This article is the fourth post of a series about planning for digital learning in higher education. You can see the first one here. In this post, I investigate the third stage of addressing issues with your digital learning: making decisions across your digital program portfolio.
While decisions about particular programs are important and must be considered carefully, questions across the portfolio (highlighted in the figure above) should set the context within which those decisions are made. These decisions begin with the following:
Stacking
Will different programs be able to be assembled into a larger unit—for example, will the completion of several certificates result in the granting of a degree? The answer to this would affect almost every decision related to each program.
Feeders
Will you use certain programs in your digital program portfolio to identify students as ideal candidates for degree programs? This might change your decisions related to admissions, price, marketing, and more.
Public Service
Will some programs be developed to serve the community (defined by its location, a professional community, or whatever)? If so, then the answers to many questions specific to the program itself will necessarily change. Explicit use of this designation will simplify decision-making around the program, especially around budgetary and resource constraints.
Winners (80/20 rule)
It is general wisdom that 80% of an institution’s profits come from 20% of its offerings. These numbers aren’t meant to be exact. Still, the underlying wisdom remains: Some programs are more important than others and need to receive a higher level of investment. While other programs may be necessary, they aren’t necessarily driving institutional differentiation, profits, enrollment, or awareness.
Shared Resources
Institutions can share technologies, administration, faculty, courses, and specialized support staff across programs when needs are sufficiently aligned. The question arises, then, as to what “sufficiently” means—what do needs look like when they are out of alignment? The answer generally goes back to the delivery timing, quality requirements, scale, and funding availability. The appropriate organizational response to misaligned needs generally involves the following:
- Creating program- or school-level support (rather than solely centralized support), or
- Providing multiple levels of support and services through the centralized system (that come with multiple levels of cost).
I want to focus on the last point just a bit more. One plan for creating a more significant barrier to entry for competitors in your market is to invest in cross-program technologies and services that would be difficult for competitors or potential competitors to duplicate. The investments can exceed the justification for a single program; however, since they would be used across multiple programs, the investment can make economic sense for the defender of the market while being difficult to match for potential competitors. Scope and scale come into play at this point and must be well understood to determine who has the advantage.
Leadership teams should address all of these questions related to your digital program portfolio at the beginning of the planning process. Barring that, they should do so every time they consider a new program or set of programs. Your answers will have implications for not only the new program but existing ones as well. Don’t be surprised if your answers change over time as you build up larger interdependent sets of programs.
