ODDE Strategic Positioning in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Abstract

This chapter considers some of the challenges of the development of strategy, both for the conventional and ODDE sectors of higher education, with a brief look at the literature since strategic planning was first in vogue in the private sector in the early 1960s. Although the most common approach in higher education, so much so-called strategic planning does little to advance long-term visions and strategies or to differentiate one institution from another. The sudden pivot to online learning and other distance education that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced on conventional (contact) institutions has blurred distinctions between traditional and ODDE universities, thus rendering effective strategy development and implementation more important than ever.

This chapter conducts the literature review considering both institutional and system-wide strategy development, underlining their common elements. Then, from the unique vantage point of the South African Institute of Distance Education (Saide), a nongovernmental organization based in Johannesburg but conducting projects throughout South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, it discusses the challenges for ODDE strategy development in the particular context of COVID-19. The chapter concludes with implications from the analysis for both the conventional and ODDE sectors in higher education in South Africa and elsewhere based, in part, on the lessons learned during the pandemic.

Introduction

What makes God laugh? …People planning!

At no time in recent memory has this old adage seemed so appropriate. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a roller-coaster ride for governments and educational institutions the world over as they struggle to cope, alternatively declaring specific policies and then being forced to renege or change them in the face of viral mutations and unpredictable human behavior. Any expectations that the peoples of the world would be drawn together by a universal challenge touching everyone have been dashed by conflicting responses, regional chauvinism, and exacerbated political divides about the most appropriate responses to the pandemic.

Under such conditions, one might expect strategic planning, the vaunted approach to corporate leadership in past decades, to be more necessary than ever. However, the notion of dramatically changing times is hardly a new concept. Mintzberg (2014) has shown how leaders in every decade have justified the need for strategic planning because of times of major transformation even though the golden era of strategic planning (1960–1980) was a period of unprecedented stability. But 2021 is clearly a time of unprecedented change and challenge given the threats and instability brought on by the chronic and parallel crises of the pandemic, climate change, and racism, all of which have brought new considerations and increased complexity to institutional and political leadership.

Strategic Planning and Strategic Positioning

Mintzberg’s influential writings about the shortcomings of strategic planning have led to reconsideration of its value but, if somewhat altered, it remains a key management tool for organizational and system effectiveness. For example, when someone is appointed as the president of a university or college, he or she usually resorts very quickly to launching a strategic planning process. The standard approach is to consult widely at the outset, both internally and externally, to seek to understand the special circumstances of the institution through some sort of SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis and, hence, to propose a new strategic plan to guide the institution for the years to come. The heart of such a plan is a vision that defines an institution’s raison d’etre and differentiates it from the competition.

Such approaches are often very effective but they can also be misguided, time consuming, and ultimately unhelpful to the institution’s development. Mintzberg (1994, p. 1) asserts that strategic planning is not strategic thinking:

Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers. And this confusion lies at the heart of the issue: the most successful strategies are visions, not plans.

Mintzberg’s work has recognized that a narrow, structured planning process may be too much about administrative control and fail to recognize the importance of strategic thinking and individual responses to institutional plans. This seems particularly relevant to universities where leaders have less prescribed authority and where faculty processes are often cumbersome and resistant to change.

Eckel and Trower (2019) echo Mintzberg’s work.

Too many university strategic plans are mostly outcomes or ideals (or unfunded “wish lists”), without an articulation of strategy. (p. 1)

…strategy is not planning. A focus on strategy is intended to help institutions experiment and take initiative, to ask questions and create synergies, and to move institutions ahead in often unknown and unknowable environments. (p. 4)

Effective strategic planning is not easy. Roger Martin (2014) suggests that many executives pursue it because it is comfortable when the challenges of forging strategic directions are anything but predictable. Like Alex Usher (2019) and Eckel and Trower (2019), he also challenges the tendency to forge five-year strategic plans when effective strategy should be much longer term in its reach – at least 15 years.

