When I met Lauren Cifuentes several years ago at a Symposium for Quality Online Education at Texas A&M system, she quickly mentioned that the book George Saltsman and I wrote in 2005, An Administrator’s Guild to Online Education, was her primary resource for starting and leading her online program. She thanked me for writing it and then gently reminded me it needed updating since the practice of online education has evolved and is more heavily used since 2005. Of course, she was right! A lot of things have changed in 15 years after our book was written that are important topics included in this new book such as the state authorization rule or the use of online learning for crisis situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, this book gathers together essays from online learning experts such as Tony Picciano, Ray Schroeder, and Karen Swan, who have been involved in this field for almost three decades and have extensive experience in designing and leading online programs.
Yet, when you look at this book’s collection of chapters, many of the same topics we found that administrators struggled with in 2005 are still within the scope of this book like strategic and transformational leadership, typical challenges and barriers that must be dealt with, policy development, a systematic process for course development, use of technologies, faculty support and professional development, student support and student success, and marketing. However, this book extends those topics with more anecdotes, more research, and draws from more experiences which makes this book an even more valuable resource for the higher education practitioner with additional topics such as program improvement, quality assurance, legal topics, ethics, and recruitment and retention.
When Lauren approached me with her idea for this book, I was thrilled to find she has the same passion and desire to help our colleagues in the field like George and I did in order to provide good sound resources for decision making, program guidance, and focusing on quality in online learning. As a dean of online programs myself for more than 10 years, there were so many times I needed a guide like this book to run to for possible recommendations or further research. This book is destined to become the next major resource for those leading, managing, or working in this exciting and increasingly important field as online education continues to impact higher education.