January 1999 — Features
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How to Go From Classroom Based to Online Delivery in Eighteen Months or Less: A Case Study in Online
Online education and training has exploded across universities and corporations in the United States. In 1993, the Peterson's guide to U.S. colleges reported only 93 "cyberschools." This number had risen 4 years later to 762![1] Says management guru, Peter Drucker, "Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast."[2]
How d'es a university go from having no online courses to launching a complete online bachelor's degree in eighteen months or less? This paper describes the experience of one large, private university in designing and launching an online undergraduate program using full time faculty and an existing course of studies. The university is described briefly, after which the degree program to be delivered online is explained. Then, the actual sequence of events from program concept to program launch is discussed. While the entire process took 18 months, the authors believe that a fast-track development cycle could be completed in 12 months. The article concludes with recommendations designed to help other schools considering online program development.
NSU and the Bachelors of Professional Management Program
Nova Southeastern University (NSU) has a long history of distance education in the more traditional form, i.e., off-site, classroom-based instruction. Originally designed to focus on the educational needs of working professionals, NSU is currently the largest private institution in the State of Florida. Chartered in 1965 as Nova University, the institution merged with Southeastern University of the Health Sciences in 1965 and became Nova Southeastern University. Headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, NSU has physical classes in more than 20 states and several foreign countries. Over the years, the emphasis on distance education has remained constant, but currently the format is changing so that many programs now augment classroom-based instruction with electronically mediated pedagogy that includes online classes, audio bridges and compressed video. Still other programs are offered 100% online.
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The authors are faculty members and administrators in the Farquhar Center for Undergraduate Studies at NSU. Specifically, they manage six undergraduate business majors which account for 1,800 students. The majority of these students attend the Bachelors of Professional Management Program (BPM), which is an upper-level completion program consisting of 66 credits offered in a lockstep format to a cohort of students who take all courses together. The typical student enters the BPM program with an associates degree and takes 27-33 months to complete his or her degree. The BPM program has been offered in a classroom setting all over the State of Florida, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Panama, Louisiana and Israel for the past 20 years.
