SWOT Analysis For University’s Proposal To Offer Distance Learning Courses To International Students

Part 1

SWOT Analysis

The specific methodology of management for recognizing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of any organization or person is known as SWOT analysis (Bull et al. 2016). According to the case study, a university have undertaken a decision to start their distance learning for all the students.

SWOT analysis for this university is as follows:

According to the SWOT analysis, the university in the case study comprises of five strengths (Yuan 2013). They are the cost effectiveness, since the student does not visit to the university, flexible, convenient, ability to attend the classes and also to work simultaneously, access to the class from anywhere through the Internet.

There are five weaknesses as well. They are the constant dependency on the Internet connection, fixed costs on various systems, no access to university library books or materials, chances of plagiarism and fraud and restriction in learning, since students are being able to learn from their peers.

The opportunities of this university mainly include incorporating new technologies, reducing cultural gaps and increasing equality in education sector and the ability to reach out to the broad students range.

According to SWOT analysis, the three threats to this university are the trusts issues in students, problems in keeping good teaches and problems in maintaining databases (Ayub et al. 2013).

It is recommended to this university to start their distance learning courses, as they have several strengths according to SWOT analysis. The most significant strength is that it is extremely cost effective and flexible. Thus could be easily undertaken by all students. There are few important opportunities for the course that this course would be enhancing new technologies and reducing the cultural gaps. However, few weaknesses and threats are also present like the dependency on Internet and trust issues of students. These problems could be mitigated with proper steps and strategies. 

Objectives, CSFs and KPIs 

When the SWOT analysis is done on the University, a distinct set of objectives can be easily created with the help of an e-commerce analysis model. In this case, it is Porter’s Five Forces. The model of the Porter’s Five Forces in respect to the given case study is given below:

1. i) Threat of New Entrants: As the university in the provided case study is new entrant within the distance learning course market, there is chance, which they could face losses in the early days.
2. ii) Threat of Substitutes: Various universities worldwide have already started several distance learning courses for the students (Parmenter 2015). Thus, there is a constant threat of their substitutes in the existing market.

iii) Bargaining Power of Customers: The market outputs are referred to as the power of bargaining of the students.

1. iv) Bargaining Power of the Suppliers: The market inputs are referred to as the power of bargaining of supplier or the management of the university.
2. v) Industry Rivalry: The healthy competition between the various universities is the industry rivalry here.

The set of objectives, CSFs and the KPIs of the provided case study are as follows:

Part 2

The most significant competition of this particular university is all the learning courses that are existing. The demand of these courses are extremely high and thus to address all of the competencies, most of the organizational alterations are needed such as they should decrease the course fees so that it is affordable to all students and also appoint good teachers on the basis on contracts.

Addressing all Issues in University Websites

The DL courses that are being offered by university are the first and the foremost step to reduce the cultural gaps (Simpson 2013). There are also various trust issues regarding these courses and students often scare of taking these courses. Since, the university is a new entrant in an existing market, they might be facing difficulties in the beginning, and however, gradually they can overcome these problems. The cultural diversification is the most important feature in this aspect. There are several trust issues and cultural issues and thus these should be mitigated on an urgent basis. For addressing all these issues, the university should take up marketing strategies on their websites with the help of online communication tools. They should advertise their products and thus address all the issues (Salmon 2013). They should interviews of the teachers so that the students get the idea that they are promoting to reducing cultural gaps. Hence, they would safe and secured. Furthermore, advertisements of the courses should be done in almost every national language. 

References

Ayub, A., Adeel, R., Muhammad, S.A. and Hanan, I., 2013. A conceptual framework on evaluating SWOT analysis as the mediator in strategic marketing planning through marketing intelligence. European Journal of Business and Social Sciences, 2(1), pp.91-98.

Brooks, G., Heffner, A. and Henderson, D., 2014. A SWOT analysis of competitive knowledge from social media for a small start-up business. The Review of Business Information Systems (Online), 18(1), p.23.

Bull, J.W., Jobstvogt, N., Böhnke-Henrichs, A., Mascarenhas, A., Sitas, N., Baulcomb, C., Lambini, C.K., Rawlins, M., Baral, H., Zähringer, J. and Carter-Silk, E., 2016. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: A SWOT analysis of the ecosystem services framework. Ecosystem services, 17, pp.99-111.

Nicoletti, B., 2017. Critical Success Factors. In The Future of FinTech (pp. 161-175). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Parmenter, D., 2015. Key performance indicators: developing, implementing, and using winning KPIs. John Wiley & Sons.

Salmon, G., 2013. E-tivities: The key to active online learning. Routledge.

Simpson, O., 2013. Supporting students in online open and distance learning. Routledge.

Yuan, H., 2013. A SWOT analysis of successful construction waste management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 39, pp.1-8.