No. 016/2006
One Size Doesn't Fit All: Developing Customised High Quality Learning Solutions to Meet Organisational Learning Needs - The Case of U21Global
Michael A. Goldberg & Wing Lam
December 2006 0
One Size Doesn't Fit All: Developing Customised High Quality Learning Solutions to Meet Organisational Learning Needs - The Case of U21Global Michael A. Goldberg, U21Global, Singapore 1
[email protected] Wing Lam, U21Global, Singapore 2
[email protected]
ABSTRACT One commonly-used definition of quality is ‘conformance to requirements’. Applied to an educational setting, quality can be viewed as providing learning solutions that meet the needs of the learner or learner organisation. This paper reports on the experience of U21Global in working with large organisations in creating customised learning solutions to meet the specific needs of their employees. Two cases are described: one of which relates to a large IT services and outsourcing firm and the other to a large public-sector oil company. Both these cases highlight the significant effort required by U21Global to first elicit and analyse the organisation’s learning needs, and then design and develop creative learning solutions within a short time. This method contrasts with the traditional university approach to quality where academics establish quality metrics largely from a faculty’s perspective. Keywords: High-quality learning, online education, customisation, customised content, learning needs
QUALITY AS UNDERSTANDING LEARNING NEEDS Meeting Organisational Learning Needs There are numerous approaches that one could adopt to assess the quality of learning programmes (Steyn & Schulze, 2003). For example, in universities, quality is typically established by departments and academic senates based on traditional academic metrics of rigour, breadth and depth of coverage, competency of the department to offer the course or degree and so on. Moving outside face-to-face learning at typical first-rate universities to online learning, it is becoming clear that quality assurance must take new forms (Roffe, 2002; O’Neill & Palmer, 2004). In this paper, we seek to move beyond this significant quality
1 Michael A. Goldberg is Chief Academic Officer at U21Global. 2 Wing Lam is Associate Professor and Director, Master of Management in Information Technology (MMIT) Program at U21Global.
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challenge to explore quality determination in online learning aimed at large corporate and government entities. Here we consider a broad view of quality. For example, one commonly-used definition of quality is ‘conformance to requirements’. And if one applies this definition to learning, quality can be considered in terms of providing a learning solution that meets the needs of the individual learner or learner organisation. This has certainly held true in the experience of U21Global, an online graduate school established by the 19 universities in the Universitas21 network, with the goal of providing the same high quality learning outcomes as the universities provide in their traditional face-to-face campus environments. When U21Global was first asked to provide executive education to meet organisational learning needs, it thought it could do so by offering the same academic content its MBA and MMIT programmes currently offer. By and large, however, this approach was less than ideal from the corporate perspective. In a nutshell, organisations did not want an ‘off-the-shelf’ learning product, but something that was customised to meet their specific learning requirements. These requirements could be quite diverse and demanding for example: • • • • • • • • •
Rethinking learning outcomes Revisiting the breadth and depth of knowledge needed Finding industry-specific case-studies Changing our assessment regime Varying the duration of the course or programme Involving workplace supervisors more directly in the learning experience Building discussion boards on actual work issues and not pre-packaged cases Adjusting pedagogy to the needs of older learners confronting online learning Tailoring student support services to meet learner and HR department needs
U21Global soon began to realise that the ability to analyse and understand an organisation’s learning requirements, engage the organisation in the design of the learning solution and then present a learning solution was critical to a successful partnership with business and government organisations. This activity placed faculty members much more in the role of listeners and consultants than speakers and designers of faculty-led courseware. Additionally, it placed significant demands and much greater emphasis on upstream content and courseware design based on client needs.
TWO ILLUSTRATIVE CASES Below we summarise two cases where we had to marshal our faculty and courseware design resources to first listen and fully understand the organisations’ learning needs and goals. We then had to work together in very tight timeframes to design and launch the customised courses. The two cases are quite different and they illustrate different organisational demands and U21Global responses.
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Case 1: Major IT Services and Outsourcing Firm The first case involved a major IT services and outsourcing firm with a highly educated and skilled workforce, but whose skill base understandably was rather technical and narrow. This organisation had a pressing need, not to bolster technical skills, but rather to build basic understanding of global business and economics so that its workforce could better comprehend and serve the firms client base in diverse industries and locales around the world. The challenge here was to meet the client’s needs under very tight deadlines by first and foremost clearly grasping the client’s needs in terms of content, pedagogy and assessment and then dramatically condensing content from nearly a dozen different 14-week courses into eight 2-week learning modules. Additionally, the pedagogy and assessment had to integrate senior workplace supervisors into the learning experience to maximise the value of the learning to the organisation. The exercise placed enormous strains on the relatively small U21Global faculty and courseware design teams. It forced us to listen carefully as there was little scope for error. It also forced us to economise our effort and work together as a highly integrated team since our own human resources were limited. Case 2: Large Public Sector Oil Company The second case involving a large mixed ownership oil company (government controlled but publicly listed) was very different. Here, the challenge was to appreciate the organisational culture and decision-making processes of this mixed ownership enterprise as much as it was to meet the specific content and learning needs. The initial customisation was much more modest than that described above as it consisted of tailoring a single subject to include cases and readings that were relevant to the petroleum industry and engaging faculty facilitators who were also conversant with the oil sector. The bigger challenge by far was understanding the corporate culture and being able to vary our courseware design and development processes to meet the client’s cultural and decision-making needs as well as content needs.
LESSONS LEARNT AND IMPLICATIONS FOR QUALITY In these two cases, quality, we learnt, had meanings that differed from traditional quality measures for content and pedagogy. First, at a macro level, quality can be seen as providing learning solutions that meet the needs of the learner or learning organisation. Standardised educational offering and products rarely meet organisational learning needs, nor do traditional academic quality measures of rigour, breadth and depth of coverage. We learnt that not all organisations are able to immediately articulate their learning needs, and this is where consultative learning design and interaction come into play—skills we did not realise we had, but we developed very rapidly. Academics may typically have little experience in customisation because they are so used to establishing the needs and goals of their learners by themselves with little or no consultation aside from the time-honoured collegial decision processes. This faculty- or supply-led learning did not suit organisational learning needs well at all and we were
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forced to develop much better listening and consultative modes for courseware design and development where quality was set by the learning organisation and not by the academy—a dramatically different and somewhat jolting approach to quality for most of us.
REFERENCES O’Neill, M.A. & Palmer, A. (2004). ‘Importance-performance Analysis: A Useful Tool for Directing Continuous Development in Higher Education’, Quality Assurance in Education, 12(1), 39–52. Roffe, I. (2002). ‘E-Learning, Engagement, Enhancement and Execution’, Quality Assurance in Education, 10(1), 40–50. Steyn G.M. & Schulze S. (2003). ‘Assuring Quality of A Module in Human Resource Management: Learners’ Perceptions’, Education, 123(4), 668–680.
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U21Global Working Paper Series, No. 007/2008
Established in 2001, U21Global is the world's premier online Graduate School that offers globally recognised postgraduate programmes. The graduate school is in close partnership and collaboration with four prestigious partner universities - the University of Birmingham, the University of Melbourne, the University of Nottingham and the University of Virginia. U21Global combines the traditional quality of its founders and partners with innovative modes of delivery on the Internet, providing students with substantial learning advantages that is relevant to current management thinking, while balancing work, travel and family life.
More details about U21Global Graduate School can be found at www.u21global.edu.sg
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