Factors for Success in Dual Mode Institutions

Consultant's report

Factors for Success in Dual Mode Institutions

Prepared by:
Andrea Hope
Associate Academic Vice-President
Hong Kong Shue Yan College
China

2006

 

Conclusions

As education providers in both face to face and distance modes embrace the use of internet-based technologies to facilitate student learning, the boundaries between distance and face to face education and the institutions that offer them are becoming increasingly blurred. Our study has examined conventional face to face and dedicated distance learning institutions that have 'gone dual-mode' as a survival strategy as well as successful dual mode operators who have introduced flexible learning for all their students. Leicester University in the UK is a traditional institution that has successfully incorporated e-learning in the on-campus curriculum and has harnessed it to trade on its established reputation for quality in the face to face mode and deliver its niche post-graduate programmes by distance learning to students around the world. The Open University of Hong Kong was founded in 1989 on the model of the UK Open University to respond to an unmet demand for higher education opportunities created by an elitist conventional system in a territory with a population of some 7 million people. Since 2001, faced with increasing competition for student numbers from both local and overseas providers of flexible part-time study opportunities, it has diversified significantly from its original mission to provide opportunities by distance learning for Hong Kong residents, by launching full-time, face to face programmes using its distance learning materials as course resources and maximizing the day-time use of its campus facilities. The university markets the quality of its teaching resources and the highly developed local student support model that characterizes its DE programmes as a competitive advantage in both situations.

As we have seen in our study, dual mode learning is not synonymous with on-line learning. In many jurisdictions, the technology involved in the distance mode delivery of programmes may still to a large extent be print-based. Nevertheless it is the flexibility offered by on-line learning technologies that is making technology-based learning an increasingly attractive option for the senior management of campus-based universities around the world, and its ad-hoc adoption by enthusiastic faculty members is giving a much-needed kick start to dual mode initiatives that in some cases have languished for many years in the face of indifference or even hostility from the faculty towards the off-campus enterprise. The use of technology permits universities to introduce more flexible learning elements for their on-campus students and the flexible fixed and variable costs associated with on-line delivery and the opportunities they provide for just-in-time learning resource production and effective tutor : student and student : student communication have enabled leading edge institutions in Australia and the UK to extend the reach of their programmes internationally. These dual mode providers understand however that planning and control are essential for their success and aim to achieve the "consistency of infrastructural and systems support" Daniel (1999 ibid: 297) across modes that is the distinguishing factor of a successful dual mode institution.