Any scrutiny of strategic plans from comparable postsecondary institutions will usually find they are very similar. Martin emphasizes that plans can hardly be considered strategic if they are indistinguishable from each other, given that a key purpose of strategy is to gain institutional advantage. Eckel and Trower (2019) mock this tendency, noting the frequency of such general objectives as “performing high tech research” or providing all students with “a transformational learning experience” by wondering what the alternatives are – “low tech research?” or “providing a less than transformative learning experience for all students?”

According to Ikenberry, strategic planning must not be confused with tactics. He believes that university leaders “are too often seduced by short-term tactical questions… that tend to crowd out the major strategic questions that will ultimately be more critical to the organization’s future” (Ikenberry, 2006, p. x).

Tactics were particularly evident in many institutions confronted with the onset of COVID-19 when there was little time for strategy and institutional leaders had to scramble to replace conventional teaching and learning with online delivery of programs with little time to prepare faculty, staff, and students for the changes. This pivoting for institutional survival contrasts starkly with Ikenberry’s notion of strategic leadership, which “is about long-term positioning, the successful execution of a multiyear strategy…It seeks to reposition the institution in new and fresh ways with stakeholders, it seeks differentiation not homogenization and it seeks to thrive, not just to survive” (Ikenberry, 2006, p. xi).

Notwithstanding such well-documented concerns, there is almost no university website that does not feature an updated strategic plan. This usually includes a mission statement and a series of initiatives designed to achieve its goals together with accompanying operational plans and accountability mechanisms such as benchmarks and time lines. While primarily instruments for internal decision-making, strategic plans can also be valuable marketing materials which is why they are so prominent on university websites. For example, the UKOU’s one-page summary of its current strategic plans (The Open University, 2021) lends itself readily to institutional promotion. This propensity to use strategic plans for marketing and promotion underscores a key difference between private and public sector approaches – private companies seldom publicize their strategic plans so as not to reveal their strategies to the competition.

Concise strategy documents are not the norm, however. The nature of decision-making in a university is particularly challenging for effective strategic planning. There are huge pressures to incorporate objectives from a great range of stakeholders, from faculty and students to governments, funding agencies, and employers. Internal decision-making processes tend to be slow and cumbersome and, too often, the result is a plan that tries to be all things to all people which is thus not really a plan at all.

Even where an institution’s strategic plan effectively projects a long-term vision and ambitious objectives for its realization, the work has only just begun. Too many such documents gather dust on president’s shelves until the next planning exercise is initiated, often by the incumbent’s successor. Falkenburg and Cannon (2020) have explored the whole process systematically and, like Piper and Samarasekera (2021) and earlier research by Westley and Mintzberg (1989), they emphasize the intuitive and the inherent weaving of strategic planning and organizational culture through engaged consultation to facilitate responsiveness rather than complacency. So, while the most common term in higher education in this domain is “strategic planning,” our primary interest is in strategic positioning and strategic management as ultimate tests of how effective any planning exercise is, in our institutions and in government.

The Context: The Pandemic and Strategy Development in Higher Education

Bargh, Bocock, Scott, and Smith (2000, p. 24) suggest that when the organizational context is “divergent” (goals and structures are increasingly inappropriate to the prevailing environment), the leader should challenge the status quo. One could argue that the onset of COVID-19 has rendered most organizational contexts “divergent” which would suggest that strategy development, thinking, and management are more important, and perhaps more difficult, than ever.

The pandemic has challenged the very nature of planning by forcing institutions and their leaders to “pivot” frequently to cope with the latest crisis. This is echoed in the public service generally as government leaders struggle to find the appropriate policies and practices in the face of such an elusive and constantly changing threat. The evidence is pretty clear that vision and leadership are particularly challenged in such a disruptive era where today’s popular decision may be very unpopular a few months later as a new virus strain upsets all the assumptions of the earlier position.

