Quality Management in an MBA Program by Distance Education |
VOL. 6, No. 2, 7-24
This paper uses a qualitative, longitudinal methodology to focus on the creation of a consumer (student) oriented framework for quality in the Deakin University MBA by distance education. Quality is viewed as the outcome of a complex set of interactions between staff, students, learning materials, and supportive educational method. The notion of students acting as passive recipients of "quality" teaching is rejected. The contention is made that quality is a primary means of gaining competitive differential advantage in a specified segment of the MBA market, only if quality is defined by student perceptions. The research findings enable the development of a Student Learning Framework of Quality that demonstrates the need for efficient learning, opportunities for student interaction with learning materials, with the workplace, with teaching staff, and with study groups and residential schools. This framework is analyzed in terms of the value chain concept and implications are drawn for the successful future management of the Deakin MBA program.
Cet article utilise une méthodologie longitudinale qualitative pour se concentrer sur la création d'un cadre de qualité orienté vers le consommateur (l'étudiant) dans le MBA à distance de l'Université Deakin. Nous définissons qualité comme étant le résultat d'une série de relations complexes entre le personnel, les étudiants, les matériaux d'enseignement, et la méthode de soutien pédagogique. Nous rejetons la notion que les étudiants sont les récepteurs passifs de la "qualité" de l'enseignement. Nous affirmons que la qualité n'est un moyen primordial d'obtenir un avantage dans la compétition pour un segment spécifique du marché du MBA que si cette qualité est définie par la perception des étudiants. Les résultats de notre recherche ont permis de développer un Student Learning Framework of Quality qui démontre le besoin d'un apprentissage efficace et d'occasions pour les étudiants d'entrer en action réciproque avec les matériaux d'enseignement, avec la place de travail, avec les enseignants, et avec les groupes d'étude et les écoles résidentielles. Nous analysons ce cadre et en tirons des conclusions pour assurer le succès de la gestion future du programme de MBA à Deakin.
In this paper we examine the following six critical issues surrounding the management of quality in respect of an MBA program by distance education:
We believe that these questions are relevant to all MBA programs (indeed, all educational programs), irrespective of the mode of delivery of the educational product.
In 1988, a group of 18 Deakin MBA participants was selected as the basis for a longitudinal study on distance learning. The primary objectives of this study were to identify students' entry-level conceptions of management and how these conceptions changed through the course of the program; to identify the learning agendas that students brought to the program and to analyze how they went about fulfilling these agendas; to examine the interplay between students' educational lives, personal lives, and professional lives; and to identify the implications that these issues held for improving the development, delivery, and servicing of the Deakin MBA (see Holt, Petzall, & Viljoen, 1990a; Holt, Petzall, & Viljoen, 1990b; Holt, Petzall, & Viljoen, 1990c; Viljoen, Holt, & Petzall, 1990). The research methodology was essentially qualitative in nature and comprised in-depth interviews of each participant every year and observation of study group processes and performance.
After two years of study, each participant was asked the question, "What is quality in distance education - what do we have to do to make your learning experience a quality one?" The responses received form the basis of this paper.
In considering participants' responses to the issue of quality, and other questions explored in the research, we have found that a team approach to our research project has greatly assisted in improving the quality of the fieldwork (a dual interviewer approach has been used in all interviews) and the quality of data analysis and interpretation. Initially, all interview transcripts were independently analyzed, in detail, by two members of the research team who constructed short written analyses, with the third member acting as an arbitrator during discussions and negotiations over the interpretation of meanings to be attached to MBA participants' comments. Invariably, interpretations of meaning overlapped, or different members of the research team focused on different, yet complementary things, to interpret. Different people looking at the same or different things, in similar or dissimilar ways, helped to enrich the interpretive process, although reaching consensus on interpretations was often an intense, but never tense, process of exchange and negotiation. (Holt et al., 1990c, p. 158)
Management education, at a tertiary level, has never been divorced from quality considerations. The rigorous methodologies applied to the research efforts of management academics are designed, in part, to ensure the quality of the information produced and, subsequently, disseminated to colleagues, students, and the rest of the world. Today, however, quality assumes a more urgent dimension. With the number of MBA programs in Australia increasing from 16 in 1988 to 29 in 1990, the notion of quality as an integral feature of the academic process is being superseded by the notion of quality as a competitive weapon. Although there are many ways of carving out a competitive niche in the market (for example, on the basis of mode of delivery, length of program, nature of curriculum, status of parent institution, and so on) within each of these segments quality is likely to become an important differentiating feature.
