How to Choose a College Partner for Distance Education
By Sylvia Vander Sluis

Selecting a higher-education alliance for management-level e-learning shouldn't be a guessing game. Here's a plan that helps you choose your partners.

You're a corporate training manager responsible for raining first-level managers (both new managers and those already in the job) and country-level managers. Perhaps half of the latter have bachelor's degrees. Your audience is dispersed around the globe, and they're busy people. Your company has excellent programs in place for providing training on tools, systems, and procedures, but that's not what this audience needs.

They need undergraduate- or graduate-level college courses. In addition, they need to work with people from other corporations to expand their experience. Your company offers a program to help workers earn college degrees, but most of the burden of selecting a school and enrolling in a degree program is placed on the employee, and there's no mechanism in place to ensure that such training supports related business goals.

You decide on a Web-based solution that leverages the corporate intranet by linking to college partner sites. Employees are already using the intranet for job- and education-related information, services, communication, and marketing, and such a program will provide a reasonably priced global solution without the travel requirements.

So, how do you select an experienced college or university that can provide quality distance education and associated services and meet both employee and corporate needs?

What we did

The pilot program was completed with an accredited college in the spring of 1998. An international group participated in two Web-based courses, working with an instructor and other course participants over the Internet. Based on what we learned from the pilot experience and our research on distance learning, I created a comprehensive set of business practices to support ongoing program implementation. The following three-step method documented in our Business Practices Guide allowed us to select and evaluate potential college partners.

Step 1: Screening. The preliminary screening criteria are: What are the company's most important program requirements? What does an educational institution need to offer to be considered?

To determine whether an institution meets your requirements, you need to do research. An institution's ability to communicate well over the Web is a critical success factor, so you may base your initial screening on information gathered from a review of the college's Website. You may also want to sample an online course at the site to review its instructional design.

For CCL, baseline requirements fell into the following categories that we organized into an online questionnaire template:

• Academic criteria. Does the institution have regional accreditation? Does it have demonstrated experience with an international adult population? Do the courses include content and resources that reflect current theory and practice in international business?
• Distance learning criteria. Does the institution demonstrate experience with delivering instructor-led, Web-based courses? Is an orientation program available to acquaint participants with online processes and the online environment? Is there responsive academic and technical support for course participants?
• Online course criteria. Are courses designed specifically for the online environment with a consistent approach to design and functionality? Are communication and delivery mechanisms primarily asynchronous and text-based to make access as inclusive as possible and independent of a participant's location or time zone? Is communication between participants and with the instructor enabled by the following technologies: asynchronous text, email, and fax?
• Systems criteria. Do the courses make minimal use of tools and technologies that may require excessive bandwidth or that may pose technical problems for the corporate intranet?

After completing a screening and an initial review of online courses, you'll be able to determine which institutions meet your baseline requirements. You can then select several for a more thorough assessment.

We screened 24 U.S. distance learning colleges--chosen from Forbes's list of top cyber universities and other resources--on their ability to meet our corporate requirements and function successfully as partners. We ranked the 24 on the screening criteria, and five were identified for more in-depth assessment. Non-U.S. colleges were also screened, but only a small number looked like immediate partner prospects. To establish and maintain a database of information on current and potential college partners, it's useful to make the screening process an ongoing activity.

Step 2: Assessment. Colleges that meet your baseline requirements move on to assessment. Assessment requires personal contact with an appropriate person at the institution, such as the director of distance education or continuing education. Call him or her to introduce yourself, describe your business needs, and determine the college's potential interest in becoming a partner. If the college expresses an interest, you'll need to provide information on your program requirements and expectations in terms of college courses and support services.

We sent interested colleges a descriptive introduction covering CCL's purpose, strategy, values, and baseline program requirements. For example, in the design category, we stated a need for flexibility in course length and start dates to accommodate the demands of a quarterly business cycle and to support a variety of employee needs. We also stated our expectations for evaluation methodologies, administrative support, and program management, as well as our expectations for other academic services.