At a time when the majority of the population is looking to government(s) for leadership, a roller coaster of stop-go decisions has contributed to an undermining of public confidence in their leaders. Political leaders the world over have diverged considerably in the ways they have responded to the pandemic, with some being cautious and quite strict with others seemingly in denial that anything serious has been going on. The ensuing distrust of leadership has implications for institutional leaders as well.

For a college or university president, the most important challenge for strategy development is to build consensus around strategic priorities, a clear understanding of the reasons for them and why they are critical to institutional success. And, once strategies have been adopted, it is vitally important that they guide implementation and decision-making and that they are constantly reviewed on the basis of their impact, both positive and negative.

University leaders do not have the same powers and authorities of their private sector counterparts and it will not be enough to simply proclaim a new strategy. Once one is adopted, the real work begins. Credibility and trust can be built with an effective plan but cynicism and apathy will quickly take over if the plans are ineffective in achieving the higher-level goals held out for them in the first place.

Writing in the British context, Bargh et al. saw vice-chancellors’ preoccupations with strategic planning as evidence of their struggles with the pressures of change and tradition.

Mass higher education poses intellectual as much as managerial and organizational challenges, and so far the university world remains racked with ambivalence about its future(s). In that sense strategic planning can be seen as part of a debate about the core values which underpin higher education. (Bargh et al., 2000, p. 24)

This demonstrates that uncertainty about the roles of and priorities for universities were among the significant issues before the onset of COVID-19 but the latter has almost certainly further eroded trust in leadership and rendered the jobs of presidents and vice-chancellors even more difficult.

Strategy Development in Government

Most of the literature on strategy development pertains to individual institutions, but the same principles and concerns apply to those overseeing whole systems of higher education, as we will show in the following case study of South Africa. Boland, Thomas, and Werfel (2021) are strong advocates for strategic planning in government as a prerequisite to dealing with the huge challenges faced in every country, notably in the face of four key and difficult realities:

• (a) The scale and pace of change, including changes driven by advancing technology.

• (b) The involvement of more stakeholders than in the past (magnified by COVID-19).

• (c) An ongoing erosion of public confidence in leaders.

• (d) Squeezes on discretionary spending due to rising deficits, aging populations, and the increasing cost of government services.

Hence, the same caveats for successful strategy development apply to government leaders as to the heads of colleges and universities. Ultimately, the success of such planning will depend on the public’s trust and confidence in government and institutional leaders alike.

The Particular Demands for ODDE Institutions

If this chapter had been written before the onset of COVID-19, it would have been limited to institutions in the ODDE sector. However, the dramatic need for most conventional colleges and universities to pivot to online learning without much time to prepare or consider the consequences has brought unexpected attention to ODDE. There has not been time, nor indeed the inclination, for conventional institutional leaders to try and learn from the experiences of the ODDE sector. Instead, they have been thrown into an unfamiliar scenario and had to learn quickly from the failures and successes of sudden moves to online learning.

The initial shock in scrambling to replace face-to-face learning in 2020 has been mitigated to some degree by better planning and more professional development in 2021 and by the adoption of blended and hybrid schemes that try to find the best of both worlds. These changes have dramatically increased the profile of ODDE, but because the changes were brought in without time to plan very much, they have also generated considerable negative publicity about online learning dissatisfaction regarding the learning experience in traditional institutions not familiar with the attention given to course design and student support in dedicated ODDE institutions.

The pandemic may have dramatically increased the challenges facing conventional colleges and universities but pressures for change in postsecondary education were already there. The explosive rise of new communications technologies has increasingly challenged the sector to be more nimble and able to pivot quickly to take advantage of opportunities, and there has been more and more acknowledgment of the need for change independent of the pandemic.

In this context, strategy development and planning is central to an institution’s (or a government’s) ability to respond. Its components are the following:

• 1. A clear and differentiating vision for the institution’s development.

• 2. Acceptance and articulation of this vision within the institution, a particular challenge in one as diverse and complex as a university.

• 3. Widespread communication of this vision, both internally and externally.