Of course, to the monopolist, competition is a particularly significant threat because the usual measures of efficiency and effectiveness (that is, comparative performance against competitors) do not apply. Such organizations need to take particular care with the assessment of the quality of their market offerings as they move into an era of increased competition. The Deakin University MBA program falls into this category. Having faced no competition in terms of other institutions using distance education as the mode of delivery from its inception in 1981 until 1989, this program is now faced with a competitive environment that demands close attention be paid to the quality component of its offering. There are now three MBA providers that offer programs either completely or partially in the external mode. Also, there is a natural degree of rivalry between all MBA programs in the market, regardless of which segment they are targeting. The trend towards making study more convenient, as embodied in part-time and executive MBA programs, is a particular threat to the programs that operate in the external mode. A major outcome of these developments is the necessity for all MBA providers to focus more strongly on the quality element of their respective programs in order to be able to compete effectively within their chosen market segment.
Before we can examine the management of quality of an educational product, we must at least confront the issue of what the nature of the product is that we are attempting to create, control, and improve. In essence, we must attempt to define the purpose of education for off-campus, postgraduate students engaged in a professional development experience.
We believe that the purpose of the MBA program is to provide a rich and diverse array of learning resources, or, if you like, learning opportunities, with which students are encouraged to engage to satisfy their educational needs. The learning opportunities must be broadly conceived to accommodate the different learning agendas that students bring to the MBA program. From an extensive review of the literature on learning theory (i.e., management learning, adult learning, professional learning, and the use of the workplace as a place of learning), we contend that the array of learning resources must develop critical thinking and action skills in our students. The essential context, therefore, of Deakin's MBA program "is one of vocational and professional education of an applied and critically reflective nature" (Northcott, 1990, p.1). The MBA product is directed at achieving more informed professional practitioners through the development of these critically reflective and action-oriented skills.
In analyzing competitive strategy, the framework provided by Michael Porter (1980) describing generic strategies is useful. Porter maintains that sustainable competitive advantage can be achieved by pursuing one of the three following strategic thrusts:
Using this framework, the strategic thrust of the Deakin MBA program is to compete on the basis of focus (within the distance education segment of the market) and on the basis of differentiation within this segment (on the basis of quality). To the extent that all segments within the postgraduate management education market overlap to some limited degree, competition will also occur with organizations pursuing other strategies.
Thus, quality can provide educational producers with a competitive edge in the marketplace. The challenge is to unlock the meaning of quality as perceived by key parties in the educational process. Of course, there is no more important party in the educational process than the consumers, that is, students.
We believe that students' desire for opportunities for interaction provides a useful unifying framework for categorizing students' perceptions of the important ingredients of quality in the MBA program. The kind of interaction we are talking about is a relatively equal, open, lively, and informed exchange of views and ideas that often works its way through to a mutually acceptable consensus or compromise amongst participants involved in the communicative exchange. Interaction, which leads to a better understanding of different participants' positions, albeit agreement between the parties may not necessarily be achieved, is also consistent with our definition of interaction. We would see our definition of interaction as being broadly in line with other distance education scholars' expositions of the nature of open forms of dialogue or communication (see, for example, Garrison, 1989, pp.11–12 & p.122). contains a summary of the key dimensions of quality interaction that maximizes student learning in the program.
Given the tremendous time pressures placed on external MBA students because of professional, family/social, and educational commitments, the demand for learning efficiency is not unexpected. One aspect of learning efficiency concerns the study materials themselves. These need to be readable, concise, and to have clear objectives stated at the outset to guide the learning process. As far as possible, they should be self-contained and should not present material that is in conflict with any supporting prescribed text. Study guides should contain clear plans for the entire semester and any additional reading required should be optional in order to minimize the amount of "administrative" time spent by the student in accessing such readings. Study guides should be delivered well in advance of each semester in order to prevent a delayed start to the learning process by students.
