Powerful or Powerless? Chief Online Education Officers’ Legitimate Power over Online Program Quality in U.S. Higher Education Institutions

As the online higher-education market continues along its trajectory of steady growth, it becomes increasingly competitive. Since quality sets online programs apart in the current competitive market, it is a priority for higher-education institutions. Consequently, presidents and provosts at many U.S. higher education institutions have been placing the quality of online program administration under the purview of a new role known under the umbrella term of chief online education officer (COEO). However, when looking for empirical research to help calibrate the COEO role in a way that maximizes its influence on quality, senior leaders find a gap in the literature. The purpose of this quantitative, correlative, non-experimental study was to ask COEOs from all over the nation to use the Online Learning Consortium Quality Scorecard (QSC) to share their perceptions of the quality of their institution’s online program. Additionally, COEOs were asked to self-assess their ability to influence quality based on their legitimate power and to describe environmental factors that could potentially impact their legitimate power. Key findings indicate a strong, positive correlation between overall legitimate power and overall quality, as well as between overall legitimate power and the hierarchy of COEO job titles (E1). Additional environmental factors significantly correlated with legitimate power categories included the number of units making a full report to the COEO (E3) and the breadth of COEO’s current portfolio of responsibilities (E12), among others. Finally, data indicate that the hardest quality category to influence is technical support.

Ensuring Online Learning Quality: Perspectives from the State University of New York

As online learning continues to grow within higher education, it is important for colleges and universities to ensure that they are delivering quality online courses and programs. This paper will discuss the evaluation and assessment of online learning from an institutional perspective. Open SUNY, the system-wide office of online education that supports and services the State University of New York (SUNY), has developed a process using the Online Learning Consortium’s (OLC) Quality Scorecard for the Administration of Online Programs to help SUNY campuses examine and improve the quality of online learning. The first half of this paper will describe the development of that tool and the implementation of the Open SUNY Institutional Readiness Process. The second half of this paper will explain the OLC Quality Scorecard standards for the Evaluation & Assessment section and provide examples of best practices from four different SUNY community colleges.

Strategic planning for implementation of Commission on Cancer standard 3.3 in a tertiary academic center.

58 Background: The Commission on Cancer (CoC) enacted a new accreditation standard (3.3) in 2012 to ensure cancer survivors treated with curative intent receive a Treatment Summary and Survivorship Care Plan (SCP) upon treatment completion. Accredited institutions reported challenges to meeting the standard such as lengthy completion time, lack of reimbursement, and limited personnel. In 2014, the CoC clarified 3.3 to allow a 5 year phased launch for institutions to be compliant by 2019. Yet, academic cancer centers continued to report difficulty in meeting annual targets. Methods: Annual goals for provision of SCPs to eligible survivors at The James Cancer Hospital were met in 2015 (10%) and 2016 (25%). Existing processes were not sufficient to meet the goal of 50% in 2017. Multiple stakeholders developed a performance improvement plan (PIP) to revise institutional practices to create a sustainable SCP delivery model. The Cancer Registry provided analytic case volumes. Results: Institutional barriers to SCP delivery included inconsistent data collection, multiple versions of a SCP, lack of personnel, a 3+ month wait time for information from Cancer Registry, and lack of provider awareness. Major tenets of the PIP were to: (1) integrate the SCP into the electronic medical record, (2) improve collection and accuracy of data, (3) initiate a hybrid (integrative and consultative) model of SCP delivery in which dedicated Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) are employed through a centralized survivorship center, (4) include provision of SCP as a metric on APP professional practice evaluations, (5) educate disease groups with high volumes of SCP eligible patients, (6) provide a quality scorecard, and (7) review eligibility criteria and the timeliness of Cancer Registry. Implementation of the PIP increased performance as the number of SCPs provided in January to September 2017 (n = 884) surpassed volume from the previous 2 years (2015 n = 617; 2016 n = 786). Conclusions: Academic cancer centers with high volumes of SCP eligible survivors often contend with barriers to meeting CoC standard 3.3. Implementation of the PIP, which improved performance in 2017, will be continually evaluated to meet the standard by 2019.

Evidencing Quality

In an era of tightening institutional budgets, ever increasing online enrollments and greater calls for accountability from multiple directions, the need for online program administrators to continually assess the quality of their overall operations has never been greater. But even vigilant administrators have had difficulty defining “quality” and were unable to benchmark to other programs, as standards for quality varied. To address this daunting task, a research-based standard assessment tool known as the Quality Scorecard for the Administration of Online Education Programs was developed. The primary goals of this case are to Provide a brief overview of the scorecard highlighting the key areas of the quality indicators and the scoring protocol and present practical applications for this research-based assessment tool as evidenced through the administration of the scorecard by three online administrators at four institutions. By focusing on the ways in which different administrators at diverse institutions (public and private, large and small) used the Quality Scorecard to benchmark their online operations against a standard, we are able to illustrate how continuous improvement opportunities, impacting on both learning effectiveness and program improvement, can be implemented at the program or institutional level.

Social and Student Engagement and Support: The Sloan-C Quality Scorecard for the Administration of Online Programs

As combinations of place-based, blended and fully online education proliferate, so do options for support and services. Regional accreditors provide criteria for student support. Aligning with regional criteria, the Sloan-C Quality Scorecard for the Administration of Online Programs is a useful way for institutions to measure and compare the quality of social and student engagement and support. The Scorecard aids quality efforts in institutional strategic planning, compliance reporting, and internal and external evaluation. Focusing on two of the nine categories of quality indicators—Social and Student Engagement and Student Support—this paper illustrates some ways institutions can meet Scorecard indicators while complementing regional accreditation guidelines.