ELEMENTS OF A MODEL ONLINE MBA PROGRAM

ELEMENTS OF A MODEL ONLINE MBA PROGRAM

When Ed Cooper was dean of graduate programs at Regis University from 1993 to 2000, the number of graduate students grew from 1,200 to more than 5,000 students. A good chunk of that growth has come from the university’s online MBA program, which currently enrolls more than 2,200 students since launching in 1993. The program is considered to be one of the first, if not "the" first, MBA program to be offered entirely in a web-based delivery mode. It’s also touted as "the largest multimedia, online MBA program in the nation."

Regis University’s online MBA program, which consists of a traditional MBA curriculum and an MBA in Health Care Management, has become a model for other institutions to mirror, perhaps due to the fact that it’s six years old and has already learned a lot of lessons. But more than its age, which makes it a granddaddy in Internet time, Cooper says the program was well thought out right from the start.

From an historical standpoint, Cooper explains that there were four key elements that Regis developed over time: marketing, technology building, content development and faculty development and training.

Taking Marketing Outside

Marketing is handled by Bisk Education, otherwise known as the University Alliance, based in Tampa, Florida. Bisk also handles fulfillment and production of online classes, including the production of course materials with a multi-media bent, such as CD-ROMs and streaming audio and video components. Additionally, Bisk provides its proprietary course management system. Everything else is handled by Regis.

MBA Degree Chair Mike Goess says that Bisk has engaged in an aggressive corporate and military outreach marketing program that has been successful in attracting students from all over the country. "More than 90 percent of the students (in the MBA online program) have never taken a course at the Regis campus and will never take a course on the Regis campus," says Goess.

Efforts to utilize television advertising have not proven to be the best means to get the word out. However, "they spend a huge amount on online advertising," Goess adds.

From the marketing standpoint it also doesn’t hurt that the program received the Peter F. Drucker Foundation Award for innovative programs and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Tom Peter’s newsletter On Achieving Excellence, and Robert H. Waterman, Jr’s book "What America Does Right." US News and World Report has consistently ranked Regis as one of the best educational values in the West, and for the sixth year in a row, the University has been named a Top Tier of the West Regional Schools.

Courses Carefully Developed, Designed and Taught

Over and above the marketing successes, "the courses are very carefully thought through and designed specifically for the eLearning mode," says Ellen Waterman, director of the Regis School of Professional Studies in Distance Learning. "Students are very interactive with each other and their faculty member, and the classes are kept to a size of 15. With more than that you can’t possibly get a handle on who the people are in your class."

The assembly process for getting an effective online MBA course up and ready starts with the lead full-time faculty member who has the content expertise, says Goess. The lead faculty assembles a course development team that includes an affiliate faculty member who teaches in the field and at least three outside working professionals who are competent in their fields and can contribute meaningful content. A curriculum design expert and/or a media consultant also participate in the course-building process, providing advice on what kind of delivery modes, such as video, CD-ROM and/or electronic text, would best serve to disseminate the content most effectively.

"Then we will begin to break it down into weekly modules," says Goess. In concert with this, a course study guide starts to take shape, based on the instructor’s insights, (including) "any points of clarification where we feel that the text materials, generally speaking, are unclear or inadequate. We also point to areas where the curriculum people and design people can talk about enriching the text and provide material beyond what you would find in textbooks, such as illustrations, examples and more in-depth discussions on various topics."

Toward the end of this process, the multi-media elements are produced. The entire course assembly process takes about two to four months.

However, "if we are not developing new courses, we are revising old ones," adds Goess. "The curriculum is under perpetual revision. We have found that the shelf life, even for basic courses where the content does not change much, is probably about three years at most. For some areas, (such as) anything having to do with information systems and computer sciences, it’s less than that."

Accelerated Format

The MBA program is offered in what’s called an "accelerated format," with courses provided inside an eight-week model. This does not mean that less material is covered in a class or that the material is being covered in a superficial way, says Waterman. "It means you focus very intensely in one subject and you immerse yourself in it for eight weeks. Our research has shown that it is valid to do it in that time frame. But we expect students in these classes to spend between 15 to 20 hours per week on their studies. Instead of sitting in class, you are spending time working on the Internet, interacting with each other, reading, researching, writing - doing all the activities that help you learn."

Regis MBA Program