The treatment of assignments is also important in creating efficient learning. Assignments need to be well structured with a clear statement of what is required in terms of length, format, style, and content. Detailed and constructive feedback is necessary so that, "you could get it 100 per cent right if you were to do it again." Also, assignments should be assessed and returned rapidly in order to improve the effectiveness of feedback.
Study groups aid learning efficiency by reducing individual workloads, by improving the understanding of course materials, and by allowing a more rapid coverage of these materials: "alone I can get things two-thirds right, but together we might get it 100 per cent right." Study groups can also be useful in correcting problems caused when the study guide itself is wrong or misleading.
The intellectual capabilities of students (as indicated by their high GMAT scores) places strong demands on the depth of subject content. Course material should be designed to promote thought and challenge rather than to provide the student with answers to specific issues. Materials need to be interesting, well written, and easy to read.
A widespread view held by students is that good in-text questions, accompanied as far as possible by suggested answers, materially enhances the quality of study guides. Such questions and answers enable students to test their understanding of the materials and serve as a substitute, to some extent, for the relative lack of face-to-face contact with lecturers.
Some participants referred to the value of clear directions on how to approach readings, or supplementary articles, contained in the study guides. They felt that directions by the course team about whether to skim-read such articles or to treat them as in-depth reading could assist them in working through their study guides.
There was also general agreement that a good tutor could not salvage a really bad study guide, nor a poor tutor spoil a good one, though tutors were seen as providing a very useful supplementary role in relation to study guides.
Teaching staff project themselves and their teaching into the learning materials, therefore, when students study the materials they are involved in a "simulated" conversation with their teachers (Holmberg, 1985, p.87). Students not only value interaction with appropriately designed learning materials, but they also value the ways in which the learning materials stimulate opportunities for further interaction outside the text itself (i.e., interaction with the workplace, the study group, and in residential schools, as well as ongoing interaction with teaching staff).
Consistent with the strong vocational agendas that students brought to the program, the research findings show a desire by students to discover how to apply what they have learnt to their individual work situation. As a result, course materials need to contain practical techniques to assist in the application of concepts and knowledge. In the more technical areas, students believed it was important not to put too much detail into the course materials or to expect them to become an expert in each field, "if I need this I'll go and pay someone to do it." Materials should also challenge students to place "different interpretations" on concepts according to their individual needs. In the same way that course materials need to be relevant, so do residential schools, textbooks, and assignments. In summary, all aspects of the program need to help participants make more sense of what they do everyday in their workplace and, ultimately, to improve their managerial performance.
The findings indicate that a high degree of educational interaction occurs within student study groups (see also Holt et al., 1990a). Study groups are seen as being critical to the success of most students. They act as a yardstick of performance, as a means of eliciting advice from people with a high degree of credibility (i.e., other students), and as a means of support when workloads are heavy or when educational material is difficult to grasp. Furthermore, study groups play a vital role in demonstrating to each student how others relate the course materials to their work experiences. Given the strong vocational agendas of MBA students, this benefit is likely to be a significant one. Study groups provide a range of people for students to bounce ideas off and students rapidly become aware that "nobody has enough experience to handle all subjects equally well." Several participants also suggested or implied that study groups were a valuable buffer for teaching staff, whose time was saved by not having to deal with simpler and more routine telephone enquiries about academic matters.
Students were quick to recognize the value of high quality study guides that allow "contact" with staff though the course materials. This accessibility needs to be reinforced by phone and fax facilities. Staff must be "on tap" in order to overcome some of the problems associated with distance. Not only must there be adequate access to Deakin staff but also the quality of this access is important. In some instances, for example, students believed that the presence of Deakin staff actually interfered with the more productive processes of their study groups!
