You Name It

Current and prospective students (n =133) were surveyed about their preferences for a name for a new online series of courses to be launched by a university. Preferences for each of five names were solicited by means of analytical ratings, holistic ratings, and rankings. All three techniques were employed to assure that the most appropriate name for the program was selected, but this also afforded us the opportunity to study several theoretical issues: (a) Do the different methods lead to discrepant decisions at the aggregate level? (b) Is the holistic rating or the analytical rating approach more closely related to the rankings? (c) To what extent is lack of agreement between ratings and rankings due to lack of differentiation in ratings? The authors find that at the aggregate level all three methods suggest the same name for the program; the holistic rating is slightly more highly correlated with the ranking; and the lack of differentiation in ratings is one reason producing inconsistencies between ratings and rankings.

Service Recovery Encounters in the Classroom

This paper explores the nature of service recovery encounters, particularly the qualities and behaviours that male and female students expect from professors in personal service recovery encounters. For this purpose, 40 semi-standardized laddering interviews were conducted (with 20 male and 20 female respondents) in order to gain a deeper understanding of student expectations and the values that drive these expectations. The analysis and findings enrich the existing limited stock of knowledge on desired attributes of professors in service recovery encounters in higher education by developing a deeper understanding of the attributes of professors that dissatisfied female and male students’ desire, as well as the underlying values for these expectations. Results show that the professor’s active listening skills, expertise, friendliness, concern for students, and being empathetic were important to both male and female students. However, gender differences are important in a service-recovery encounter in a classroom, which suggests differential treatment. While men place more importance on a quick problem solution, women seem to prefer a more communal approach.

How Technologies Can Localize Learners in Multicultural Space

Technological innovations can be used in many ways to enhance the suitability of global learning. A newly developed online-supported curriculum “Global Studies” takes account of the necessities of interdisciplinary, intercultural and interparadigmatic learning. The history and genesis of such an innovative curriculum is embedded in a national umbrella organisation focusing on development studies. As the interdisciplinary core, a new lecture on the fundamentals of Global Studies has been implemented in 2010/11 that envisions team teaching and interdisciplinary perspectives. The web platform allows students to present their professional views and discuss them in a peer review. Dialogue and discourse are enhanced by repeated change of roles which is enriched by the broad international and intercultural backgrounds of the participating students. Cultures of understanding are generated and widened as a prerequisite for future careers in development cooperation, diplomacy and transnational organisations.

Higher Education Marketing

The importance of the Internet as commercial platform is by now universally recognized, and businesses increasingly adopt online marketing channels at the cost of traditional ones. The social media, being second generation (Web 2.0) internet applications, allow interaction, one-to-one communication, customer engagement, and user generated content. The interest of higher education institutions in social media as part of the marketing toolkit is increasing, but little is known about the potential of these channels in higher education marketing strategies. Even less is known about the role of social media as influencers of future students in the choice of study and university. This article presents the results of a study identifying the role and importance of social media on the choice of future students for a study and university in comparison with the traditional university marketing channels in the Netherlands. The study identifies and describes three market segments among future students based on their use of the social media.

Marketing to and Developing Faculty Members to Create High Quality, Highly Interactive Online Courses

In this paper, the author shares a detailed process for soliciting and securing exemplar faculty members, who are ready to redesign and offer their course in a high quality online environment. The goal is to help faculty create highly engaging online learning opportunities as good as or better than their current face to face classes. Interested faculty members submitted a competitive proposal, and were selected to interact in a highly dynamic three day short course. The course introduced and applied learning theories as a mechanism to help faculty develop their materials, so that learners could attend, process, retain and use meaningful conceptually-based material. The outcome of the program was targeted, high quality online courses; word of mouth support and requests for short courses from our law and dental schools.

The Use of Facebook as a Marketing Tool by Private Educational Institutions in Singapore

With social network sites growing in popularity, many organisations have started to use this platform to market themselves. However, marketing on social network sites is different from traditional marketing. Its value lies in engaging members of the social network and generating shared cultural meaning of the advertised brand rather than promoting awareness of the brand to a large number of people. This is not apparent to marketers and as such, many organizations are not leveraging on this media tool effectively. This paper examines the use of Facebook as a marketing tool by private educational institutions offering degree programmes in Singapore and investigates the extent that these educational institutions are leveraging on this new marketing communications tool. The findings suggest that marketing on social network sites remains in its infancy. Educational institutions in Singapore have started to use social network sites as a marketing communications tool. However, as the majority of visitors were using social network sites as an extension to existing mediums for seeking information, there is clearly the potential for the educational institutions to move to the next level in leveraging on social network sites to engage its members and generating a shared cultural meaning of their brands.

Mediating Effects of Study Outcomes on Student Experience and Loyalty

This paper aims to examine whether expectations of the student experience have an impact on student loyalty that is mediated by expectations of study outcomes at their university. To achieve this, a 15-minute pen and paper survey was self-administered to a convenience sample of students at a major university in Western Australia. The total sample size was 400 students, with 200 students each drawn from the home and international student populations. Findings suggest the university’s image and facilities that prepare students for career, personal and academic development were positively related to home student loyalty, while teaching and support services that prepare students for career development were positively related to both home and international students’ loyalty. Since the global trend is toward a customer-oriented model, universities can remain competitive by providing the ‘gestalt’ student experience that helps students to achieve their study outcomes and develop loyalty toward their university.

Business Lessons for Higher Education Marketing

Today, recent business marketing approaches that depend upon market analysis and planning have stimulated the growth of marketing firms that offer sophisticated quantitative market analyses in order to identify an organization’s potential and current customers and their needs. This analysis contrasts educational service provider to enrollment outcomes at two nonprofit higher education institutions. The authors’ data indicates securing educational marketing services may be a costly approach in order to attract and keep customers or students.

Lighting the Fires of Entrepreneurialism?

Entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurial leadership are increasingly viewed as essential to improving the capability of organisations to innovate and improve performance. This article aims to refine the conceptual understanding of entrepreneurialism in the context of public education, drawing on data concerning constructions of meaning around entrepreneurialism in an inner city Academy in England. The authors highlight effects of power in forming the discourse and meanings around entrepreneurialism, the layers of meaning in these constructions, and the presence of both business entrepreneurialism and alternative groundings for entrepreneurialism. The article concludes by refining the typology of entrepreneurialism, placing it in the context of levels of meaning and suggesting three implications for schools and educational policy. The association the authors found of enterprise with relational motivations and with public and community-orientated aims suggests a general appetite exists to forge a more radical entrepreneurialism than that prescribed solely by a private, competitive business view of the world.