Abstract:

As higher education institutions (HEIs) seek to diversify their income streams amid unprecedented competition for students and ever challenging funding opportunities, so the sector has embraced a range of flexible approaches to provision including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), distance learning, virtual learning and online learning, all with varying degrees of success. But as competition for students now moves to a global frontier, the pressure on innovative online provision to not only remain successful, through delivery of quality provision, with effective quality enhancement measures in place, it must do so in an environment where governance structures were designed with traditional campus provision in mind, which cannot always cope with the accelerated time frames, and near continual student admissions points, needed to support online learning provision. This paper, whilst adopting a UK focus, draws upon leadership theory to examine the successful practices adopted in embedding online masters provision in a UK university through an external partnership approach and a carousel mechanism which allows students to step on an step off provision multiple times during the course of their studies. The paper primarily considers the leadership role needed to support not only this approach but also to support an expert academic team of online instructors, making its first soiree into online provision. In so doing the paper also highlights the adjustments, developments and continuous professional development practices needed to maintain excellent postgraduate provision consistently, against the accelerated pace of a carousel system which delivers 200 students (and rising), incrementally, but rapidly across a 10 month period.

Keywords:

Online learning, leadership in higher education, moocs, distance learning, virtual learning environments, team leadership, online support.