Dr. Robert Roehrich

Veronica, It is important to remember that an unavoidable but healthy tension exists between creating a new "product" (while preserving the best of the current one) and marketing it. Your challenge is to know how to manage that tension. Having a strategy for marketing and sales starts with alignment of the "learning strategy" with the business objectives and responding to the needs of your potential online community. From your posting, I presume that you already have enough information about who purchases your courses and where they see the value in your institution. The challenge to the marketing folks is to… >>>

Veronica, Thank you for articulating the challenges you and your institution have been facing in selecting an appropriate LMS for your online programs; its not an easy task! To para-phrase your response and to reinforce what I posted earlier, selection of an LMS must align with your educational and business objectives. Institutions are more likely to select an appropriate LMS if an instructional delivery strategy is carefully developed and considered a "business asset". Given your June 2013 target for a final decision, have you developed a "decision tree" format for assessing and comparing LMS characteristics against your instructional strategy and… >>>

Veronica, Thank you for your detailed response. Apparently you have given quite a bit of thought to the process of establishing your online policies and procedures. Consulting policies of other university and college offering online delivery is a great starting place, but more important are the steps you will take for engaging your faculty and appropriate departments in finalizing the policy language. I would also encourage you to fully engage them in developing the companion procedures and steps for implementation. With regard to addressing policy violations, you should also have a clearly defined process in place when the policies are… >>>