• 4. Operational plans designed to realize the vision over the long term.

• 5. Accountability mechanisms that measure the extent to which the operational plans have been successfully implemented.

• 6. Regular revisits to strategic choices to ensure that they are still right for the institution and have widespread internal and external support.

In this connection, a 2011 publication from Ontario’s Contact North/Nord offers a practical template for strategic planning for online learning by the province’s institutional leaders. It guides the reader through an exemplary strategic planning process, starting with two fundamental questions that recognize the importance of institutional vision and differentiation.

Does the institution have a clear, owned and widely understood vision for online learning? Can key leaders describe what it will be doing differently in terms of teaching and learning 5 years from now? (Contact North, 2011, p. 2)

This represents, then, an effective approach to strategic planning that underlines the vital importance of strategy and emphasizes the importance of differentiation for a given institution.

These issues are now explored through the particular case study of ODDE in South Africa and the key strategic role played by the South African Institute of Distance Education (Saide). This selection is based both on the importance of exploring the issues in a developing country with the added benefit of an institution dedicated to facilitating it.

Strategic Planning for ODDE in South Africa

University Education System in South Africa (SA)

SA’s new democracy in 1994 heralded a dramatic departure from a racially divided university system (with the bulk of universities serving largely the minority White community with separate universities for Black African students in designated “homeland” areas and one university each for so-called “Colored” and “Indian” students) to an integrated system dedicated to the social justice values and principles of the new democracy, committed to promoting equity of access and fair chances of success while advancing redress for past inequalities.

The new system, framed by a white paper (Ministry/Department of Education, 1997), provided for a large amount of public university autonomy under the notion of cooperative governance, with the (now) Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), the Council on Higher Education (CHE), and its Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) steering the system through:

• Enrolment planning – includes the mix (level and subject area) of programs on offer, enrolment numbers, and mode of provision.

• Funding to be expected from government as subsidy as well as ear-marked funding.

• Quality assurance mechanisms overseen by the CHE and HEQC, including institutional audits, new program accreditation, and program reviews for the first two decades. A recent CHE document places emphasis on standards development, promotion and capacity development, and a move away from program to qualifications accreditation (CHE, 2021).

All public institutions are subject to the “steering” outlined above. They are required to negotiate their enrolment plans with DHET in order to receive state funding, which is based on these enrolments as well as on numbers of graduates produced. Private institutions are subject to separate registration but the same quality assurance processes.

The latest White Paper for Post-School Education and Training (2014a) saw the development of policy for an integrated post-school system that would:

• Assist in building a fair, equitable, nonracial, nonsexist, and democratic South Africa.

• Expand access, improve quality, and increase diversity of provision.

• Build a stronger and more cooperative relationship between education and training institutions and the workplace.

• Be responsive to the needs of individual citizens, public and private sector employers as well as to broader societal and developmental objectives.

The Special Role of Saide

Established as a small nonprofit independent organization, governed by a board of trustees, in 1992, Saide is guided by a vision of a society in which all people value, have access to, and succeed in lifelong education appropriate to the global knowledge economy. Its mission is to increase equitable and meaningful access to knowledge, skills, and learning through the adoption of open learning principles and distance education methods. Saide acts as an advocate, catalyst, and facilitator of change in education policy and practices. Over the years, Saide has contributed to a range of educational policy processes, supported a number of systemic interventions, and worked with educational practitioners to transform their practices. While initiated in South Africa, the organization has increased expanding its services to many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Saide has been particularly active in the South African university sector, contributing to country-wide processes and engaging with individual institutions.

COVID-19 in South Africa

COVID-19 has changed much of our lives including the modes of provision in higher education, particularly for those at residential universities. While faculty and students have enjoyed some respite from daily commuting, taken-for-granted classroom practices in face-to-face teaching environments have been shown to be replaceable with faculty forced to attempt new online practices.