The research findings show that, as is common in both the on- and off-campus cases, MBA students want to receive personal attention from University staff whom they expect to show genuine concern for the problems and issues raised by students. This applies at both the academic and administrative level. However, it is particularly relevant for teaching staff who often "cop all the hard questions" that students have not been able to resolve for themselves within their respective study groups. One participant commented that staff "must be accessible, approachable, willing and helpful." Another maintained that Deakin's performance in this regard was exemplary in that "when you ring up, they [staff] make you feel as if they have nothing else to do except talk to you." It is clear that students would like teaching staff to be approachable and responsive and to provide high quality learning assistance on an individual basis. This applies not only in terms of staff/student interaction at study group visits, through teletutorials, or at residential schools but also in staff assessment of assignments. As one student maintained, "comments on assignments must be tailor-made to my assignment and must be consistent with the mark awarded" and "you must get the feeling that staff care and want to comment on the assignment."
There was a general agreement that residential schools were useful from a social perspective, in creating bonding and group cohesion between participants. As one participant put it, they had a "morale content."
However, opinion was more divided concerning the academic value of these gatherings. Two participants felt that Schools scheduled too early in the semester were of little value as learning experiences because not much ground had yet been covered in the study groups. Others expressed reservations about the weekend schools in the first two years of the program being overloaded with academic content, and an extreme loner dismissed all schools as a waste of his leisure and family time.
Perhaps the most balanced perspective was that of a participant who had already completed the course. She had attended both the two weekend schools, in the first two years of the course, and the two week-long schools in the third and fourth years. Her view was that the third and fourth year schools were of most value as learning experiences.
Another respondent felt that the recipe for a successful residential school, from an academic perspective, was one that would "stimulate thought processes" and have "directly relevant content." In practice, he found the Schools he had attended to be of mixed quality in terms of these criteria.
It is clear from the comments made by students that the considerable opportunity cost of studying part-time off-campus creates a strong demand for a challenging and stimulating educational experience. This demand is not so much a separate dimension of quality interaction as an indication of how the other elements of the framework need to be implemented in order to challenge and stimulate students.
In total, interaction with the workplace, staff, study materials, and within study groups enables students to be involved and to feel involved in the educational process to the extent that the program is able to hold their enthusiasm for four years. Subtle and complex forms of interaction take place within and across these learning contexts. Any exploration of such an interaction network that disaggregates the constituent dimensions, and treats them separately as we have done, must also recognize the holistic nature of the teaching and learning process by mapping the interconnections within and between the various learning contexts.
A useful way of describing and analyzing the performance of an organization with respect to a specific strategic objective (in this case "quality") is through the use of value chain analysis (see Porter, 1985). Woudstra and Powell (1989) have applied Porter's value chain thinking to distance education organizations. The authors use value chain analysis as a framework for illuminating management issues in distance education. We use the same analytical technique to explore quality considerations at the educational program level in distance education.
Value chain analysis is based on the simple idea that every activity performed within an organization adds some value to the final good or service which that organization produces. The final output is simply the aggregate of values contributed by organizational activities and resources.
The value chain is usually viewed as comprising activities, skills, and resources associated with:
Underlying each of these primary components of "value" is a collection of support functions that permeate all components. These are:
These two sets of variables support each other in creating a chain of value through the organization. The chain begins with the identification of real customer needs, before progressing through inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, sales, and service activities. The chain is held together and strengthened by support activities in the form of marketing, procurement, technology, human resource management, and organizational systems.
The value chain is useful in the context of this study because:
The value chain is demonstrated in Figure 2.
Using this value chain framework, it is possible to create a resource audit matrix for the Deakin MBA program. This matrix, containing all the value adding activities associated with the creation, delivery, and servicing of the MBA program, is constructed without allocating priorities to any specific primary or support activity (See Figure 3)
In view of the comments of students regarding the dimensions of quality portrayed in Figure 1, certain elements of the value chain assume greater or lesser significance. summarizes the value chain implications of each of the quality dimensions listed in Figure 1.
