A Strategic Framework for Developing a Master Plan for Online Learning at Your Institution

Abstract

Launching a successful new online learning initiative or expanding existing online learning offerings takes careful planning and preparation. Online learning is an institution-wide endeavor, involving multiple departments, functions, and personnel, many of which require modifications or rethinking to meet the needs of fully online learners. Leaders tasked with heading up institutional online initiatives may be unaware of everything that needs to be done to initiate or examine online learning. This article offers a systematic framework to guide strategic planning that is based upon the unique needs and circumstances of online learning and online learners and the institutions who recruit, educate, and graduate them.

Introduction

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has influenced higher education institutions in a profound way. Numerous leaders from around the globe, whose institutions did not have online learning as part of their missions or culture, found themselves having to close their facilities and turn to online and remote learning for institutional survival (Roache et. al, 2020). The pandemic caught many institutions off-guard, requiring administrators and faculty to quickly move existing face-to-face courses and programs to fully online or to emergency remote teaching (Hodges et. al, 2020). It is estimated that half or more of faculty involved in these efforts had no prior experience with online teaching or online course development (Garrett et al., 2020).

The contributions of faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and professionals in enrollment management, information technology and student services have been critical to the establishment and implementation of online learning. It is the administrator’s task to provide structure, organization, coordination, policy and procedure, allowing for innovations such as online learning to scale and institutionalize (Roache et. al, 2020). Lack of proper leadership and strategic planning can lead to the failure of online learning initiatives, as in the case of unsuccessful attempts to establish virtual campuses by the University of Illinois and University of California systems (Derousseau, 2015; Kolowich, 2009).

Strategic Planning and Master Planning

Edge (2004) defines strategic planning as “the process of determining a company's or an institution's long-term objectives, then identifying the best approach to achieve those objectives” (p.1). Due to increases in government regulations, changes in accreditation standards and decreases in federal, state and private funding, Spackman and his colleagues (2015) noted that higher education institutions offering distance education programs need strategic planning more than ever before. While several models and frameworks for strategic planning can be adapted to institutional online learning (e.g., Macneil et al., 2010; Pisel, 2008; Spackman et al., 2015), we have developed a strategic planning framework that utilizes online and distance learning at its base (Watson, et al., 2020). The major sections of the Strategic Framework include the following 12 objectives. 

1. Assure that Online Learning is in the Institution’s Mission
2. Determine the Purpose for Offering Online Learning at the Institution
3. Determine the Demand for Online Learning
4. Determine the Institution’s capacity for Online Learning
5. Develop Online Learning Policies 
6. Establish Online Course Development Process
7. Establish Online Teaching Process
8. Develop Human Resources
9. Determine Program-Level Development
10. Establish Online Learning Visibility
11. Evaluate Master Plan for Online Learning
12. Implement Improvements

1. Assure that Online Learning is in the Institution’s Mission  

Mission statements are used by many organizations to align efforts across the enterprise. “Institutional mission statements provide various constituencies--students, faculty, legislators, etc.--with the institution's educational goals and guidance concerning the achievement of these goals” (Foley, 1995, p.1). When an institution decides to undertake launching an online enterprise, the chances of its success is increased when that online learning is incorporated within the written mission and vision statements (explicit or implicit). Examples include: Assuring that online learning is mentioned explicitly (or inferred) in the university’s strategic plan and that senior leadership buys in explicitly via the mission, vision, and strategic plan, as well as implicitly by their words and actions.

Strategic planning requires deliberation informed by broad-scale yet effective information gathering, analysis, and synthesis; clarification of the mission and goals to be pursued and issues to be addressed along the way; development and exploration of, and choice among, strategic alternatives; and an emphasis on the future implications of present decisions; Strategic planning can help facilitate communication, participation, and judgment; accommodate divergent interests and values, foster wise decision making informed by reasonable analysis; promote successful implementation and accountability; and enhance ongoing learning. In short, at its best, strategic planning can prompt in organizations the kind of imagination - and commitment - that can help effectively address the challenges they face (Bryson, 2018). When online learning is included in the mission or strategic plan it becomes part of the fabric of the institution itself and if that guides action the online offering(s) will be more likely to succeed.

