FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Background
Online Program Management providers (OPMs) are companies that offer services related to the development and administration of online programs. This includes cutting edge digital education market research, marketing, and recruitment, enrollment management, student retention support, support for online course design, and technical infrastructure. OPMs help universities expand their online offerings and increase enrollment in ways that universities usually do not have the resources or infrastructure to accomplish on their own.
OPMs offer services of a type and scale that are very difficult to achieve solely with the resources available at traditional institutions. For example, OPMs invest substantial resources in online instructional design assistance for faculty, sophisticated digital marketing to remote audiences, guiding new students through application processes, and online student support. Many universities use OPMs in their strategies to to achieve a robust portfolio of high-quality online programs.
There are two ways: One is a fee-for-service model. The other is a revenue share. The second is most common. For all students an OPM brings in, they take a portion of the tuition. The budget model for OPM-supported offerings takes this into account. OPMs recruit students for the programs they support, not for the whole University.
No.
Steps to partner with an OPM
OPMs are a part of the higher education landscape and have been for more than a decade. They have proven success in helping universities expand their online offerings and generate significant revenue by ensuring quality online programming and excellent user experiences. Provost Harbor has experience using OPMs at other institutions. If the University of Montana were to partner with an OPM, we’d be able to provide greater access to quality programs for many more students than we currently serve. This will increase access for students who would not otherwise be able to take advantage of our programs, and will also increase enrollment and revenue for the University.
Faculty engaged in online programs were invited to, and attended the information sessions in August 2018. The RFP committee was formed to include Faculty involvement, including Faculty Senate, UFA and MCFA representation in this important conversation. UMOnline Director Robert Squires and members of the RFP committee have attended Faculty Senate meetings in 2018-2019 to engage a wider cross section of the faculty in this conversation.
OPMs will market existing online programs more effectively than we currently are able to. OPMs can help design courses in about six months. If an OPM begins work with UM this spring, a small slate of courses should be ready by fall 2019. This will have a positive effect on our fall 2019 enrollment.
The contract will be negotiated by UM's Procurement office, the Office of the Provost, and UMOnline with input from Faculty Senate, UFA, MCFA, and ASUM.
Scaling online offerings
The committee is attentive to this concern. The terms of the RFP will ensure that OPMs have a contractual obligation to follow UM’s faculty contracts and personnel procedures. If the need to hire new instructors arises, hiring processes will be conducted, and decisions will be made as they are now – by the academic department that’s doing the hiring. This is standard practice for OPMs working with institutions like UM.
When developing a budget for an online program that’s offered via an OPM, it is assumed the program will scale. As the program generates tuition, resources will be allocated specifically to hire additional instructors and provide additional administrative support in the departments and in other service units.
The administration is considering a new financial model for all fully online programs, including those working with an OPM. More information will be shared with faculty in fall 2019. The intent of the new model is to provide funding back to the college/department that is offering the program to cover costs of instruction and other staff effort.
There will be no requirement for departments to create scalable courses and programs; each program will make its own decisions which will be informed by their goals and intended outcomes. Faculty and programs who are interested in highly effective and scalable online pedagogies can choose to explore these, and the research on their effectiveness.
Procedures
Intellectual property rights are outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreements. OPMs will have a contractual obligation to follow our intellectual property policies and procedures as outlined in the CBAs.
In the recent past, Faculty Senate has reviewed curriculum proposals on an as-needed basis in the spring (in addition to the fall) in order to help speed up the entire BOR degree approval process.
BOR policy 940.20 states that an online program is defined as a degree or certificate program in which 80 percent or more of the total program is delivered in a technology-enhanced distance learning (e-learning) environment. So if your current hybrid program will be meeting or exceeding the 80 percent online threshold, please talk to your dean about submitting paperwork to formally change the delivery method.
Yes. Any teaching or course development activity should be considered in-load for faculty teaching requirements, and should be considered “classroom performance” for evaluation purposes (ref. CBA 10.120, 2.a.)
The University’s existing academic quality control mechanisms (course evaluations, unit standards, faculty evaluation processes, program review, accreditation, curriculum review) will remain in place for all academic offerings that are delivered online, including OPM-supported programs.
OPMs will only support the programs we and they agree they should support. There will be UM programs that are supported by UMOnline as there currently are, and there will continue to be opportunities to develop new courses and programs through our existing processes. The committee on online program development and course quality will ensure there is no difference in the quality of the student experience between the programs supported by UMOnline and the OPM.
We will not be required to use the vendor’s textbooks, and faculty can mix and match as they do now.
Departments and faculty make final decisions on what courses to deliver. Courses supported by an OPM remain UM courses.
UM will have complete control over which UM programs will be supported by OPMs.
UM will determine tuition in line with Board of Regents policies.
As with all contracts, UM will honor them, and have the option to end an agreement when the term is completed.
Accreditation is not affected by the use of OPM services in the same way that accreditation is not affected by using services of vendors such as Blackboard or Qualtrics to provide the current Learning Management System and Course Survey systems. Program quality will remain the purview of the unit.
Student experience
Students in these programs will be UM students, whether their programs are 100 percent online or hybrid. OPMs create a user experience such that students in online programs run by OPMs feel as much like UM students as students in online programs that are not run by OPMs. The student experience will obviously not be identical to that of a student who comes to campus every day for face-to-face instruction, but it will be like that of our current UM online student experience.
No. The OPM revenue model is based on a percentage of new enrollments. The committee and Faculty Senate shared this concern, and included language in the RFP in order to learn more about how the enrollment definitions work with different vendors' financial models.
Yes.
The OPM only gets a share of income from the fully online programs that it supports jointly with UM.
Zero. The OPM only gets a share of income from the fully online programs that it supports jointly with UM, not from single online courses that UM regularly offers for its residential students.
Course development and delivery
This is to be determined by the unit and faculty as it is now.
UMOnline will continue to develop online courses and programs, offer professional development sessions, and support new course and program developments with its current staff. It is anticipated that additional staff will be needed as UM also develops its internal capacity to deliver quality online courses and programs.
UM faculty are responsible for course content, which can be developed in current UM systems such as Moodle, giving faculty the same control as present. If UM faculty choose to use the OPM's learning management system they may, but there will be no obligation to do so.
Courses in Moodle will continue being taught there. There is no requirement to use the OPM's learning management system (LMS).
No.