Education Balanced Scorecard for Online Courses

Abstract

This case presents a best-practice in higher education, whereby a balanced scorecard approach was used to assess the effectiveness of a distance education (online) course in an accredited business degree program at an Australian public university. The assessment rubric was created by applying the concept of the balanced scorecard (from management science) to measure student performance, satisfaction, as well as content and delivery effectiveness. Performance was derived from the course grades while a validated survey instrument was utilized to gather estimates of all other factors from the students. One of the key lessons-learned in the case was that rather than reinvent the wheel, it was better to reuse accreditation surveys designed for the classroom to assess online courses and leverage the management science philosophy of measuring more than just performance to evaluate program success. Similar scorecard concepts have already been applied in U.S. universities, thus their differences with this case are also discussed.