      2. Determine the Purpose for Offering Online Learning at the Institution

Institutions often begin the process of offering online learning for several reasons, most frequently as a way to improve top-line revenue and, secondly, to meet the divergent needs of different types of learners. Third, as a way to expand both geographic reach and expand the institutional brand, and finally, as a way to support their institutional mission. Often it is a combination of several, if not all, of these factors that lead an institution to offer online education.

Improvement to the bottom line was a task much easier accomplished in the early 2000’s as online learning was taking hold in higher education. In the post-pandemic landscape of 2024 those institutions that already have online offerings are seeing increased competition and those not yet in the mix have a lot of work to do to get from the ideation stage into the market, and then begin to grow their offerings to a point of positive margins.

Increased competition, growing expenses on marketing and recruitment, and shrinking pools of applicants have made determining the purpose even more important in terms of challenges related to growing the brand and expanding reach.

Whatever the reasoning, institutional leadership should be clear about the “why” before they move on to the “how” of delivering learning online. In addition, institutions should ensure the online venture is meeting the needs of their particular type of learners and the outcomes of the offering provide them with improved career opportunities (Venable, 2024).

      3. Determine the Demand for Online Learning

Once leaders have established a clear rationale for why their institutions should offer online courses and programs, they need to determine that there is, in fact, a demand for these programs. Including a strategic market analysis in the master plan provides invaluable data to help determine whether it is viable for the institution to enter the highly competitive online learning marketplace and, if so, which programs would have the greatest likelihood of success (Thompson et. al, 2012). For institutions that lack the internal capacity to conduct market research, numerous marketing and enrollment consulting firms, including Education Dynamics, Carnegie Higher Education, Hanover Research, Eduvantis, and EAB can provide the data needed to determine online learning demand.

Local Education Community

A recent survey of more than 1,500 online learners found that over 60% preferred to enroll in a college or university located within an hour’s drive from their home or office (Aslanian & Fischer, 2024). Leaders would do well to conduct research into their nearby communities to determine whether local high schools, community colleges, and other “feeder” schools provide or require online learning experiences for their students. This may help to determine which potential online programs may be a natural fit for students with previous online learning experience. It may also be helpful to consider whether enrollments at feeder schools are growing or shrinking. For specific higher education institutions, this data can be found at the College Navigator site (National Center for Education Statistics, 2024).

Local Employer Community

Another target for market research is local employers, who would encourage—and possibly even finance—online educational opportunities for their employees. Exploring opportunities to partner with local businesses can be a fruitful area for potential growth, as an increasing number of employers are offering tuition reimbursements and other incentives to encourage employees to pursue online courses, certificates and degrees while they continue to work (Blumenstyk, 2016).

National Data and Competition

For institutions wishing to extend their reach beyond their local service area, publicly accessible data on employment numbers, education requirements, and median salaries for numerous occupations are freely available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024). Leaders should also determine which online degrees and programs are already being offered by the institution’s primary competitors (Piña, 2017). It should be noted that the marketing and enrollment consulting firms listed above typically have access to national data, such as Google and Linkedin user search statistics for specific degrees and careers, that may not be readily available to higher education institutions.

      4. Determine the Institution’s Capacity for Online Learning

Online education is a systemic, institution-wide initiative that involves all departments and functions that “touch” an online student from recruitment to graduation. Too often, leaders commit the error of limiting the scope and support of online education to course development, online teaching and marketing, not realizing that the infrastructure, policies, operations and services established for traditional on-campus students may not work well for fully online students who may never come to campus (Piña, 2017).

Upon determining that engaging in online education aligns with the institution’s mission and goals, the question must be asked: Does the institution have the internal capacity and readiness to fully implement online learning or is anything lacking? A capacity assessment can identify the institution’s current state of readiness in the following areas (Piña, 2017):

• Culture (Is there a common understanding of, need for, and commitment to online learning?)
• Technology infrastructure (Is the learning management system’s capability and the network’s capacity and bandwidth sufficient to support a population of off-campus learners?)
• Training and support (Is user training and support available for online faculty and students? Is 24x7x365 technical/LMS support available?)
• Organization (Where does online learning reside in the organization? Is it centralized or distributed?)
• Program and course development (Are the policies, procedures for online program and course proposal, approval, development, and evaluation in place? How do these differ from on-campus programs and courses?)
• Regulatory environment (Can the institution monitor and comply with local, state, federal and accreditation requirements for online/distance education?)
• Human capital (Does the institution currently employ sufficient instructional designers, technical support staff, student services staff, and others to provide services to online learners?)
• Budget (Does the institution have sufficient budget to build and maintain the human and technological infrastructure necessary to establish, maintain and grow online learning?)