COVID-19 has had dramatic effects on context, with students and staff from traditional institutions coming to accept the possibility of the education process moving away from the classroom to educational practices making use of technology in a variety of ways. It has underscored the importance of understanding who your students are and the context in which they study. It has also exacerbated inequality within and between countries. Rich countries are recovering far more quickly than middle-income and poor ones. The upper middle classes are least affected and employment rates among men recover more quickly than those of women.

COVID-19 has aggravated an already challenged higher education sector. The cost of higher education has increased far more than inflation in many countries, with the cost per student place becoming increasing unaffordable for many countries and students. For example, South Africa cannot afford to fund its target enrolment rate of 1.62 million students by 2030, set in 2012. This was to be a modest 25% of 18- to 25-year-olds up from 17.3% in 2011 (DHET, 2014a, p. 30). Already staff-student ratios have deteriorated, resulting in class sizes growing dramatically in some faculties. All of this has transpired in a context where the growth of higher education is essential for a world of work increasingly dependent upon digitization and artificial intelligence.

Learning from the COVID Experience

These changes impact on strategy for the university sector. Strategy development involves consideration of context, clarity of values, and forging a position in order to determine a plan of action that involves strategic choices. In particular, the COVID experience is likely to erode the taken-for-granted niches of distance education institutions. In this context, it both underlines the need for a complete rethinking of ODDE and serious considerations of new opportunities that are identified in the process.

Role of ODDE in the University Sector

Traditionally, across the world, distance education has been seen as providing an opportunity for those unable to access traditional universities. In 2004, a special report on distance education (CHE, 2004, pp. 17) outlined this positioning by identifying the key motivating factor for distance education as providing “access to students for whom – either because of work commitments, personal social circumstances, geographical distribution, or poor quality or inadequate prior learning experiences – traditional full-time contact educational opportunities are inappropriate or inaccessible.”

Experiences of remote emergency teaching under COVID-19 have encouraged traditional universities to venture beyond their practices of offering contact opportunities which “require students to attend classes regularly at set times in order to discover the curriculum” (reference?). This has enlarged the pool of students constituting their target market. Traditional universities can potentially play a far greater role in meeting the needs of the post-school system as described in the 2014 White Paper:

…for the post-school system to cater for a very wide variety of potential student needs, including mature adult learners who have to study and work at the same time, as well as younger people who may have dropped out of the schooling system due to financial, social, learning or other barriers. Such students require access not only to a diverse range of programmes, but also to appropriate modes of provision which take into account their varying life and work contexts, rather than requiring them to attend daily classes at fixed times and at central venues. (DHET, 2014a, p. 48)

The Iron Triangle

The abovementioned CHE (2004) report goes on to suggest that the South Africa’s resource-constrained system should also capitalize on the potential of distance education to achieve economies of scale while not compromising quality. Daniel’s “iron triangle” as the basis of an effective distance education institution requires an appropriate balance across access, cost, and quality (Daniel, 2009).

Immediately post-1994 in SA, the pursuit of access was considered paramount, with a goal of “massification” particularly for previously marginalized groups, both for the system as a whole and for distance education. The system almost doubled in size from 490 to 837 thousand students over the period 1994–2009, but, importantly, the number of African students in the system increased from 32% in 1994 to 66% in 2009 (National Planning Commission, 2014, p. 317) and to 77% in 2019. (CHE, 2021a, p. 3). This compares very favorably with the percentage of Africans in the population (81%). In 2019, 60% of headcount enrolments were of women compared to their share of 51% of the population (CHE, 2021a, p. 5).

In 2001, distance education students made up 43% of headcount enrolments and, because they were largely part-time, 29% of full-time equivalent students (DoE, 2001, pp. 36, 44). However, by 2014, this percentage of headcount enrolments had decreased to 38% and to 34.5% by 2019 (CHE, 2019, p. 9). This decline is explored below. Of those in distance education, 80% were African and 69% women, showing how distance education has made a particularly important contribution to access. Unfortunately, it appears that access for older students (over 35) has steadily declined in recent years with only 24% of distance students being older than 35 (CHE, 2019, p. 11) compared to 32% in 2011 (CHE, 2018, p. 11). In general, however, distance education has a proud history of offering access to more marginalized students.

