) stated

that formally assessing student learning through measurable goals and objectives is a

characteristic of effective teaching, regardless of the modality. Kanuka et al. (2007) suggested

that the quality of online discussions amongst online students is directly related to how

effectively the course content is administered. Other researchers have stated that effective faculty

involvement correlates to online student engagement (Drouin, 2008), as does the manner in

which technology tools are used in the online course activities (Bhati et al., 2009). In all, the

literature emphasizes that delivering course content online must be carefully thought out and

continuously evaluated (Gibson & Dunning, 2012).

The participants interviewed for this study offered some clues as to how the collaborative

process worked with their Learning Academy instructional designers, although most information

was anecdotal in nature. What was clear from the findings is that communication was frequent

between the faculty member and the designer, and once the activities and course pages were

ready to review, the faculty member carefully combed through them to ensure everything was

done correctly. The factors that facilitated and inhibited collaboration were similar to those stated

by Chao, Saj, and Hamilton (2010) in their article that described four case studies of faculty

member/designer collaboration in creating online courses. According to the authors, successful

collaboration occurred most often in those case studies when the faculty members and the

instructional designers built a working rapport and outlined expectations early on in their

relationship. The interviews with Esteemed online faculty did not specify whether such formal

conversations occurred during which expectations were established, but Esteemed’s faculty

members certainly experienced Chao et al.’s (2010) top factor that inhibited collaboration: short

turnaround times. Esteemed faculty interviewed for this study commented frequently of the time

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commitment required to create and teach the online courses. Cynthia’s statement that she “was

working 24/7 work weeks” during the collaboration period with her Learning Academy

instructional designer typified these comments (personal communication, January 20, 2016).

Studies have shown that creating online content development can absorb significant

amount of time for online faculty (Hardy & Bower, 2004; Hummer et al., 2010). This time

commitment can come as a surprise to those who are unfamiliar with the work involved in online

course delivery (Hummer et al., 2010). Cynthia’s comments about the “hundreds and hundreds”

of hours needed to develop her course, and the failure of anyone warning her of the time crunch

this would create for her (personal communication, January 20, 2016), indicated that the

collaboration at the course development stage took at least some Esteemed faculty members by

surprise.

Theme 4: Accountability

The fourth theme of this doctoral study is that of accountability; in other words,

measuring the performance of the partnership by determining how well the expected outcomes of

the relationship have been met. In this sense, the themes of aligning expectations and

accountability in the findings are closely interwoven. The leadership of the School of Business

& Management agreed to the partnership with Learning Academy on the premise that the OPM

provider would deliver on its promises of achieved enrollment, cohesive branding, and high-

quality course development. Participant responses clearly illustrated that these expectations

largely have been unmet. This was mentioned earlier in this chapter but will be analyzed in

greater detail in this section.

Baines & Chiarelott (2010) warned that university/vendor agreements may not be as

appealing as they appear on the surface. In fact, they may be a Trojan horse, “a seemingly

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attractive gift disguising a perilous core” (p. 159). While the participants of this study didn’t use

the term perilous to describe the partnership with Learning Academy, they didn’t refrain from

describing their opinions with Learning Academy’s performance with strong language. Terms

used included “mediocrity,” “sloppy,” “a black hole,” “a disappointment,” “a disaster,” and “a

lot of misses” (see Appendix C).

Metrics are used by Esteemed faculty and administration to measure the performance of

their partnership with Learning Academy. This is in line with other studies in the literature that

recommend the use of metrics and evaluation tools in vendor-company relationships

(Gunasekaran, Patel, & Tirtiroglu, 2001; Jiang & Qureshi, 2006; Misra, 2004), although no study

in the literature specifically outlines the metrics that are appropriate for an OPM

provider/university partnership. The participants in this study, particularly the administrators,

were remarkably consistent in their individual answers as to which metrics Esteemed uses to

evaluate the partnership. This unity in their responses suggests a culture of evaluation at

Esteemed’s School of Business & Management, a critical step in the long-term success of any

online program (Hughes et al., 2012).