The capacity assessment will also help to identify those areas in which the institution is lacking and where additional hires, infrastructure, resources, or assistance from third party partners may be needed. Models and frameworks for assessing institutional readiness for online learning have been provided by Aydin and Tasci (2005), Bandiru and Jones (2012), Haney (2002), Marshall (2011), and Piña (2017).

Determine the Capacity to Serve Online Learners 
Special attention needs to be paid to the institution’s capacity to provide fully online learners with an equitable (or at least comparable) range of essential student services available to on-campus learners (Travers, 2016). Online learners are particularly at-risk for attrition, due to feelings of disconnect from the institution and its faculty (Kretovics, 2015). The capacity analysis should consider the following questions:

• Are the full range of student services, including orientation, library resources, tutoring, program advising, financial aid counseling, degree progress audits, technology support, wellness counseling, and career coaching, currently able to be accessed digitally? 
  
• Are these services able to be accessed after the institution's “normal business hours”?

Providing online students with the same services in the same way and by the same personnel as on-campus students may sound desirable from a fiscal perspective. However, LaPadula (2003) noted that services designed for on-campus learners may need to be completely reconceived, as they often do not meet the unique needs of fully online learners.

      5. Develop Online Learning Policies

At many public and private colleges and universities, online learning began when individual faculty members decided to put their face-to-face courses online. Soon, they were joined by other peers, until the number of online courses reached a sufficient quantity to capture the attention of administration (Piña, 2021).

At this point administrators would begin to establish policies and procedures for online learning in order to provide parameters within which online learning programs can operate and function. However, the COVID pandemic left no time for a systemic review of policies, procedures and regulatory compliance related to distance education and online learners for those institutions who had to pivot quickly to emergency remote teaching (Hodges et al., 2020). Recognizing the dire situation of schools, colleges and universities, the federal government issued a federal health emergency, providing flexibilities and exemptions from distance education regulations (Nworie & Charles, 2021; U.S. Department of Education 2020). As institutions determine that they will retain online learning as part of a “new normal,” strategic planning provides an ideal opportunity to proactively instigate policies and procedures to address issues and prevent problems.

Review Existing Policies 

One of the biggest challenges facing students who are learning fully online is when institutional policies and procedures assume that students must be able to come to campus to complete admissions, financial aid, registration, orientation, assessment testing and other necessary activities for matriculation (Murphy, 2018). Once a student is enrolled, other resources and services, such as advising, counseling, tutoring, and ombuds often require students to come to campus to receive them. The same situation may be faced by faculty working remotely, as policies and procedures assume that onboarding, employee orientations, benefits presentations, compliance training and filling out of forms, must take place on campus.

A critical item to include in the master plan is to review existing policies and procedures and to adapt them to the unique needs of fully online learners and faculty (Murphy, 2018). Are there any current procedures that require that online students or remote faculty come to campus? Can digital signatures replace “wet” signatures? Can orientations, presentations and meetings be done virtually, either synchronously or asynchronously?

Review External Regulations

When an institution prepares to offer its first fully online programs, it must be granted permission by state and federal agencies and by the relevant accrediting body (Higher Learning Commission, 2023; Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, 2020). The state board of higher education—or a similar agency—typically must be notified for all new programs, but, particularly, for programs to be delivered in a new modality. Programs subject to state licensing—such as nursing, counseling, criminal justice or teaching—must receive permission to be offered online by that state’s licensing board (State Authorization Network, 2024). Institutions offering fully online programs that will enroll students from outside the state will also need to petition the state to become a member institution of the National Council of State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA, 2024). At the federal level, online programs must be deemed eligible for federal financial aid, to participate in Title IV programs (Pell Grants and federal student loans). Permission to offer online programs must also be granted by the institution’s accrediting agency, typically through a substantive change application (Higher Learning Commission, 2023; Murphy, 2018, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, 2020).

