Introduction
The City University of Seattle is one of several institutions of higher education in this state that will be considered in this paper. The case is that it is necessary at this University to improve aspects of online learning for foreign and local students as part of the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration program. The work aims to improve the efficiency of this process and its optimization following modern requirements and trends in this field. Finally, based on the external evaluation, small and large-scale objectives and recommendations will be proposed, as well as a management style in a new context.
External Assessment
The global factors that affect this kind of education are the consequences of the pandemic, which has significantly accelerated the development of distance interaction and various platforms. This mode of education has its disadvantages; however, in the context of global challenges and opportunities for international students, it provides practical implementations that simplify many processes (Palvia et al., 2018). Accordingly, online education in the context of the spread of the virus becomes a necessity, not an option, and then can be used as a flexible tool that provides opportunities for both local and international students in the first place. Consequently, the first external factor to be considered is the technological development of online educational opportunities.
Local factors include the capabilities of the City of Seattle itself. Offices of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, and other extensive engineering and IT companies are based in this territory. This geographic, environmental factor can be used for online education as a potential collaboration between the University and these organizations to conduct practices, and share resources and talents, since such a practice is widespread in higher education (Mascarenhas et al., 2018). In the aggregate of this information, another external factor is the availability of real practice opportunities among companies in the same city as the University.
Solutions
First, management needs to focus on small-scale tasks to achieve the effectiveness of online education. The first of these is to contact the companies listed above for cooperation within the online environment: organizations can receive young talents through practice and provide various modules or resources. The second task reflects global trends in transitioning to a distance format: creating an accessible library of electronic resources, including lectures from university teachers, to concentrate knowledge in a single area. The third goal is the professional translation of these unique resources in the library into foreign languages, which will improve academic results and the involvement of international students.
The next step will be optimizing online interaction: centralizing all processes using only one software and selecting the most comfortable platform for work. Finally, because of the transition to digital integration in education, Agile and Scrum are well-established approaches as methods of teamwork, differentiation of activities, and continuous monitoring of success (Müller-Amthor et al., 2020). Given that Agile and Scrum are usually the main methods of working in IT companies, students receive valuable skills that will definitely come in handy for rapid professional growth even within the host city.
Larger-scale goals will be achieved in the long term and are some vectors of development. First, the university should strive for advanced technical equipment for students both on the ground in the classrooms and in pursuit of the opportunity to supply all those in need with equipment for comfortable distance learning. The second goal is to form a department responsible for supporting and developing the directly educational online environment, whose responsibilities will include the tasks listed above and their integration into educational processes. The third step could be the fruit of cooperation with leading IT companies to create an adaptive learning platform – an artificial intelligence-based system that considers the student’s cognitive abilities and ways of perceiving information.
The fourth aspect is to promote integrative learning, which involves closer interaction between foreign and local students to exchange experience and cultural acquaintance and implement interdisciplinary approaches. The online environment can create the most favorable conditions for implementing this plan. Finally, the last task facing the leadership is actualizing the knowledge taught. This process is almost impossible to automate, which can increase, on the one hand, the burden on teachers; however, automation can help in checking student work, scheduling and class plans, and offloading the duties of a teacher in other organizational processes.
Leadership Style
In this case, it is proposed to use a liberal leadership style to implement both large-scale and small-scale tasks. It is because, within the framework of this approach, the leader provides much freedom to his subordinates, which in this case includes a team of teachers, administrative staff, and even students who act as an interested party. In addition, the listed representatives of the headquarters have more experience in the educational process itself and better see the shortcomings and needs that need to be corrected. In this regard, along with the liberal style, it is necessary to ensure the availability and speed of communication between all interested and involved departments.
Conclusion
Global trends emphasize the need for online education; local geographic factors influence the possibilities of development direction. Within the framework of this work, small-scale goals of varying degrees of long-term duration and longer-term large-scale goals were identified that correspond to the indicated trends and the initially set goal. As a result, the most appropriate leadership style was determined against the background of the identified steps toward achieving the goal, creating the most comfortable and adequate conditions for this.
References
Mascarenhas, C., Ferreira, J. J., & Marques, C. (2018). University–industry cooperation: A systematic literature review and research agenda. Science and Public Policy, 45(5), 708-718. Web.
Müller-Amthor, M., Hagel, G., Gensheimer, M., & Huber, F. (2020). Scrum higher education–The Scrum master supports as solution-focused coach. In 2020 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) (pp. 948-952). IEEE. Web.
Palvia, S., Aeron, P., Gupta, P., Mahapatra, D., Parida, R., Rosner, R., & Sindhi, S. (2018). Online education: Worldwide status, challenges, trends, and implications. Journal of Global Information Technology Management, 21(4), 233-241. Web.