How to Overcome 3 Challenges of Moving Distance Education Online
3 Challenges in Moving Your Distance Education Online & How to Solve Them
As colleges and universities are squeezed by rising costs, tuition fees continue to climb, student debt mounts, and more express doubts about the value of a college education.
Many academics believe it’s time to look at improving “educational productivity.” This means doing more with less, just like every other sector of the global economy. That doesn’t have to be a threat; it can be an opportunity.
“Productivity is a ratio between costs and outcomes,” concluded a seminal report from the U.S. Department of Education,” noting three ways to improve productivity:
- Reducing costs, while maintaining learning outcomes
- Improving outcomes, while holding costs steady
- Transforming processes to reduce costs and improve outcomes
To help boost productivity, many colleges and universities are turning to online education. In fact, 70% of Chief Academic Officers in the U.S. agree that online education is critical to their long-term strategy.
Yet the answer is not simply to roll out online courses; the real solution is to do this as effectively as possible. Three main challenges face any college or university that considers moving courses online:
- Reducing the cost to deliver courses
- Achieving learner engagement and success
- Selecting the right technology
Moving online may require a rethink of your campus legacy IT systems. There may be a better option than soldiering on with the status quo.
Moving courses online involves risky decisions, including how to manage course development, budget for added IT, set up an online payment system, create a mobile app, and launch promotions to attract new students.
To support online courses, colleges and universities generally choose between three categories of educational technology:
- Open source learning platforms, such as Moodle
- Traditional learning management systems (LMS)
- Cloud-based LMS, such as WizIQ LMS
This white paper describes each of these categories, and how well it meets the challenges of moving online. This paper concludes that the best way to support online initiatives is with a cost-effective, integrated e-learning platform such as WizIQ LMS software.