      6. Establish Online Course Development Process

Online learning provides the means to approach course development in a more systematic way. It is important to consider the following:

• Use established online course development frameworks
• Determine the role of faculty in the course design process
• Design a curriculum map
• Identify an incentive structure
• Train faculty to design online courses
• Establish academic integrity
• Evaluate the course design

The following is a discussion of each.

Use Established Frameworks for Online Programs

There are several organizations that provide educators with systematic research-based processes to design high-quality online courses. For example, Quality Matters (QM) provides a course design rubric that includes the following eight general standards: (1) Course Overview and Introduction, (2) Learning Objectives (Competencies), (3) Assessment and Measurement, (4) Instructional Materials (5) Learning Activities and Learner Interaction, (6) Course Technology, (7) Learner Support, (9) Accessibility and Usability. The rubric also includes 44 Specific Review Standards and annotations that explains how to apply the general and specific standards (Quality Matters, 2020).

The Online Learning Consortium partnered with the State University of New York to provide the OSCQR Course Design Review Score Card that includes 50 standards for educators to review and improve the quality of online courses in the following categories: Course Overview and Information, Course Technology and Tools, Design and Layout, Content and Activities, Interaction, Assessment and Feedback (Online Learning Consortium, 2022). Some institutions use either the QM rubric or the OSCQR Scorecard to help their faculty design quality online courses while some institutions use Blackboard’s Exemplary Course Rubric (Blackboard, 2022), The CSU Quality Learning and Teaching Rubric (California State University, 2022) or a combination of these.

Determine the Role of Faculty in the Course Development Process

The conventional way of developing an institution’s courses was for faculty to design and develop their courses, mostly independently. However, in recent decades, institutions have provided various levels of help for faculty to design their courses. Piña (2021) shared the following options to determine how online course development is managed at an institution:

1. Not Managed: Individual faculty operate autonomously and independently;
2. Distributed: Each academic unit (department/school/college) operates separately and distinctly from the institution’s other academic units;
3. Coordinated: There is a set of institutional policies and procedures adhered to by all academic units of the institution.

Piña (2021) also explained that institutions may have (1) a centralized unit that is responsible for developing online courses or (2) a decentralized process in which individual academic units operate their own online programs independently of each other, and (3) an approach in between 1 and 3. Piña (2021) described three different roles of faculty in the course development process:

1. Autonomous: Course development training is optional, and the faculty “assumes the roles of subject matter expert, instructional designer and course developer in the learning management system” (p. 145). Institutions may rely on this approach in the initial stages of offering online courses and, “The advantages of doing so include not having to invest in a full team of instructional designers and other professionals and avoiding faculty pushback and accusation of violating academic freedom” (p. 147).
2. Limited Autonomy: “Training and other items may be required but the faculty member is still solely responsible for the development of the course” (p. 145).
3. Partnership Development Model: When faculty members work with someone such as an instructional designer who draws on their pedagogical training to help assure that the course objectives are aligned with the learning activities and assessment, etc. (Xu & Morris, 2007).

Design a Curriculum Map

A curriculum map may be used to ensure that important elements of a course (e.g., objectives and assessments) are aligned with the program objectives. According to Plaza et al., (2007), “Curriculum mapping is a consideration of when, how, and what is taught, as well as the assessment measures utilized to explain achievement of expected student learning outcomes” (p.1).

Identify an Incentive Structure

Institutions should determine the types of courses to be developed (e.g., hybrid, online, full, partial, credit hour) and decide how faculty will be incentivized for developing the courses. For example, an institution may award a stipend at the end of a course development, or may offer faculty half of the monetary incentives when they have developed half of the course, and when the course is completed the faculty would receive the other half of their compensation. Another form of compensation may include a course release. Further, Piña (2021) classified course development projects to help institutions manage staffing, timelines and payment for online course development. The classifications include: new course development, course redevelopment, partial course redevelopment, and blended/hybrid development.

Train Faculty to Design Online Courses

In relation to the actual design of the course, depending on the approach selected by an institution, the faculty may be provided with a course design template that provides guidelines and examples of how faculty may design their courses. For example, the course template may include a course home page with an example of how to tell students what is in the course for them (e.g., abbreviated form of the major course objectives) as well as a clear indication of where to get started. In addition to the start-here section, the course design template could also include important course and institution policies and a sample module with video instructions about how to design the module. The institution may invite faculty to download the entire course design template for use in their course, or they may use sections of the template, depending on their situation and the institution’s requirement.