This provision is also substantially more “cost-efficient” than that of the conventional institutional provision, with government subsidies per full-time equivalent student enrolment in distance education being half that of the subsidy for face-to-face provision (DHET, 2014b). Student fees are generally far lower, with the cost of a three-year qualification through distance being roughly half that of conventional provision.

This aspect is particularly important in South Africa in planning a post-COVID future. The aspiration of equitable access to university education has led to over 60% of South Africa’s students being supported by the National Student Aid Fund (NSFAS), which covers tuition fees and living allowances, with much of the remainder of university costs coming from government subsidy. The level of these subsidies is also under attack as COVID-19, among other factors, has wrought havoc on the budget allocated to higher education, with university infrastructure grants already curtailed.

The higher education system is therefore under huge financial pressure – more cost-effective ways of provision need to be found. In positioning themselves in a post-COVID era, it is therefore imperative that the system and individual institutions respond to the extremely serious challenge of the increasingly unaffordable nature of the current teaching and learning model of the university sector.

Unfortunately, the third side of the iron triangle – quality – is questionable in much distance provision. This is exemplified by a measure of one central component of “quality” – student success. Already in 1995, Saide had raised an alarm bell that the pursuit of improving access in distance education needed to be accompanied by equal emphasis on student success, showing that only 15% (Arts), 10% (Commerce), and 6% (Science) of students who were enrolled past the census date completed their degrees in 9 or 10 years for a three-year qualification (Saide, 1995, p. 5). This was largely ignored by governments and institutions for over 15 years.

More recently, issues of student success have come to the fore. Over the last 10 years in particular, especially as it became clear that there were not enough resources to further expand the system, DHET identified the serious impact of students taking too long to complete with too few ever completing. With the national data available via a new (1998) Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS), it was possible to track student retention and course/module success rates, as well as conduct cohort analyses which showed student throughput rates within minimum time (M), minimum time plus 1 (M + 1), and minimum time plus 2 (M + 2). Minimum time for a three-year qualification for a distance student is considered to be 6 years.

Figure 1 below shows the dramatic differences between the throughput for three-year degrees through “contact” mode of provision and that of distance provision (DHET, 2020a, pp. 25–28).

Fig. 1

Throughput for three-year undergraduate degrees across contact and distance provision

They also show the marked improvement in throughput for distance education from the 2006 intake to the 2011 intake. Of the 2006 intake in distance education, 15% completed in six years, 17.7 in seven years, and 20.3% in eight years. (This percentage rose to 24.9% after 10 years.) Of the 2011 intake, 19.5% completed in six years, 23.1% in seven years, and 25.7% in eight years.

The pattern for three-year diploma throughput is very similar. The improvement seen is a result, at least in part, of some deliberate efforts within the dedicated distance education institutions (which make up more than 80% of distance education provision) to improve their quality of support. The notion that distance education must provide both access and success is now firmly entrenched within policy.

Throughput rates are, however, not the only measure of student success. It is suggested below that open learning principles are a useful high-level lens through which to begin to examine the quality of provision, especially for distance education.

Open Learning Principles

In reimagining university teaching and learning, it is critical to be guided by broad goals for the sector rather than being distracted by the new technological tools it has learnt to use. As set out in the white paper of 2014, this involves careful consideration of the context in which students will study and subjecting the use of the new tools to careful scrutiny through a range of principles.

The white paper, with its vision of diverse modes of provision, sets out principles of open learning to guide implementation. These have strong underpinnings of social justice, in line with efforts to build a new equitable democratic South Africa, providing a clear set of values essential for strategy development. SA policy sees open learning as a range of principles which need to be applied to all modes of provision but particularly to distance education – these include access (widely used in distance education discourse), success, and accumulation of learning.