Both Esteemed and Learning Academy have financial incentives to fulfill their ends of

the agreement. Esteemed’s online program administrators want to avoid the high cost of

maintaining the online MBA program if enrollment continues to fall short of projections because

operational costs drop as enrollment increases (Ginn & Hammond, 2012; Morris, 2008). Even

though enrollment figures in the online MBA are “steadily improving” (Patrick, personal

communication, December 10, 2015), they remain well below original expectations in the pro-

forma and even below the Learning Academy’s revised projections. It’s still too early to

determine the long-term revenue potential for Esteemed’s online MBA program; however, the

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rapidly rising national rankings for the program are a positive indicator of the future. So, too, is

the institutional commitment to online learning that Esteemed has demonstrated by building

internal capabilities for instructional design with Kathryn’s team, and the expectation of building

similar in-house expertise in marketing. As Wiesenberg and Stacey (2005) emphasized, this

commitment from a university’s administration to adequately resource its online programs is

critical to the success of the institution’s online ventures.

Recommendations for Practice

This study revealed several important recommendations for practice. These

recommendations are especially relevant for universities and colleges that desire to launch online

programs but have limited internal resources to do so. For such an institution, a partnership with

an OPM provider may be the best possible solution to get the online program up and running.

However, administrators and faculty in this situation are encouraged to consider the following

recommendations for practice.

Recommendation 1: Identify an OPM provider with a compatible organizational

mission. Just as universities and colleges differ drastically from each other in their missions and

visions, so, too, do the more than 30 OPM providers in the industry. An institution that serves

large numbers of students and intends to develop a high-enrollment online program—a public

university, for example—may be best served with the economies of scale offered by an OPM

provider such as Learning Academy. Large OPM providers such as Learning Academy

specialize in producing cost-effective, standardized programs but place less emphasis on tailored

marketing, online course updates, and personalized attention. A smaller-scale institution such as

a liberal arts college or a prestigious university that relies heavily on its reputation to attract

students may choose to partner with an OPM provider that values customer service and

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flexibility. Typically, these niche OPM providers are smaller in size, allowing them to be nimble

enough to adapt to the needs of individual institutions.

Recommendation 2: Determine what services the OPM provider will offer. In a

typical university/OPM provider partnership, the OPM provider offers assistance with

market/lead generation, enrollment management, student services, and course development and

delivery (Levine et al., 2012). However, universities and colleges may consider retaining some

services internally rather than outsourcing all of these traditional functions. This option may be

particularly applicable for an institution that possesses some existing expertise in house (such as

a small instructional design team) but needs to scale up to accommodate the work involved in

administering an entire online program. In such a situation, the university should strongly weigh

the cost and time required to scale up internal resources to perform a given function against the

length of time a contract would run with an OPM provider if the provider handled the function

externally.

Recommendation 3: Negotiate a favorable contract. It is in the best interest of a

college or university to negotiate a contract that is favorable for the circumstances of the

institution. This includes the length of the contract. Standard contracts with OPM providers last

10 years or longer (Hoffman, 2012; Levine et al., 2012), but even a contract of 5 years may be

cumbersome to a college or university that plans to aggressively expand into online learning. The

online education landscape evolves rapidly, and a college or university may elect to manage

certain functions internally that are handled by the OPM provider far in advance of the

termination date of the contract.

Certainly the contract should contain clearly defined and understood opt-out clauses that

are based on performance. To add to this, the ideal timeframe for the opt-out clauses to take

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effect may be after the first online student cohort cycles through the entire program (usually

about 2 years). This timeframe would allow the OPM provider time to demonstrate proficiency

in the key performance areas: recruitment, marketing, student services, and course development.

A variation to this recommendation is to advocate for a trial period—lasting perhaps a course or

two in duration—during which the partnership is evaluated by both the university and the OPM

provider before a long-term contract is signed.

Recommendation 4: Spell out expectations clearly with the OPM provider. Conflicts

can arise when expectations are not identified and agreed upon with an OPM provider. In

addition to identifying the major areas of responsibility that each organization would handle

(marketing, course development, teaching the courses, maintaining the LMS, etc.), university

administrators should identify all other areas of possible conflict in the relationship. Examples

include the following: Who performs quality control on marketing material? How does the

quality assurance step operate within the instructional design department at the OPM provider?

How closely should faculty members inspect the work performed by the OPM provider’s

instructional designers? What influence do university leaders have in staffing decisions at the

OPM provider? What role do university administrators play in the creation of marketing

messages and material? What is the schedule for releasing online courses to students, and what

recourse does the university have if these dates are not met?