Institutions should clearly identify course design standards (e.g., Quality Matters, OSCQR Rubric, Blackboard Exemplary Rubric, or combined standards). It may be necessary to organize faculty training opportunities (e.g., course design institute, course design challenge, or course design workshops series).

A good practice is to develop training to guide faculty with designing online courses in the institution’s learning management systems (LMS) such as Canvas, D2L Brightspace, or Blackboard. The purpose of the LMS training is to provide concrete opportunities for faculty to experience important components of the LMS from a student’s perspective (e.g., (assignments, quizzes, module design) as well as to apply best practices for teaching online.

After the course is designed, it is helpful to have a process for reviewing the quality of the course. The aforementioned established course design frameworks (e.g., QM rubric and OSCQR Course Design Scorecard) may be used by faculty developers to review the faculty online courses and provide constructive feedback to faculty. Faculty may also use the frameworks to do informal self reviews, sometimes prior to making their course available for a more formal course review. In addition to the guided training in the LMS, some institutions provide an online toolkit/resources for faculty to use to access on-demand resources.

Establish Academic Integrity

Institutions have found it prudent to use technology to promote academic integrity and reduce plagiarism and other forms of cheating. They may choose technologies (e.g., Turnitin or SafeAssign) that allow for students to submit their work so that a report may be generated by the system that indicates to what extent the students submitted original work. An integral part of this process is determining a student verification process that helps to identify whether the students are who they say they are and that they submitted their own work. These verification systems include–but are not limited to–programs such as Respondus Monitor and Lockdown Browser.

      7. Establish Online Teaching Process

 In addition to knowing how to design online courses, faculty also need to know best practices for teaching or facilitating the online course. Establishing an online teaching process involves identifying expectations for interactions, including regular and substantive interaction, developing training for faculty, and evaluating online teaching. The following is a discussion of each.

Identify Expectations for Interaction

Identifying expectations for interaction may fall in three important areas: (1) student-instructor, (2) student-student, and (3) student-content (Garrison et al., 2000). First, student-instructor interaction may include establishing communication expectations (e.g., announcements, discussions; establish synchronous and asynchronous expectations, and establish virtual office/student hours expectations). Second, student-student interaction may include identifying netiquette expectations, identifying student interaction expectations (e.g,. group work and peer review). Third, student-content interaction may include establishing engagement expectations (e.g., attendance, participation, assignment submission, and extra credit).

Include Regular and Substantive Interaction

The federal definition for distance education courses requires that they include regular and substantive interaction (RSI) between instructors and students (Code of Federal Regulations, 2022; Piña & Martindale, 2023). RSI includes providing at least two of the items below on a regular basis.

• Providing direct (synchronous) instruction.
• Assessing or providing feedback on a student’s coursework.
•  Providing information or responding to questions about the content of a course or competency.
• Facilitating a group discussion regarding the content of a course or competency.
• Other instructional activities approved by the institution’s or program’s accrediting agency.

Develop Training for Faculty

Developing the training to help faculty teach online should involve exposing them to the three major types of interactions mentioned above and identifying concrete examples that could be relevant to their disciplines and are helpful to the achievement of the stated learning objectives. The training should also provide strategies for serving students with special needs (e.g., reasonable accommodations and universal design for learning). Helping faculty to master key elements of the learning management (e.g., design assignments, facilitate online discussion, assign peer reviews, post announcements, etc.) is also an important part of the process. Faculty should also be taught about approaches to evaluate their students’ work (e.g., rubric, student evaluation, and observation protocols).

      8. Develop Human Resources

Because online learning at a higher education institution is a systemic function that involves academic, student services, budgetary, regulatory, marketing and other functions across the institution, its success is dependent upon the quality and sufficiency of the personnel performing each of these functions.

Chief Online Learning Officer

The Chief Online Learning Officer (COLO) is the highest-level person within the institution whose primary job tasks involve online learning (Herron et al., 2016; Fredericksen, 2017)). The COLO may be known by a variety of titles, however the priority that an institution places in online learning can be determined by where the COLO resides within the organization and the scope of authority granted to the COLO (Fredericksen, 2017). Executive leaders who recognize online learning as a strategic campus-wide initiative will position the COLO as a direct report to either the President or the Provost (Herron et al., 2016; Laws, 2021). The COLO will then be empowered to interact and coordinate with leadership of departments and functions across the institution in an authoritative leadership role.