As can be seen from a comparison of Figure 3 and Figure 4, there is a clear distinction between the values derived from a student-centred definition of quality and the standard values in the MBA program value chain. This does not imply that one is better than the other because, for example, students may be unaware of many activities and processes that contribute to the overall success of the program in the long run. It does, however, indicate that if we wish to provide a quality program on a semester by semester basis, attention needs to be focused primarily on the organizational systems and human resource management activities that support the operations and service components of the value chain. In particular:
Teaching staff need to have subject expertise, distance education expertise, writing skills, a focus on management (as opposed to a single discipline), a willingness to support study group activities, and good interpersonal/human skills. Of equal importance is the need for strong educational development support in all aspects of planning, producing, delivering, and servicing the MBA program. Educational developers need to work closely with teaching staff to ensure that all MBA materials are concise, readable, relevant, interesting, and jargon free and encourage the application of subject content.
The value chain analysis described in Figure 4 gives a strong indication of where, under ideal conditions, emphasis needs to be placed in the overall value chain (Figure 3) in order to produce a high quality MBA program. Of course, the extent to which these requirements can be met is a separate issue altogether, but they accurately describe some useful goals for the program to target. This, and other implications of the findings, are discussed in the following section.
The research findings hold several important implications for the management of a quality MBA program by distance learning. As indicated by the use of value chain analysis, the major implications concern the need to apply a user-centred definition of quality to the MBA program and the need to find ways of improving the value chain within the constraint of a University system.
The high opportunity cost of study for this group of students develops in them an acute awareness of quality related issues. The teaching institution should avoid the often whispered view that students have no reference point by which to measure quality, so poor quality programs will probably not even be noticed if they are delivered with enough gusto and jargon and surrounded with enough academic mystique!
The research findings provide a clear example of the unique nature of the product "education." They show that education is not something that is produced by universities (in this case) and consumed by students. Rather, it is the end result of a complex series of interactions between student and student, student and study guide, staff and student, and staff and a wide array of learning materials and support activities. This results in a long, complex, and difficult to manage value chain for the MBA.
A key resource for students in producing a quality program is one over which the University has very little day-to-day control - the study group. While study groups operate almost independently from the University, the institution can create an environment conducive to their development through appropriate pedagogical, assessment, and student support strategies. Over-all, it is important to realize that Deakin's MBA program is largely method and student driven. It is not teacher driven. It is not the perceived quality and status of the teacher that is important but the quality of the educational method, the quality of the student, and the interaction between these two. The notion of the expert (lecturer) informing the ignorant (student) is defunct and, in fact, naive in the case of the MBA program. It is harder to find quality students and to provide a quality educational method than to find good, raw subject content (which can essentially be bought from any number of academic "experts" under simple contract arrangements). This means that successful MBA programs by distance learning must recruit high quality students and employ staff who can involve them in quality educational methods. These staff must comprise education experts and also management subject specialists who may or may not be persons of high academic status or repute.
The traditional conflict between time spent on teaching activities and time spent on research by academics is relevant to this study. In order to accommodate student perceptions of quality, greater focus on the function of academics as teachers is needed. Given that university reward systems are based strongly on research performance, academics are unlikely to respond to calls for teaching excellence. This problem is not unique to educational institutions. Many organizations have to implement strategies that run contrary to their existing cultures. They accomplish this by managing around the culture (given that a change to the current culture is not feasible). In the case of an MBA program by distance education, this involves building a strong educational development capability to ensure the quality of all educational materials and employing key people to drive the study group and residential school systems, to ensure the efficiency of the materials production and despatch system, and to run an efficient and personable student administration. Although this is not ideal, it allows the quality of the program to be maintained in the face of a research-oriented culture among academic staff.
Although the management of the MBA program requires attention to specific activities and processes, it is important not to view each of these as being discrete. Student perceptions of quality embrace dimensions that flow through many of these "discrete" activities. For example, the notion of learning efficiency concerns study guides, assessment, residential schools, and study groups. Any attempt to treat these as separate or discrete activities prevents synergy from arising through focusing on the learning efficiency dimension of each. The major areas of the value chain affected by student perceptions of quality are the human resources management and organizational systems components of the operations and service activities. These represent the high cost components of delivering a program and, for distance education institutions, are relatively complex. Improvements in these areas are likely to be difficult to implement, especially given the public sector ethos, the academic rigidity, and the collegiate decision- making systems that pervade universities.
