This Midwest University's Graduate School of Business wanted to create a new offering using the web – an online program where students could enroll and participate in classes toward a Master of Business Administration or a Master of Accountancy.
The University uses Blackboard as it’s core learning management system for undergraduate degree programs. While the Graduate School of Business had the opportunity to develop their online program using Blackboard, there were two significant issues: licensing fees and the fact that the graduate program would be intermingled with the undergraduate programs. The Graduate School wished to keep the students, courses, and records separated.
The online degree program offering had to have its own branding as well as unique content that would be provided by school administrators and by professors, and the solution had to be cost-effective and easily managed.
Oakwood worked in partnership with 2e Creative to design an online Master’s program to be developed on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 platform. 2e Creative provided branding direction; Oakwood’s MOSS developers executed on the vision provided.
The site features for students include:
- Apply Online through an electronic form
- Prospective student information without login
- “My Program” for students who are logged in
- Podcast and video feeds for instructional content
- Group memberships and group discussions
- Wikis and blogs relevant to specific courses
- Announcements
- Program schedule and events listings
- Class rosters and “my contacts”
The site features for administrators include:
- Easy entry of new information
- Branding standards preserved through CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
- Central management and administration
This Graduate School of Business is looking forward to releasing this new program to prospective and current students, positioning their university as a leading educational institution.
The school regards this program as having the potential to create an entirely new revenue stream by attracting a different student profile to the program. The ability to offer these programs in an online format creates a completely new pool of prospective students from around the state, and potentially from around the globe.