Recommendation 5: Staff up adequately to support the online program. One factor

in successful online program implementation is adequate staffing within the university or

college. Staffing questions that higher education administrators may consider include the

following: Who will manage the daily operations of the OPM provider relationship? At what

point will the workload of managing the online program exceed our current capacity and a

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dedicated online program director will need to be hired? Who will serve as the LMS

administrator? If course development is retained internally, how large should instructional design

team be so it does not sit idle during periods of the year with lower workload? How quickly can

the existing university marketing team gain the expertise needed to market online programs?

Should a dedicated online student recruiter be added to the university staff, and if so, in what

department should that person reside?

Recommendations for Future Research

As mentioned in Chapter 3, one limitation to this study is its single research site.

Although Esteemed’s partnership with Learning Academy in launching its online MBA program

largely has not met several of Esteemed’s expectations, this experience may not typify other

university/OPM provider partnerships. Further research is needed on other university/OPM

provider partnerships to give context to this study. Another limitation to this research is the

viewpoint of only one half of the partnership. Because interviews with individuals from Learning

Academy fell outside the scope of this study, their perspectives are not included in the findings.

A case study that reports on a university/OPM provider partnership from the perspective of the

OPM provider is an area of further research.

Another possible area of research is the future of OPM providers. As online learning

continues to play a larger role in higher education, more colleges and universities likely will

develop internal expertise in the functional areas OPM providers typically offer of market/lead

generation, online student enrollment, online student services, and instructional design. OPM

providers will need to evolve as a result in order to stay relevant and competitive. Some OPM

providers already offer ala carte services rather than act as one-stop shops for online program

development (Levine et al., 2012). Others serve as mediators in an aggregator-like capacity

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between colleges and vendors who specialize in specific aspects of online program management

(marketing, for example). These different models of university/vendor partnerships and alliances

are worthy of further study.

Conclusion

This chapter has discussed the findings presented in Chapter 4 about the design and

implementation of Esteemed University’s online MBA program through a partnership with the

for-profit OPM provider Learning Academy. It was shown that the findings of this study closely

parallel the components of the theoretical framework of this study, the resource-based theory of

strategic alliances (Das & Teng, 2000). The relationship of the literature about online program

implementation to the findings of this study was also established. Finally, recommendations for

practice and further research were provided.

The primary research question of this qualitative case study has been the following: How

does a university partner with an online program management provider to design, launch, and

administer an online MBA program? This research question was answered through interviews

with eight administrators and faculty members in the School of Business & Management at

Esteemed University (pseudonym), a private university in the western United States, who were

closely involved with the launch and development of Esteemed’s online MBA program. In

addition, data was collected from websites and marketing material from both Esteemed and

Learning Academy that described the online MBA program and the online program management

services provided by Learning Academy.

The findings of this study were categorized into four themes: (a) Decision Making, (b)

Aligning Expectations, (c) Collaboration, and (d) Accountability. Before the online MBA

program could be launched, administrators and faculty from Esteemed made a number of critical

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decisions including whether to partner with an OPM provider, which OPM provider should

become their partner, what elements should be included in the contract, who should teach the

online courses, and which learning management system should be used. Learning Academy was

selected as Esteemed’s OPM partner because of its reputation within the OPM provider industry,

its revenue and enrollment projections, and its willingness to front the money required to launch

the program.

Expectations for performance have been established between the two organizations.

These expectations include revenue projections, marketing and branding strategies, personnel

decisions, and course release dates. Participants in the study revealed that differences between

the business models of Esteemed and Learning Academy account for much of the conflicts that

have arisen in expectations and deliverables. The third theme of the study was that of

collaboration among Esteemed faculty and Learning Academy’s instructional designers. While

participants spoke highly of Learning Academy’s abilities to translate course content into the

online environment, Esteemed faculty expressed surprise and frustration with the time

commitment required of them in the course development process.

Finally, the fourth theme that emerged from the findings was that of accountability of the

partnership with Learning Academy. Through the use of metrics, Esteemed has monitored the

performance of the partnership in several key areas: (a) total student enrollment, (b) the quality

of the online students recruited by Learning Academy, (c) student retention, (d) student

satisfaction, and (e) course development quality. Esteemed’s online program administration and

faculty reported that Learning Academy has met expectations in terms of the quality of students

enrolled, online student retention, and online student satisfaction, but has not met expectations in

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total student enrollment and course development quality. For these reasons, Esteemed

administration does not anticipate renewing its contract with Learning Academy.