Instructional Designers

Although instructional designers may be involved in the development of instruction using multiple modalities (e.g. on-campus, hybrid, HyFlex, laboratory) they are most often associated with online course and program development. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the quantity and visibility of institutional designers at colleges and universities has increased markedly (Decherney & Levander, 2020; Petherbridge, et al., 2022). However, how they are deployed, whether they are centralized or distributed throughout the institution, and their relationship to faculty, is highly dependent upon the culture and strategy of the institution (Piña, 2021).

Student Services

The U.S. Department of Education and other regulatory agencies treat on-campus and online learners differently when it comes to eligibility for federal financial aid, and what constitutes attendance, interaction, and engagement (Piña & Martindale, 2023). Fully online students have different access (and sometimes no access) to many resources, services, and social interactions with university life and other students (Travers, 2016).

Proposed regulations seek to make the distinctions between on-campus and online students even more pronounced (Dowd et al., 2024). The institution not only needs to determine the services that it will provide to students who do not come to campus, but also the personnel who will provide these services. While it is generally known and accepted that teaching in a classroom and teaching online require differing skills, it is less understood that providing advisement, counseling, troubleshooting and other services to fully online learners requires expertise that differs from serving on-campus students (LaPadula, 2003).

The strategic plan should address whether there will be dedicated online student services personnel or whether existing personnel will be trained in the unique needs of online remote students and whether these will reside in a centralized student services office, in a centralized online learning administrative unit, or decentralized and distributed among the different schools, colleges and/or departments (LaPadula, 2003).

Faculty

Faculty involved in online learning may have unique human resource circumstances compared to their on-campus counterparts that need to be addressed through policy (Piña, 2021). Some of the questions to be addressed are: Is online teaching and online course development considered to be part of the faculty member’s regular academic workload or is it considered an overload? Are there stipends or grants available for online course development and training? Are there limits to what non-tenure-track/adjunct faculty are able to do online? Are faculty who reside out-of-state able to teach for the institution?

      9. Determine Program-Level Development 

Similar to point (#2) of the Strategic Framework on the purpose of online learning at the institutional level, each individual online program offering needs to be well planned and well defined in order to succeed. In 2024, many schools currently offering online programs are exploring adding additional offerings. In fact, according to Venable (2024) “40% of administrators say their institutions are planning to increase online program development budgets in the coming year; this is a decrease from 47% in 2023, but an increase from 35% in 2021, the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic” (p.1). Even if they are already in the online learning space, individual program review prior to launch is required.

The first step is to determine the purpose of the program, be it a degree, certificate, stackable credential, etc. What is the return on investment (ROI) for the institution to put forth the funding and effort to launch the new initiative? If there is no clear answer to this question then the program likely is not worth the investment. The ROI could be in additional revenue, however, it could also be for other reasons. Examples of alternate ROI could include institutional brand recognition, establishing expertise in a new field, or connecting with new types of learners. So while revenue is typically a driver it is not the only one to consider.

The second step is to determine the market demand for the offering. Often an institution will launch a program offering without assessing the actual market demand and find that interest by applicants is minimal. There are many research firms who specialize in the market assessment of education offerings if the institution does not have that capability internally. Accurate assessment of the demand and competition for those applicants is crucial prior to launching any new program. Marketing plans must also be made to ensure that there is a strategy around recruiting learners to the new offering which will be further discussed in Section 10 below.

The third step in program-level development is the development of the course offerings themselves. Here is where the institution should apply the established course design process from Section 6 of the Strategic Framework where the roles and responsibilities are well-defined. Available support for course development and instructional design must be established for each offering, which could be internal, external, or both.  Planning should include not only the funds required to build courses but the time required by faculty, staff, and perhaps outside vendors to produce the courses.