Open learning is an approach which combines the principles of learner centeredness, lifelong learning, flexibility of learning provision, the removal of barriers to access learning, the recognition for credit of prior learning experience, the provision of learner support, the construction of learning programmes in the expectation that learners can succeed, and the maintenance of rigorous quality assurance over the design of learning materials and support systems. (DHET, 2014a, p. 13)

These were further elaborated at a September 2021 DHET Research Colloquium as part of a presentation by Glennie (2021) in which she challenged educators to examine their online learning provision using the open learning principles (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Open learning principles different dimensions

The above framework aligns to South Africa’s existing quality criteria, although they need to be interpreted according to the mode of provision. All South African higher education, regardless of mode of provision, has been subject to the same quality assurance provision.

A COVID-related quality assurance framework (CHE, 2020) cites the “humanising framework” of Stobel and Tilberg-Webb (2008, p. 11) which highlights the following core principles for teachers to integrate technologies into instructional design and education:

• Fostering independent thinking.

• Problem-based learning.

• Student-centeredness.

• Student engagement and interaction.

The main purpose of the humanizing framework is that the larger educational goal remains in focus and that the technology is only used as when and how it may be appropriate to achieve these goals (CHE, 2020, p. 17)

The values espoused echo several of the open learning principles, but anecdotal evidence points to COVID provision, especially for large classes, concentrating on the conveying of information, with large numbers of resources piled on students, little student engagement, and assessment focused on recall. Moreover, in our digitally unequal society, students often access their learning management systems through smart phones with sporadic connectivity and erratic electricity supply.

Strategic Positioning for both ODDE and Traditional Institutions

Shaping the System Toward National Goals

As indicated in the introduction, it is essential for any strategic planning process to articulate a mission that distinguishes it from other universities. In South Africa, this is referred to as differentiation. In the except that follows, both achieving national goals and differentiation is encouraged.

Differentiation is a way of ensuring a diverse system that will improve access for all South Africans to various forms of educational opportunities, improve participation and success rates in all higher education programmes, and enable all institutions to find niche areas that respond to various national development needs. A differentiated system should provide a variety of modes of learning, learning programmes, and methods of teaching and assessment for diverse student bodies, and should support both flexibility and innovation. It should also allow an effective and focused way of distributing public funds, and improve the overall quality of the system. (DHET, 2014a, p. 9)

Once these clearly differentiated missions are developed, universities can move to developing their strategic goals to achieve this mission, with related activities and high-level indicators. The ensuing annual performance plans are as follows:

Institutional Strategies

In determining their missions, COVID-19 has blown traditional higher education demarcation wide open and both traditional and ODDE institutions will need to reconsider their overall strategies in response. The competition for students will take place in a number of ways with ODDE institutions finding their traditional markets of remote and part-time students contested.

• 1. Targeting remote students

Traditional universities are likely now to be confident that they can offer small enrolment courses to students wherever they are located in the country. In preparation, some universities are already considering setting up a network of learning centers which provide all the necessary facilities so that students can study away from their central campus. However, traditional universities may be wary of large enrolment course/modules where the importance of careful course design is paramount, an area where distance education is expected to excel and the organization of large-scale academic and psychosocial student support is underscored.

• 2. Targeting part-time students

Conventional universities in large urban areas already enrol substantial numbers of part-time students within their vicinity. They may continue their fully online offerings here and feel confident to expand these part-time offerings to remote students as well. Cost may be a deciding factor. In SA, despite the major distance education institution receiving half the enrolment subsidy of traditional residential education from the state, they charge half the fees for a full qualification compared to traditional universities.

