TECHNOLOGY ENABLING INNOVATION IN ONLINE GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

Abstract

It has been approximately twenty-five years since the Internet became available for public use and slightly over ten years since the World Wide Web became readily accessible. In this paper, we examine innovations in graduate management educational delivery methods that have increased the quality of distance education by investigating the literature surrounding distance education with a focus on four major concepts and their association with modern education technologies. Our exploration involves a comparison of an innovative, parsimonious, online educational model with other methods of graduate management education especially for adult management students. Through this model, we focus on four major concepts that can have a significant impact on management education quality. The first two concepts include dialogue and structure that have been used to describe and assess the quality of distance education programs. The second two concepts comprise students' ability to access courses and the flexibility that students have relative to their participation in courses. We note that these four factors can impact the delivery, content, innovativeness, and quality of graduate management education programs. We review existing models of distance education and note how each model relates to each of these four factors. We then suggest how the design and delivery of online education programs can be improved with a greater understanding of these four concepts in addition to their relationship with recently developed web-based technologies. Finally, we discuss several issues surrounding the administration of web-based education programs and identify several questions that call for further investigation.