As courses are being developed, the faculty should review and apply the institution's online teaching process as outlined in Section 7 of the Strategic Framework. Successful teaching and learner outcomes will be improved if the institution provides training related to best practices in online teaching to the faculty. Assessment of effective teaching practice and methods to provide course instructors with feedback should be a key part of the teaching process framework. Effective classroom teachers teaching online without the proper support may not be as successful in the new modality as those who have the appropriate support and training.

Assessment methodology should also be taken into account when delivering a new program online, including assessment of the instruction and the course modules themselves. Examples include rubrics for evaluating the learning outcomes of an online course that are utilized to make adjustments and updates to the course content.

For all of the steps in program-level development above, it is imperative that key stakeholders are consulted. Examples of stakeholders could include representatives of academics, advising, marketing, operations, or leadership. Consultation of these groups is essential to ensure the outcomes of the program are being met and that the experience of the learners is frictionless and supportive.

      10. Develop Online Learning Visibility 

Branding and marketing are key considerations that should be mapped out well in advance of the launch of a new program. These strategies are important for recruiting suitable learners for the specific offering and should consider strategies that account for competition from other providers.

Typically, prospective learners in an online offering will live or work within 100 miles of the institution, unless the brand is well known outside of the local area or if the offering is truly unique and there is little competition. Depending on the offering and the associated budget, marketing efforts could expand regionally, nationally, or internationally.

Digital strategies such as the website, email, mobile, content marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO), blog posts, digital advertising, and promotion on social media will be required. (Belostecinic, 2023). Non-digital marketing options may be utilized to support the digital efforts. These can include out-of-home advertising like billboards, mail, and in-person recruiting. Finding the right mix of strategies will be unique for each institution and program but the methods above are some examples of common best practices.

The use of these methods will not only increase enrollment if used effectively, but can also increase the visibility of the institution as a whole. This approach is referred to as brand-marketing, which can be difficult to measure but is equally important.

      11. Evaluate the Master Plan for Online Learning

Pisel (2008) notes that a common failure in higher education strategic planning is that the process often ends when implementation begins. In order to determine whether the implementation of the master plan for online learning has been successful, the plan needs to include an evaluation component that consists of specific actions (key performances) tied to each of the plan’s main objectives (Edge, 2004; Maurato & Patricio, 2019). Performance metrics determine which data to collect and analyze for each objective. Some actions and metrics may be simple to determine (e.g., Is online learning mentioned or implied in the institution’s mission, vision and strategic plan? Is the Chief Online Learning Officer properly positioned within the organization?) Others may require more consideration (e.g., how will we determine online faculty and online student success?) Institutional or programmatic accrediting agencies may provide general or specific metrics, while others are available through rubrics, such as the Online Learning Consortium’s Quality Scorecard for Administration of Online Programs (Shelton, 2019).

      12. Implement Improvements

The principle of institutional effectiveness has been stated as “The institution identifies expected outcomes, assesses the extent to which it achieves these outcomes, and provides evidence of seeking improvement based on analysis of the results” (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, 2018, p. 73). Accrediting agencies have identified institutional effectiveness as among the most frequently cited standards for non-compliance (Higher Learning Commission, 2024; Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, 2023).

Building institutional effectiveness into the strategic plan involves not only gathering and analyzing the data gathered from the evaluation metrics mentioned earlier, but also using those metrics in the formulation of plans for improvement (Brint & Clotfelter, 2016). During the next implementation cycle, those improvement plans and their associated metrics will be evaluated to determine whether the improvements were successful. This is referred to as “closing the loop” (Banta & Blaich, 2011).

Conclusion

This Strategic Framework is meant to guide discussions around launching online learning initiatives in a college or university setting. Support for a new online learning initiative or expansion of online learning grown organically–rather than strategically–starts with leadership incorporating online learning within the mission to help guide the process into the future.

From there, key stakeholders need to be involved in researching the purpose and direction of the initiative. This process would include measuring the need for the offering and projecting the cost of delivering it in time, effort, and budget. Policies and procedures related to course development, faculty training and support, and ancillary student services need to be created and adopted across the institution. Prior to the actual launch of any new program, the marketing strategy, the strategies to recruit learners, the evaluation process, and how improvements will be determined and implemented, need to be developed. The Strategic Framework is not a panacea. However, it provides leaders with a guide for planning online learning that is steeped in best practices, yet is flexible enough to adjust to the unique needs, culture, and circumstances of different higher education institutions.

References

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