Resourcing - Taking the Lead: Strategic Management for e-Learning

A Theme from Strategic Management for e-Learning

Chief executives need to be clear about two questions with respect to the resourcing of e-learning:

• How should e-learning be resourced within your organisation?
• What will it cost?

While the second question may be of more immediate interest to senior managers, the first question is probably more important. In the full report we chart a common evolution of resourcing for e-learning among New Zealand institutions. This goes as follows: early adopters are supported by targeted grants; a pilot programme receives similar targeted funding; as the numbers of users increase, gaps are identified in the provision of services; central services are established and resourced to fill these gaps; e-learning support services are made available to teaching units generally without charge; as usage grows, these units have to start rationing their provision of support.

By this stage, most institutions have a fairly stark choice to make when it comes to funding the wider development of e-learning strategies. The first option is to ‘ring fence’ the resourcing and management of e-learning and treat it as a centrally-planned, centrally-resourced and largely stand-alone stream of activity and funding. Under this option, the development of e-learning strategies is generally resourced by ‘top slicing.’ The central e-learning unit is allocated sufficient resources to develop a given number of courses to a given standard. Some selection process then determines which courses will be developed and to what standard. A common variant of this approach is the use of development grants, which are awarded on the basis of applications from across the institution.

This approach has a number of strengths. It allows a corporate and strategic decision to be made about which programmes will make use of e-learning and how they will deploy it; it tends to encourage a programme-wide approach to e-learning rather than a more piecemeal, course-based approach; and it may act as a strong incentive for programme groups to make the effort to develop their online programmes.

On the other hand, in a regime of devolved funding, targeted central funding can distort the decisions that programme managers are making about how their programmes should be delivered. As the scale of an institution’s e-learning grows, this mode of funding e-learning will represent an evergrowing proportion of each unit’s total funding. Therefore it is probably not conducive to ensuring the accountability of individual unit and programme managers.

The other alternative is to keep the level of centrally-funded support services to a minimum and encourage divisional and programme leaders to view e-learning as just one of the many delivery options that they should consider resourcing from their current income. In theory, this should encourage programme leaders to make rational and cost-effective choices among competing delivery options. The downside may be that the uptake of e-learning will be slower than with a more centrally-funded approach. More seriously, the quality and range of approaches adopted across the institutions are likely to be much more variable, and, therefore, likely to attract the attention of a quality assurance unit.

On balance, the evidence seems to favour a continuing level of central resourcing for central services. Institutions with development grants to facilitate e-learning are able to target developments on a more strategic basis and ensure a more even standard of provision. The scale of such grants can vary considerably. One or two regional polytechnics are investing up to $1 million in targeted development projects each year, while a couple of much larger universities are investing $100,000 to $200,000 across a large number of projects.

In the Massey University case study, we present an example of an institution endeavouring to resource its e-learning development on a fully-devolved funding model. The Otago University and AUT University case studies are examples of competitive grant systems delivering modest support for selected programmes. The NorthTec and Otago Polytechnic case studies are examples of larger-scale central investment in e-learning on a targeted basis.