This doctoral study adds to the body of knowledge about OPM provider/university

partnerships in launching an online program. No other study currently exists in the literature that

addresses this unique relationship in higher education. It also has implications for practice, as it

offers insight into these partnerships for colleges and universities that consider launching an

online program. The process Esteemed leaders underwent in selecting an OPM provider and the

challenges they have faced in the creation and administration of Esteemed’s online MBA

program provide additional perspective to the nature of these vendor relationships within higher

education, and in particular, within online learning.

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Appendix A: Interview Protocol and Questions

You have been selected to speak with me today because you have been identified as

someone who has a great deal to share about the launch, development, and/or administration of

the online MBA program at Esteemed University (pseudonym). My research project focuses on

the development of the online MBA program, in particular the partnership between Esteemed

and the online program management provider that assisted with the launch, Learning Academy

(pseudonym). Through this study, I hope to gain more insight into this partnership between the

two organizations and learn what has worked, what has not, and what other colleges and

universities might expect if they were to enter into similar agreements with online program

management providers to launch online programs.

Because your responses are important and I want to make sure to capture everything you

say, I would like to record our conversation today. Do I have your permission to record this

interview? I can assure you that all responses will be confidential and only a pseudonym will be

used when quoting from the transcripts. I will be the only one privy to the recordings of this

interview, which will be eventually destroyed after the interview is transcribed. To meet our

human subjects requirements at the university, you must sign the form I have with me.

Essentially, this document states that: (1) all information will be held confidential, (2) your

participation is voluntary and you may stop at any time if you feel uncomfortable, and (3) this

study does not intend to inflict any harm. Do you have any questions about the interview process

or this form?

I have planned this interview to last no more than an hour. During this time, I have a

number of questions that I would like to cover. If time begins to run short, it may be necessary to

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interrupt you in order to push ahead and complete this line of questioning. If you feel you are not

able to answer a particular question, you may skip it. Do you have any questions at this time?

Participant Background

Please state your educational and professional background, including your current

position at Esteemed University (pseudonym).

What connection do you have with the launch and/or the administration of the online

MBA program at Esteemed?

Decision Making

How was the decision made to start an online MBA program at Esteemed?

Why was the decision made to partner with an OPM provider rather than launching the

online MBA program internally with existing resources?

Why did you choose to partner with Learning Academy (pseudonym) over other OPM

providers?

What strengths and assets has Esteemed brought to the partnership? What strengths and

assets has Learning Academy brought?

What were the initial goals for the online MBA program (such as enrollment numbers)?

How were these goals decided?

What have you done to ensure the marketing and branding strategies of Esteemed and

Learning Academy are cohesive?

Financial Implications

What are the financial arrangements of the contract with Learning Academy?

What revenue objectives did you have for the online MBA program going in? How were

these determined?

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How was the price of tuition for the program determined?

How does the cost per student in the online MBA program compare to the cost per

student in Esteemed’s on-campus MBA programs?

Course Design and Faculty

How were the courses and the course curriculum created?

How was the decision made to go with one learning management system over another?

Who teaches the online courses? How was this determined?

Measures of Success

What metrics do you use to assess the performance of the partnership?

How have these metrics evolved over the duration of the partnership?

What were your expectations for the partnership going into it? How well have these

expectations been met?

Reflections

What lessons have you learned throughout this partnership?

What ongoing challenges do you face today in the administration of the program?

What would you do differently in this partnership if you could do it over again?

What recommendations would you offer other colleges and universities looking to

partner with an OPM provider?

Future Considerations

Do you plan to eventually manage the program internally rather than with the help of

Learning Academy? If yes, what makes you confident you can do so successfully?

What is the future of the partnership with Learning Academy, as far as you know at this

point?

