Abstract:

At a time of decreasing public budgets, rapid changes both in student demographics and digital behavior, the transition to the so called “experience economy” as well as the increase of international competition, universities –like any other service sector- strive to find the balance between cost effectiveness and high-standards of student experience delivery.

Related literature is mainly focusing on the teaching and learning aspect, neglecting the fact that administrative services can be as crucial to the student achievement as the actual teaching, especially amongst the continuously increasing “non-traditional student” market. In distance Higher Education in particular, where a variety of student options is only a click away, providing excellent student experience can be even more challenging.

In order to meet the challenges of this new era of higher education, universities need to replace their large volume of processes and silo-based working environments, with more innovative, creative, human-centered and cross-functional organizational strategies, which will provide them the opportunity to stay focused on the students/customers/users they are creating something for.

This paper describes the efforts of the Open University of Cyprus, the country’s state university dedicated entirely to open and distance education, to build and implement a strategic approach of a holistic suite of innovative “one-stop-student” services model, using service and design thinking tools along with customer relationship management models to differentiate itself among other universities and ultimately, directly and indirectly, ensure its enrollment, retention, and satisfaction rates.

The paper illustrates the challenges, the lessons learned and the actions taken before and during the design of the project that is being currently implemented, based on Open University of Cyprus’ specific needs and context, hoping to propose a possible roadmap of positive change to other open and distance universities around the world.

Keywords:

Student lifecycle, student experience, open education, distance education, service design, customer relationship model, one-stop-student model.