DALLAS TELELEARNING INTERACTIVE TELECOURSES COST-EFFECTIVE
OPTION FOR DEVELOPING UNDERGRAD DISTANCE ED COURSES
Developing courses for delivery at a distance is a costly
and time-consuming process that is often taken on by faculty
members who are not skilled instructional designers or
curriculum developers. Additionally, some institutions
offering distance education courses may get caught up in a
course development cycle that may be unnecessarily
duplicated, especially at the general education
undergraduate level. For example, the same
undergraduate-level United States History course or Abnormal
Psychology course might have five sections taught by two or
three different faculty, each of whom has put in the time
and generated the cost to develop his or her own unique
distance education course.
Distance education program and institutional administrators
realize this kind of scenario is not a cost-effective way to
build distance education courses.
The Dallas County Community College District’s (DCCCD)
Dallas TeleLearning division has created a relatively new
set of undergraduate-level interactive telecourses, which
were first launched in 2001 and are continuously being built
today. These telecourses are offered through licensing
agreements and are being utilized as a solution for offering
rich, dynamic, and highly flexible undergraduate distance
education courses in a way that can save on course
development costs.
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ABOUT LICENSING FEES FOR INTERACTIVE TELECOURSES
Information about cost of Dallas TeleLearning telecourses.
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THE ADOPTION OF INNOVATION, PART II
This month we begin our expansion of last month’s cover
story - “The Adoption of Innovation: Online Learning
Business Plans, Strategies, Change Management and Leadership
“ - with an overview of a business planning model - herein
referred to as BPM - that has been created and fine-tuned
over time by MSU Global.
As noted on its website, MSU Global is “Michigan State
University’s entrepreneurial academic business unit that
reports to the Provost and works with partners across the
MSU campus, and worldwide, to develop and market online
institutes, programs and services.”
The BPM is an internal document that has been developed over
four years, says MSU Global Director Chris Geith. “It is a
model and a template for planning new online degree and
certificate programs. In our role at MSU we are like
internal consultants to the deans and the department chairs.
When they have an idea about putting something online, this
template helps prepare the business plan for their idea.”
The BPM starts with an overall process summary checklist and
then moves into five phases that outline concept
development, proposal formulation, internal approval,
implementation and evaluation. There’s also a Program
Costing Model that is utilized to capture expenses. What
follows is a description of each of these BPM items, based
on an interview Educational Pathways conducted with Geith.
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