Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Developing and marketing graduate-level certificate programs

What: How Institutions Market Online Certificate Programs

Relevance: Aiding and improving marketing and positioning of CFPH in collaboration with program managers.

Take Away Points:

-- A framework available for evaluation of certificate program positioning
-- Who is NOT using cert. courses as a hook? No one! But they do not explicitly state that.
-- Burrell and Grizzel, 2008 and Gibbs 2008 say that program positioning quality is not as good as department positioning within universities.
-- Usability Testing of Cert Course Public Websites is Important: Most cert course program sites took the presenters 45 minutes to comprehend.
Caveat: The research scope is certificate programs for teaching eLearning / online learning / distance. But some points relevant because the study focussed on professional grad cert programs.
Positioning e-learning graduate certificate programs: Higher education and the development of a profession
Authors:
Shahron Williams van Rooij, George Mason University, USA
Larissa Lemp, George Mason University, USA
Abstract:
Institutions of higher education are developing and marketing graduate-level certificate programs aimed at individuals seeking to enter or advance in the e-learning profession. This presentation reports the results of a content analysis of 43 higher education e-learning certificate program Web sites to determine what audiences they target, how they describe their programs and what they state differentiates their programs from the competition. Results of the study indicate that both U.S. and international institutions marketing an e-learning graduate certificate program in the U.S. are clear and explicit about who they are, what they are offering, and what target audience they are seeking to reach. However, most programs sites do not include differentiators. This suggests that the providers have yet to identify what distinguishes their certificate programs from the competition, or that they have not yet found a way to articulate those differentiators

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