The research findings also show quite clearly that the concept of quality needs to be based on the conceptions of the student as much as on the conceptions of the suppliers of educational goods and services. The old notion that a quality program is one that holds historical status and places academics of repute in front of a class of students (who are then expected to act as sponges) is naive. As in all markets, quality is best defined by the occupants of each market segment. Traditionally, these segments have been geographically determined (i.e., how many on-campus MBA programs can each metropolitan area take before supply outstrips demand). Now, segmentation is more complex and includes on-campus, off- campus, part-time, full-time, company-based programs, executive programs, overseas programs in Australia, collaborative programs, general management MBAs, specialist MBAs, or a combination of some of these models. Within each market segment, students will define quality according to their particular need for a specific curriculum and convenience of study and according to their perception of the image/status of each MBA program. The message for MBA programs from this analysis is simple: find a segment (defined in terms of one or more of the above dimensions) and strive to dominate it by matching educational offerings to the quality specifications of the students in that market. Do not try to be a clone of the traditional prestigious programs either locally or internationally.
Finally, it must be recognized that providing a quality MBA program by distance education is a costly exercise in terms of investment in educational expertise, servicing the core product through residential schools, staff visits to study groups, and teleconferencing, as well as creating, printing, storing, and delivering course materials. In the face of severe funding constraints, there is strong temptation to reduce quality (costs) in these areas (which are relatively flexible in relation to the major university cost centre - salaries for tenured and contracted staff positions). The net result of funding limitations, therefore, tends to be a reduction in quality in precisely those areas of the MBA program where students in this study perceived quality to be most important.
The starting point in designing any educational product is to understand who the students are, including, most importantly, their educational needs (or learning agendas) and the nature of their circumstances. Furthermore, the institution must develop a view, based on the assessment of the student clientele, on the best ways students can learn and the best ways the institution can teach them, given the circumstances of the student cohort. Answers to the questions of who needs to learn what and how should translate themselves into an appropriate mission statement (or statement of educational purpose) for the educational product and student clientele. The quality of an educational program, and thus the degree of competitive edge it might have in the marketplace, depends on making the right assumptions with regard to these fundamental questions and continually testing these assumptions by being responsive to customer feedback on the quality of various facets of the educational experience.
Whereas, ultimately, teaching intentions must be translated into an appropriate combination of goods and services produced by the institution to satisfy educational needs, we believe that quality is best understood, in the context of Deakin's off-campus MBA program, by locating it within a network of opportunities for interaction. Students' learning is maximized when the educational experience is conceived as an interactive exchange between key parties and resources located in students' professional, personal, and formal educational worlds. Creating and exploiting opportunities for inter-action demands both institutional and student commitment.
Using a multi-dimensional, interactional learning framework as a basis for shaping the institution's educational product output, we explored the origins of this output through constructing a producer value chain. That is, we identified the key activities and processes within the institution that create and sustain quality output and that, in turn, provide the rich and diverse range of opportunities for interaction. It is the quality of the range of interactions that ultimately determines whether Deakin's off-campus MBA enables the development of professional managers with critically reflective and action-oriented skills. Interaction, however, cannot take place without the initiative and commitment of students. Thus, students add, if provided with the appropriate range of opportunities, a considerable amount of their own value to the educational experience, value that cannot be directly produced by the institution. The overall value chain for the MBA is, therefore, long, tenuous, and problematic.
It is the complexities of the interplay between internal activities and processes, the institution's final output, the development and use of learning networks for interaction, and student's educational needs that makes quality management of an off-campus MBA program a challenging, fascinating, and never-ending task.
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John Viljoen is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Management Policy in the Faculty of Management and Business at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia. He is currently the Director of the University's off-campus MBA program. His major research interests lie in the areas of management education, strategic management, and international business management.
Dale Holt is a Principal Tutor in Distance Education in the Institute of Distance Education at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia. He has been involved in the preparation of postgraduate professional development courses in management, accounting, and distance education (including a course on the management of distance education). His major research interest is professional learning at a distance.
Stanley Petzall is a Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour in the Faculty of Management and Business at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia. He is currently on leave at the Nanyang Technological Institute in Singapore. His research interests lie in the areas of management education, leadership styles, and employee participation schemes.