Developing Your World Class

Posted on By Duncan Hothersall

CAPDM Ltd.

Dear Reader,

CAPDM has an established track record of success spanning more than two decades in:

Developing digital strategies and online distance learning (ODL) businesses
Delivering global education with university partners

During this time we have been directly responsible for the development of very significant, sustained income streams for these partners. CAPDM also helped to instil a cultural change that has refreshed internal approaches to the development and delivery of high quality educational resources.

Many universities are exploring the potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to help establish their global brand. This should really be part of a wider digital and business strategy to establish ODL, or ?open? education, as part of normal practice in the institution.

MOOCs highlight some of the issues within an overall strategy for ODL, but also hide many other considerations. CAPDM has summarised the elements of a holistic strategy in a diagram. The diagram illustrates why taking the easy step towards ODL by replicating what is done on-campus has problems, as identified by the OU:

?Classic models of education cannot meet all our needs. Simply transferring those models online is not the most effective approach to open education?.

There are perhaps a number of reasons why a university finds it difficult to focus on ODL developments, but a key factor is lack of experience. CAPDM?s decades of total involvement in ODL ? from consultancy to joint development ? can greatly assist with the transition involved.

CAPDM?s website includes many short papers on our approach to the development of a workable strategy which you may find of great use. If you are seriously looking into developing ODL as a sustainable business then our experience could prove to be extremely valuable. We would be keen to demonstrate this and our recent advances in:

  • Online pedagogies and design
  • Support for content authors
  • Repository set-up and management
  • Course production and delivery tools
  • Progress profiling and adaptive feedback.

CAPDM only work with standards. There is no proprietary lock-in with our approach ? we focus on the learning.

You can find out about CAPDM at www.capdm.com or call me on 0131 477 8632.

Yours sincerely,

Ken Currie

This newsletter was originally sent by CAPDM Ltd. on the 16. June 2015.

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Duncan Hothersall is Managing Director of CAPDM Limited. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1994 with a degree in theoretical Computer Science and found his niche in the development of publishing systems. Having worked for a traditional typesetter, Duncan saw the opportunity to introduce the quality associated with high-end print publishing to the web and CAPDM. He manages the production services side of CAPDM, and is the architect of much of the XML-based software at the heart of these services. Duncan was Operations Director of CAPDM Limited from 1996 to 2022.