Forms, such as a request for information (RFI), are essential for gathering information. We sent an electronic RFI questionnaire to each college contact. The college's potential as a CCL partner was assessed by reviewing the completed RFI and by holding follow-up conversations with appropriate college staff.

Step 3: Proposal review and evaluation. At this point, you're looking for colleges' responses to specific business training needs in a request for proposal. Send RFPs to colleges that have passed your initial screening and in-depth assessment and that have also expressed interest in becoming a partner. Each proposal you receive from a college or university holds a wealth of information, and the success of your program depends on careful analysis. This is the time to include input from business consultants in the organization to make sure the program will meet corporate business needs. Now's also the time to perform a more thorough analysis of the sample courses offered by each college and evaluate each school's method of orienting students to online learning.

We developed a decision matrix for proposal reviewers. It organized data into the following broad categories with a rating scale of weak, solid, and exemplary:

• Proposal submission. Is the proposal complete, timely, and easy to comprehend? Is information presented clearly?
• Content and structure. Is the proposal consistent with the RFP? Does it present relevant information? Is the college ready to deliver the needed course content? Can the college deliver a program with the proposed structure?
• Services. Does the college offer academic advising, enrollment administration, support for English as a second language, and other services?
• Instructors. Does the proposal indicate the academic and professional profiles of the instructors and do those profiles meet the program's needs? Are the instructors trained to deliver online courses? Are they ready to deliver the proposed content or is additional development time needed?
• Evaluation. What are the college's existing processes and tools for evaluating courses? What process is proposed for the program?
• Technology. Is the college able to meet the program requirements? For example, does it make minimal use of high-bandwidth tools?
• Costs and timeframes. What will be your investment in course development? What will be the per-employee tuition cost? Is the college able to meet your time constraints?
• Overall. Summary results from all categories.

In addition to these ratings, we performed a second, more comprehensive evaluation of the sample online college courses using a similar matrix. Evaluation criteria for online course design were organized using the same rating scale in the following categories:

• System. What's the overall look, feel, and operation of the online courses?
• Technology. What's the platform? What applications, hardware, and software are required for successful completion of the courses?
• Integrity. Are the courses instructionally sound?
• Support. What processes and materials are provided to assist learners and instructors?

After analysis came negotiation. We were interested in offering business certificate programs made up of several related, credit-bearing courses. Most colleges that responded to the proposal had the content we desired, but their proposals raised new, substantive questions that forced further discussions and exploration. For example, one of the two colleges we were most interested in required admission to either their undergraduate or graduate school to enroll in the business certificate programs--whether the employee wanted to apply the credit toward a degree or not. In addition, both of the colleges required the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor's degree for admission to the graduate-level certificate program.

These academic admission requirements were a concern to Compaq because we believed the majority of employees would prefer focused certificate programs to degree programs, and we felt that the substantive admissions hurdles could be a negative motivator, particularly for those who lacked a bachelor's degree. The colleges were convinced that people enrolling in the graduate-level classes needed a bachelor's degree in order to ensure an even level of preparation for all students, as well as to adhere to academic policies.

This experience highlighted the fact that businesses often need flexibility in academic policies for their employees. Flexibility, of course, must be weighed against many other factors. It may be worthwhile to take an investment approach with colleges that offer greater academic flexibility. As long as their curriculum content and services are basically on target, they may be the best choice for a long-term, evolving partnership.

For us, two universities were standout preferences. Interestingly, they had significantly different course structures and, in some cases, admission requirements. We decided to offer certificate programs through both universities so that employees could complete the college program that offered the best fit.

A manager's work is never done

The process of managing and evaluating a program like CCL and the college partnerships that support it is an iterative process. You need a valid selection process with a robust, consistent set of criteria and assessment tools to identify the best potential educational partners. Documenting the steps in the process and formalizing tools and sample implementations of those tools makes an efficient process over time.

Sylvia Vander Sluis (sylvia.vandersluis@
compaq.com) is a training program manager in Customer Services Training and Development, Compaq Computer Corporation.