• 3. Understanding the context and profile of students

The COVID experience has underscored the importance of knowing the context of likely students to determine what mix of technology one is able to take as a given, especially if students are not accessing the campus regularly. There are significant disparities in such crucial concerns as access to devices, uninterrupted access to the Internet (which is too often intermittent even in areas of Johannesburg, making synchronous sessions hazardous), and even issues of the constancy of the supply of electricity. Moreover, in a very large sample of South African students, more than half (54%) did not have a quiet place to study, and only half (50%) indicated that they had appropriate network connection (DHET, 2020b, p. 7).

The following grid has been useful in helping to determine where to locate the mode of provision with the accepted notion of a continuum elaborated to include a second dimension of levels of the adoption of technology (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Dimensions of modes of provision

Distance education is viewed as anything on the right-hand side of the grid above – degrees of remoteness of the student – with the cutoff being the percentage of face-to-face or synchronous learning hours against the learning hours for the course/module. Defining a cutoff was necessary for funding differentiation, and ensuring that traditionally face-to-face universities did not move into serving remote students without adequate planning.

Important dimensions can be added to this grid, including axes for kinds of pedagogy, role of the educator, assessment types, and sources of feedback (Hodges et al., 2020). For this chapter, the consideration of class size is imperative. Hodges et al. suggest class size criteria of under 35, 36–99, 100–999, and over 1000. Clearly, the interactions an educator can have with a class of 35 are very different from those possible with much larger groups. It is in the latter two categories where ODDE is meant to thrive.

• 4. Ensuring cost-effectiveness

It is apparent from the above analysis that any strategy for a distance teaching institution in the post-COVID environment must address all three legs of the iron triangle. It will be no small challenge to retain the system’s accessibility via distance education while significantly improving completion rates without jeopardizing its cost advantages.

Summary: Lessons Learned for Better Strategy Development

Effective institutional leadership starts with a strategic approach to institutional development. While the common practice of strategic planning can be an effective tool for institutional advancement, it will only be successful if it is clearly strategic – identifying a particular identity of and long-term vision for the college or university that separates it from competitors followed by comprehensive strategic and operational plans intended to achieve its primary goals.

COVID-19 has blurred the distinctions between conventional and distance teaching institutions as the former have been forced to pivot quickly into online learning and other methods of distance education. This has, in turn, raised the bar for strategic positioning of each institution.

These developments can be both positive and negative for the ODDE sector. On the one hand, distance education and digital learning have gained a new prominence and it is highly unlikely that conventional colleges and universities will revert completely to in-person classroom teaching post-pandemic. Instead, they will develop blended or hybrid approaches that reduce the distinction between conventional and traditional distance teaching institutions. And they will do so in the great majority of cases without trying to learn from the previous experiences and research of ODDE institutions. Indeed, for small classes, it may not be long before the conventional institutions, especially those with greater resources, will catch up to and even surpass ODDE institutions in their knowledge of and effectiveness with online and digital teaching.

However, for large classes, conventional universities may continue some of their existing COVID practices of simply conveying information to students through the online lecture mode with little engagement with and among students. In this case, ODDE institutions need to bring to the fore their particular talents – intensive course design, interactive purposive learning materials, and the ability to engage with large numbers of students through decentralized student support. In this case, they well be able to steal back from conventional universities. This could have a major impact on the latter as large class sizes are an important part of their financial sustainability.

As the South African experience has demonstrated, ODDE institutions have dramatically increased access to higher education but unless they are able to achieve much more competitive completion rates while retaining their cost-efficiencies, they will not be seen as cost-effective recipients for the allocation of scarce national resources. While they will benefit from the legitimization of their approaches to teaching and learning, their response to the envisaged competition will be crucial to their future success. They will need to be very strategic in their development, capitalizing on their experience and expertise in course development and student support, always mindful of the three prongs of the iron triangle.

Overall, national and institutional leaders will have to strategize and plan for a system of institutions that contributes to national goals by meeting the iron triangle requirements and fulfilling open learning principles while always taking the context of the students into account.

While the edges may be sharper and the challenges greater for South Africa than for many wealthier nations, it is not difficult to see that the issues at stake are universal in the post-COVID era. There is no time to lose!