University Teaching as E-Business?
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Case Studies

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The draft case studies below are an internal resource for the University Teaching as E-business? research project. They are intended to provide a general overview of selected e-learning ventures and reflect information gathered from numerous sources, including news articles, press releases, scholarly reports, and company websites. Our primary task was to assemble the relevant sources in a form that would be useful to our research associates and reflected the changing nature of university and corporate activities.

These case studies were compiled by Shannon Lawrence, the Assistant Director of the Higher Education in the Digital Age program. In many cases, information presented herein was taken directly from The Chronicle of Higher Education's longitudinal series of articles on Information Technology and Distance Education, which represents the single best source for information about this evolving universe. Goldie Blumenstyk, Scott Carlson, Dan Carnevale, Sarah Carr, Stanley N. Katz, Geoffrey Maslen, Florence Olsen, and Jeffrey R. Young provided invaluable insight through their detailed articles.

Unless otherwise noted, interviews with company officials were not included. The case studies were originally released in October 2001 and updates were made to a number of these case studies in March 2002. Due to the fluidity of the e-learning marketplace, information presented may not reflect recent changes in these programs. Please contact Shannon Lawrence with corrections or updates to the case studies below.

Case Studies:

• Army University Access Online (AUAO)
• Fathom
• The George Washington University (GW)
• Global Education Network (GEN)
• MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)
• NextEd
• NYUonline
• OnlineLearning.net (OLn)
• UMassOnline (UMO)
• UNext / Cardean University
• Universitas 21
• Western Governors University (WGU)

Update: Since these case studies were first published in October 2001, the e-learning industry has seen some changes. Most notably, NYUonline closed its doors the following month, citing a weakened economy. By January 2002, George Washington University's Prometheus was purchased by Blackboard, MIT OpenCourseWare began its pilot phase, and Army University Access Online (AUAO), more commonly known by it's portal name, eArmyU, met its enrollment goals for 2001 and issued new RFPs to add more partner institutions. UNext signed marketing deals with Thomas Learning and Knowledge Universe to bolster lagging sales, and AOL opened an education portal that directed users to Western Governor's University, among others. WGU has also established a scholarship program for Olympian teachers to receive master's degrees and is concerned over possible cuts in expected federal funds. Fathom has shifted their marketing approach and added several hundred mostly noncredit corporate training courses by SmartForce, Zoologic, Kaplan, and PrimeLearning.com, which increased their overall offerings by 20%.