At all levels from R1 to Tech College, Six Sigma is Vital and Part a Lean Quality Effort in Education.

I believe this stuff. I've been involved in online education in one way or another for about 18 years. In 1999, I published a piece in the Indiana Higher Education Commission magazine on the future of higher ed online. Back then, I said it was a tabula rasa with great promise for reaching students who may not have access, or who may not have the desire to attend a classroom for various reasons including sophomoric behavior in undergraduates, time constraints, and fundamental disagreement with the common attitude that education is a commodity and not a future. At that stage, people seem to pay for education and ask for less, rather than more (as long as there is promise for a well paying job with a "good" company).

For those who have worked and lived, this isn't the equation. The adult andragogy, or andragogik, needs to allow adult learners to apply concepts to what they already know and develop skills and competencies in specific areas that lead to greater understanding in an enactive mastery modeling effort.

17 years' ago, when I started exploring online ed, the development of coursework was shoddy at best. There was a great deal of confusion about how and each course became a part of the "course owner" who was capable of teaching that course, no one else.

We've done better since then. The proprietaries seem to have the modeling down to where a certain quality can be achieved no matter who facilitates (cheaply). This was because of a course development process involving subject experts and instructional designers in an effort to solidify coursework methods and order. The top public and private schools are working toward this and many have had excellent efforts leading to widespread acclaim as they offer reach, scope, diversity, and subject excellence.

This is, however, a grainy field. There are small players and large ones. The Matthew Principle applies in that the schools who have, get more. I don't have any problem with that, neither should you. There are some basics here. The competition is moving from the perfect competition model to a more oligarchic one and those who want the reach, scope, excellence, diversity, and money can learn as they move from the tiny grain to a larger player, through quality enhancement and management.

I'm a big believer in benchmarking. In the US, there are about 6,000 courses online for management principles or accounting alone. The courses have to be somewhat alike, because the subject paradigm is pretty stable.

What about the higher levels? If the school has the minds, the higher levels can be taught in a sealed and specific to school order. They have the money and the intellectual power. They've built that over a great long time. For others, how are you going to get the higher levels if your faculty are ALL generalists, they all teach 12 - 16 classroom hours per semester and they are asked to develop the WEB-CT / and WEB-EX methodologies and teach two classes in exchange for a 1 course offload in the classroom. Afterall, teaching online requires less effort, right??

Isn't it possible to coordinate course offerings, either with other schools because they have complementary distinctive competencies?

How about coordinating the courses with industry? Some very, very good tech companies have online training in very specialized areas of quality control and operations management, and coding, and.... They offer the courses to employees and managers to complete as part of a wider effort. I KNOW companies who do this. The better part is they can offer some skills that undergrads and MBAs (well, everyone in the arts and sciences, or humanities, or healthcare) need to be employable at the cutting edge for lean operations and quality control. Schools can coordinate with those companies, and rather than benchmarking from the advisory role of a steering committee only, they can reach in and develop partnerships and cooperation from the best, who can employ and have an input to schools about the competencies they need in the short, medium and longer terms.

Hey, small schools can develop the curriculum without hindering their course delivery. Larger schools can enhance their applications and coordinate them with major and innovative players. Of course, the larger schools, the R1 and R2 (is R1 still a useful designation?) can expand their already very large reach...but then again in something like this, more is pretty useful.

When my kids were smaller, they watched "Bob the Builder". The catchphrase was like this, (and yes, I watched).. "can we build it? YES WE CAN". Can you build it and enhance it? yes, you can......si, se puede, nos podemos conocer...or oui nous pouvons. This translates across languages, borders, schools, and efforts. That's the global part.

I have about 3400 +/- followers on Li. It's my hope that at least someone can find this interesting.