Strategic initiatives in the online environment: opportunities and challenges

Purpose – The paper aims to present a strategic model for online program success in higher education and to discuss the implications of web‐based teaching for learning assessment and program evaluation.Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses an analytic approach to deconstruct a successful online program to identify necessary elements for the initiative to become apart of the institutional culture.Findings – The paper traces the evolution of online learning in higher education over the past decade, poses the necessary strategic planning questions that must be answered, identifies critical success factors, argues that that the broadening scope of evaluation will have to encompass emerging constructs such as information fluency, and hypothesizes online learning as a systemic initiative.Research limitations/implications – The study intends to stimulate case study research at other colleges and universities using the template of this paper to assess whether or not the model constructs and elements are r...

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