Research Idea: Which Kinds of Virtual Programs are Most
Likely to Receive Support from Their Alumni?
From what sources will
virtual programs receive revenue in the future? I’d like to
suggest a longitudinal study that development offices, distance
learning programs, institutional researchers, and/or education
researchers might want to perform.
To begin, let’s consider
three revenue sources:
- Tuition and fees
- Taxation
- Gift giving (often from people who feel
some sense of obligation because of “gifts” received from
their own educations and the donors who supported that
education)
If education is to be
available to all, tuition has its limits. Besides, we’re
accustomed a rich, highly-subsidized form of education. The
second source, taxation, is becoming less available as a revenue
source, even for public higher education (which is currently
offering most of the virtual programs). So the third source is
likely to be important, too, even for public programs: alumni
gifts.
I’m exploring this idea
because I do not think that alumni gifts can be automatically
expected. Gift giving by former customers is, after all, rather
unusual in the larger world. Do past buyers of Macintoshes send
checks to Apple each year, in gratitude for their earlier
purchase and to help assure that future Mac owners get better
machines?
What kinds of present action
by virtual programs are most likely to lead to future income
from alumni?
Hypothesis 1:
An institution’s future chances of receiving alumni gifts will
be proportional to the personal relationships and bonds that it
fosters between the student and others in the program (faculty,
other students, staff, alumni).
Hypothesis 1.1:
Programs that emphasize lectures (whether live or on video),
reading, simple quizzes and other transmissionist forms of
teaching/learning will have a harder time creating such
relationships than programs that also rely heavily on team
projects, discussion, debate, peer critique, public
presentations, and other pedagogies that build relationships. To
put it another way, the more an institution teaches as though
education is a matter of transmitting content from experts and
materials to isolated learners, the harder time it will have
soliciting future income from alumni.
Hypothesis 1.2:
institutions that provide constructive roles for interested,
qualified alumni in their current programs (e.g., helping to
assess the work of current students) will also have an easier
time developing a supportive alumni community. And I don’t just
mean support from those alumni; I mean support from the students
who are helped by the alumni.
Hypothesis 1.3:
Institutions whose virtual environments help build relationships
both to the present and the past of the institution will have an
advantage later in alumni fund-raising. Consider how most
virtual environments today (Blackboard, WebCT, other course
management systems) look alike. In contrast, consider how
physical campuses can build a sense of connection. The
Rochester Institute of Technology (which my son attended) has a
network of tunnels connecting its dormitories, quite useful for
snowy Rochester; the tunnels are lined with student artwork from
the past. Students meet one another, and connect with the past,
as they move from building to building. And they’re in a place
that is distinctively RIT. Southern Utah University has a large
hall lined with paintings with past trustees, some of which are
captioned “Mortgaged his house so that the college could
survive.” In contrast, how many connections do course
management systems and the rest of a program's virtual workplace
offer to the institution's past, to its distinctive character,
to building social relationships with its staff and students in
other courses, or to anything else that differentiates this
institution from all others? In doing research of this sort, I
suggest that one pay attention to the ways in which the
environment encourages (or fails to encourage) the affective
side of relationships: fun, humor, joy, grief, frustration...
I suspect that institutions
that do the best job of creating distinctive virtual
environments that encourage the building of these larger
relationships will also have an easier time creating a
sustaining, growing community of alumni.
Research design: this
is obviously a long-term project so it makes sense for a
development office, or set of offices, to take the lead.
For example, a state university system might study virtual and
campus programs over a period of years. if you'd like some
advice about how this kind of data might be collected, please
feel free to get in touch, or not. Your choice!
If you
find these ideas
provocative and would
like to chat about them,
or related issues, please
let me know. To see more ideas for
research projects, grant proposals, and dissertations,
click here. Stephen C.
Ehrmann, Director
The Flashlight Program |