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Appendix B: Informed Consent Document

Signed Informed Consent Document

````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Northeastern University, Department: College of Professional Studies

Name of Investigator(s): Principal Investigator: Dr. Shannon Alpert; Student Researcher: Scott Springer

Title of Project: “Partnering With an Online Program Management Provider to Implement an Online

MBA Program: A Case Study”

Informed Consent to Participate in a Research Study

We are inviting you to take part in a research study. This form will tell you about the study, but the

researcher will explain it to you first. You may ask any questions that you have. When you are ready to

make a decision, you may tell the researcher if you want to participate or not. You do not have to

participate if you do not want to. If you decide to participate, the researcher will ask you to sign this

statement and will give you a copy to keep.

Why am I being asked to take part in this research study?

We are asking you to participate because of your involvement with the online MBA program and your

knowledge of the launch and/or ongoing administration of the program.

Why is this research study being done?

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The purpose of this research is to better understand the nature of the partnership between a college or

university and an online program management provider in the creation and maintenance of an online

program.

What will I be asked to do?

If you decide to take part in this study, we will ask you to participate in an interview with the researcher

lasting no more than one hour in which questions will be asked pertaining to the development and

ongoing administration of the online MBA program. If clarification or additional information is needed

for any of your answers, you will be asked to respond via email or in a separate phone call.

Where will this take place and how much of my time will it take?

You will be interviewed at a time and place that is convenient for you. The interview will take no more

than one hour. It is not expected that the time required for follow-up questions will be extensive.

Will there be any risk or discomfort to me?

There is no foreseeable risk or discomfort in participating in the study.

Will I benefit by being in this research?

There will be no direct benefit to you for taking part in the study. However, the information learned from

this study may help other college and university administrators looking to launch online programs at their

institutions.

Who will see the information about me?

Your part in this study will be confidential. Only the researchers on this study will match your responses

to your identity. Your identity will not be revealed in the study, nor will the study specifically identify the

university as the place of the study. The interview will be recorded, with your permission. The recordings

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from this interview will be transcribed, either by the researcher or by means of a transcription service.

Your true identity will not be evident in the transcribed interview; rather, a pseudonym will be used in the

transcription and your identity will be stored in a separate document.

After the recordings are transcribed, the digital tapes of the recordings will be destroyed. All notes from

the interviews, including the transcription, will be stored in a locked drawer for 3 years, accessible only to

the researchers. All data and documents will be destroyed after 3 years.

In rare instances, authorized people may request to see research information about you and other people

in this study. This is done only to be sure that the research is done properly. We would only permit

people who are authorized by organizations such as the Northeastern University Institutional Review

Board to see this information.

What will happen if I suffer any harm from this research?

No special arrangements will be made for compensation or for payment for treatment solely because of

your participation in this research.

Can I stop my participation in this study?

Your participation in this research is completely voluntary. You do not have to participate if you do not

want to and you can refuse to answer any question. Even if you begin the study, you may quit at any time.

If you do not participate or if you decide to quit, you will not lose any rights, benefits, or services that you

would otherwise have as an employee of the University.

Who can I contact if I have questions or problems?

136

If you have any questions about this study, please feel free to contact Scott Springer

(springer.s@husky.neu.edu), the person mainly responsible for the research. You can also contact Dr.

Shannon Alpert (s.alpert@neu.edu), the Principal Investigator.

Who can I contact about my rights as a participant?

If you have any questions about your rights in this research, you may contact Nan C. Regina, Director,

Human Subject Research Protection, 490 Renaissance Park, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115.

Tel: 617.373.4588, Email: n.regina@neu.edu. You may call anonymously if you wish.

Will I be paid for my participation?

You will not be paid for participation in this study.

Will it cost me anything to participate?

There is no cost to you in participating in this study.

Is there anything else I need to know?

You must be at least 18 years old to participate.

I agree to take part in this research.

____________________________________________ ________________________

Signature of person agreeing to take part Date

____________________________________________

Printed name of person above

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____________________________________________ ________________________

Signature of person who explained the study to the Date

participant above and obtained consent

_____________________________________________

Printed name of person above

138

Appendix C: Expectations of the Partnership

The following image visually illustrates the expectations that administrators and faculty

from Esteemed University’s School of Business & Management expressed in this study

regarding the partnership with Learning Academy to launch Esteemed’s online MBA program.

The quotes in the graphic come from the interviews with study participants.

139

The following image visually illustrates the perceptions that administrators and faculty

from Esteemed University’s School of Business & Management expressed in this study

regarding the performance of the partnership with Learning Academy in the launch of

Esteemed’s online MBA program. The quotes in the graphic come from the interviews with

study participants.