A Case in Customizing E-Learning

Abstract

Organizational change in today's competitive landscape is no longer just an option, but a fundamental strategy for success. In order to be the premier player in this type of competitive landscape, customer focus has to become a priority, and bearing this in mind both academia and competitive organizations have one key objective in common. Their current focus is on implementing successful support systems in order to meet their end-users’ needs. As early as 1995, University College Cork (a Third-level Irish university) introduced on-line support to provide learning material for students ranging from full/part-time undergraduates and postgraduates to distance-learners. However, students identified a need for more support, the type that only a more interactive system can provide. This paper focuses on the evolution of e-learning and learning management systems (LMS) in considering e-learning as the academic equivalent to the customer relationship management (CRM) challenge. This research outlines the different characteristics necessary for the successful management of the learning process and the support needed by students, through the investigation of current research and the analysis of the case environment. It also highlights the potential of the system to overcome the physical barriers of the traditional classroom aligning the key critical factors necessary for e-learning with those of CRM. Through the adoption of the CRM philosophy, the system presented here strengthened its link between the different actors and additionally provided the university with a more in-depth view of its target audience.