Artifact 4: Strategic Planning: Designing a Learning Organization

For my next artefact, I would like to introduce the work I completed for MDDE605 – Planning and Management in Distance Education and Training in which I created a comprehensive business plan for a proposed learning organization.  The task of designing a learning organization would take place across the entire semester and was broken down into three separate assignments, culminating into what would be considered a fully actionable business plan upon completion. 

Ultimately the organization which I decided to create was actually a distance learning branch of the postsecondary institution I currently work for.  I chose this because I had always felt that my institution was missing out on an opportunity to cater to more students because it traditionally had very little virtual learning offerings.  Interestingly, my work on this assignment began approximately two months before the pandemic actually took hold of life as we knew it and so very quickly I saw my institution pivot to the virtual learning environment to avoid total service disruption to students.  As I look back on this assignment I think it is interesting to note the timeliness of it all given the topic of choice. 

Business Analysis

To create an effective plan for a proposed Centre for Distance Education (CDE), I conducted a meta-analysis, of sorts, which incorporated information from many different sources.  For the business analysis section of this assignment, I analyzed the current state of the market as well as the potential for growth followed by a competitor analysis.  I utilized credible sources like Statistics Canada for things such as enrolment rates and demographic trends, as well as research-driven websites like Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA) for information which would help provide insight into the various trends and opportunities within the broader postsecondary landscape (5.8).  In my search for relevant, credible resources, I found myself utilizing Boolean search operators in combination with specific keywords; some elements of the Boolean method which I found to be most useful in generating favourable search results were the use of quotation marks around keywords and the use of the word ‘AND’ in between two search terms to reveal search results containing all of my keywords.  For example, if two of my keywords were enrolment and Ontario, my search field would reflect the following: “enrolment AND Ontario” (5.2; 5.5).  Alternatively, I would incorporate the search operator ‘NOT’ in cases where I wanted to exclude certain terms from my search.  I found this operator to be particularly helpful in the beginning stages of my search when my thought processes were less defined, thereby generating results which weren’t always useful.  As I worked through my primitive thought processes and became more accustomed to the kinds of words which would generate the information needed for my topic, I used the ‘NOT’ operator to filter out what my trial-and-error approach had revealed as the “wrong” search terms.  I can’t recall exactly what my search terms were in every case, but it is safe to say there were many different keywords used and in many different combinations in order to generate useful research results which could be used to formulate the basis of my analyses (1.4; 1.5). 

For the competitive analysis, I knew that my primary competitors would likely be other public Ontario colleges which fall within the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAAT) umbrella; there are 24 in total.  However, being an employee of the very organization which I was developing this plan for, I had pre-existing knowledge of who the key comparator colleges were in terms of geographic location, population size, and program offerings.  Using this knowledge, I stuck to their official college websites (as well as that of my own institution) to get a sound understanding of their institutional character, their published strategic plan, and their guiding principles (5.4; 5.6).        

The Strategic Plan

Following the business analysis, I began brainstorming language which would appropriately articulate the vision, mission, value statements and multi-year goals and objectives for the new CDE branch.  I found myself regularly referring back to my initial thoughts about why a CDE was needed in the first place, which was essentially that I felt my institution was missing out on an opportunity to maximize enrolment growth (1.1).  I strongly believed that they key to maximizing enrolment growth was through the expansion into the area of distance education programming, as this would successfully transform the teaching/learning context into one that is much more learner centric, barrier free, flexible and cost-efficient (1.2; 6.1).  I compared and contrasted various key concepts and words such as flexibility, future-focused, innovation, to provide me with direction toward the creation of an effective vision and mission statement, as these embodied the objectives of the CDE (1.6; 1.7).   To this end, I came up with the following vision and mission statements:

Vision:

“Future-focused learning. Anytime, Anywhere, Anyplace.”

Mission:

 “To preserve academic excellence and propel the student experience through the delivery of flexible, cutting-edge learning that is rooted in innovative pedagogy and industry best-practices.”

Meta-Cognition and Synthesis

While this wasn’t my first introduction to the process of business planning, it was the first time I was tasked with putting together a plan that was as detailed as this.  The assignment guidelines provided by the professor were exceptionally long and detailed, and required me to consider a wide range of factors for my proposed organization, including but not limited to strategic direction (i.e.: vision, mission, values); legal status; location; governance structure, reporting process, decision making processes; personnel requirements; marketing and sales promotional strategies; work processes and procedures; performance indicators and measurement; and implementation timelines (6.2).  Initially, I felt overwhelmed by the vastness of the assignment guidelines, so to keep myself organized and to help me wrap my mind around all of the various aspects of the assignment, I basically covered my walls with large chart sized paper and mapped out my thoughts using coloured markers (6.6).  To my neighbours (or anyone walking by my living room), I imagine I resembled the likes of a mad scientist, pacing back and forth with my arms crossed and the tip of the marker in my mouth, occasionally stopping to feverishly plaster my thoughts on the wall.  When all of my initial research and information gathering was complete, I had to face the daunting task of organizing it all in such a way that it would reflect a coherent business plan (1.7; 5.8).  I looked for ways to synthesize large amounts of information so that it could be easily digested by my reading audience, as I wanted to ensure the resulting CDE business plan would be received as fully actionable and coherent (5.9; 6.3).  A few ways in which I sought to create this synthesis included:

• SWOT Analysis – which highlighted the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the CDE (6.1; 6.4)
  
  
• A Workflow Estimate chart - to illustrate the phased-in approach of program offerings as well as the requirement for various personnel involvement (6.2; 6.3)

• Cash Flow Projection tables - to illustrate various sources of revenue (e.g. Domestic enrolment versus International enrolment; fee revenues) against projected expenses (e.g.: personnel and training costs, marketing, ICT costs, administrative costs) (6.5)
  
  
• Balanced Scorecard - to summarize objectives, mode(s) of measurement, drivers of success and targets (1.10; 6.4)

I think that by incorporating these visuals alongside an in depth explanation for each one, I capitalized on an alternative method of articulating my distance learning organization proposal, and effectively demonstrated my ability to reflexively present my ideas and thought processes to a wide variety of audiences while also assessing appropriateness of style based on context (4.1; 4.2).