Considerations for Marketing Distance Education Courses in Health Education

This chapter discusses considerations for marketing select distance education courses in health education. Five questions and answers are provided regarding: (a) implementing feasibility analyses for course development; (b) course augmentation strategies using distance education offerings; and (c) identifying important developmental aspects of proposed course offerings. Creating an inimitable process for effectively marketing prospective distance education courses enhances a health educator’s ability to appropriately use educational technology within both pre-existing and emergent course offerings. In addition, various health education courses especially conducive to distance education will be discussed based on current trends. Marketing concepts such as: demand, course management, course visibility, and branding will be discussed within the context of higher education courses in health education. The importance of relationship marketing between various stakeholders in the course development process will be discussed to enable positive experiences in course enrollment and create mutually beneficial experiences for students, faculty, and administrative personnel. Finally, distance education quality indicators will be suggested for future course evaluation protocols.

The Marketing Strategies and Applications of English Language Teaching (ELT) Programs via Distance Education

The main aim of this descriptive study is to review the marketing strategies and applications of English Language Teaching (ELT) programs via distance education. The study, firstly, introduces the role of English as a global language in the 21st century and the importance of marketing of English Language Teaching (ELT) programs, examines using ways of distance education and distance teacher training in ELT, and finally, presents the some sample of websites on marketing ELT programs and products via e-Learning.

Older Adults as New Learners

This chapter presents a marketing model for four-year higher education institutions that may be appropriate for engaging aging Baby Boomers in lifelong learning. Baby Boomers will challenge higher education institutions to rethink their customer base and respond to a different set of needs from that exhibited by traditional students and by adult learners who are currently 65 or older. Higher education institutions have not prepared for the demands that aging Baby Boomers may place on providers of learning. The PRI2SM model suggests ways to recruit nontraditional students to traditional providers of higher education.

Applying the Corporate Identity in Mega Universities’ Web Sites

It can be seen that due to increasing importance of public relation efforts, mega universities started to assign more place to corporate identity elements in their web pages. Those universities also include visual corporate identity in their web pages. Those institutions may differentiate themselves from other universities only via their corporate identities. Corporate identity studies are of importance for increasing awareness on the institution and promoting recognizability. The aim of current study is to reveal the way mega universities utilize web pages as public relations tools in order to provide information on their corporate identities to the target audience. As a consequence of this examination, practices are revealed which are implemented by mega universities with tremendous target audience in order to take attention of the target audience and introduce the institution.

Social Media Based Relationship Marketing

A growing number of colleges and universities are using social media as an integral component of their marketing strategy, because they realize marketing is not a marketer-led, one-way form of communication, but a student-led, two-way dialogue. By becoming part of this conversation, educational institutions can learn about how to incorporate social media as part of their marketing strategy to reach these students. The chapter combines an overview of social media based marketing tools and “real-world” experience from corporate and academic institutions on social media based marketing. This chapter ends with a case study of Penn State Global Campus to assist marketing managers to create social presence for online educational programs.

Marketing and Promoting Online Adult Education

To serve a significant portion of the student population, adult learners, in the academy in the 21st century, this chapter argues that online education (e.g., e-learning) has the potential to open wider the door to greater access and advancement for learners across their life spans than the traditional, four walled classroom teaching. Some of the major issues revolving around online education and adult learners such as policy, access, completion, and equity have been addressed in this chapter. The purpose of this chapter is to show it’s possible to rely on practice and research to harness the great, yet untapped potential of online education to market and promote online education programs, especially among adult learners. Marketing and promoting online education programs are equally as important as helping adult learners learn.

From Consumer to Prodsumer

This chapter aims to open a discussion on how tertiary level students of 21st century transform from passive receivers of courses to producer – consumers. The chapter brings up a new term that is “prodsumer.” The term explains that students assume two roles simultaneously. By designing the learning programs, deciding the technology, and by choosing the source of information, they become producers of their service package. On the other hand, by consuming the package that they initially created, they are consumers too. A new era is opening up, and in this new era students will assume and practice the “power” which they had never before. When the power of producer and consumer is united in one hand, this will initiate a new look to the age old marketing marketing paradigm. Thus, such conception will certainly be the milestone of new argumentations.

Financing Distance Education in a Time of Economic Challenge

This chapter examines marketing messages that may persuade older adult learners to enroll in online higher education programs. It builds on a theoretical framework of the factors in adults’ decisions to enroll in higher education programs. A demographic shift has been occurring that will influence the population targeted for academic online educational opportunities. Baby Boomers are becoming older adults, defined as those over the age of 60, and it is projected that these individuals will remain in educational, social service, managerial, and customer service positions past the traditional age of retirement. Yet marketing strategies used by institutions of higher education may be neglecting this population, who will require additional educational opportunities to obtain credentials needed for workplace opportunities (Willis, 2006; Stokes, 2006). In addition, older adult learners do not have time to devote to long educational experiences and must move through the system as quickly as possible, often attending only part time to accommodate work and family needs.

Standardization, Hybridization, or Individualization

With student population on the rise globally, colleges and universities face daunting new challenges to accommodate the increased demand for services (Marginson, 2006). The historic threshold of 100 million students worldwide has been crossed and the prospect of reaching the figure of 125 million students will be attained before 2020 (NCES, 1993). Important increases in student numbers are reported in all regions, particularly in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Arab countries, and in Eastern and Central Europe (Altbach & Balan, 2007).

Marketing of Virtual Healthcare Communities as Being Distance and Open Learning (DOL) Environments

The findings indicate that members of the reviewed website used forums heavily as a means of interactivity and gathering of health related and social based information.