Friday, February 10, 2012

RKG Marketing Solutions Marketing Conference 2012

RKG Marketing Solutions LLC - Marketing Conference - Spring 2012 - Hosted By Dr. R. Kay Green - Hilton Atlanta Airport - Suwanee Room - February 17th 12:30 pm - 4:30 pm 

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Dr. R. Kay Green - RKG Marketing Solutions LLC

Be sure to visit  www.rkgmarketingsolutions.com for all of your marketing needs.

At RKG Marketing Solutions, our team has developed a “one-stop shop” palette of tools and top-tier publishers to meet our client’s cause marketing objectives. From defining a clear strategy, developing content, driving traffic, technology, social media, mobile, email, design, green marketing, and more.

Visit RKG Marketing Solutions website for all of your marketing needs..........Dr. R. Kay Green

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Online Education May Transform Higher Ed

Online Education May Transform Higher Ed - The industry has experienced growing pains but may be on the path to maturity.
April 20, 2011 RSS Feed Print

Can online education be the rock that disturbs the placid waters of American higher education? Several industry experts believe it will have a significant ripple effect on colleges and universities of all sizes in coming years—but only if it's subject to regulation, governed by a common set of accreditation standards, and widely accepted by institutions who have long clung to the traditional face-to-face model of instruction.

Citing the vast online enrollment gains made by for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University, Louis Soares, director of postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, recently dubbed online education a potential "disruptive innovator" in the higher ed landscape. Much in the way cell phones disrupted the traditional landline-based model or discount retailers like Wal-Mart revolutionized the nation's retail market, the for-profit sector—though a subject of intense scrutiny in recent years—has driven changes that could greatly affect the world of higher education, Soares argues.

"A disruptive innovation always starts out at a lower quality," he says. "[But], if you take that for-profit energy out of higher education, online [education] wouldn't have grown the way it has in the last 10 years."
[Read about the partisan battle over for-profit education.]

In the coming decade, experts say, college students should expect an increased presence of online classes at traditional nonprofit schools. Already, about 30 percent of American college students take at least one course online, says Elaine Allen, statistical director of the Sloan Survey on Online Education, which monitors student involvement in online higher education.

Though wholly online programs generally target nontraditional students, established institutions that are populated by traditional, high-achieving students are starting to embrace the technology. The University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill and the University of Southern California are among the highly regarded schools that have recently adopted online-centric programs.

Efforts made by such schools are not the culmination of a movement online, but rather a hint of inroads into a new market, experts say. "We're at the beginning of elite schools starting to take online seriously," says Richard Garrett, managing director at research firm Eduventures. "They're trying to marry the online experience with the brand of the institution."

As technological capabilities expand and more traditional schools embrace online education in the coming years, schools may opt to replace many of their massive, entry-level courses that are traditionally taught in vast lecture halls and are characterized by little to no individual interaction between students and professors, experts say. "Is there a secret sauce to a professor sitting in front of 400 students and lecturing that couldn't be [replicated] online?" asks Soares, of the Center for American Progress.
[Learn about the effectiveness of blended learning.]

Standardized methods for training professors to teach online is another potential change on the horizon, and one that is essential to online education's future viability, experts claim. Currently, there is no standard for training professors to teach online courses. That need could be met by an association of online schools introducing a pedagogy or could be regulated by an accrediting body, says the Sloan Survey's Allen.
It's a void that will need to be filled for the quality of online education to increase and for online instruction to be widely accepted at mainstream universities, she says. "Training is all over the map," Allen adds. "We need to do something about that to address quality."

More HBCUs Offer Online Degrees

More HBCUs Offer Online Degrees

Historically black colleges and universities are going online, but some top schools aren't plugging in.


As degree seekers continue to flood the online education market—online headcount is estimated to have grown 18 percent in 2010 alone according to market researcher Eduventures—many historically black colleges and universities are hoping to capitalize on the surge. As of fall 2010, 19 of the 89 HBCUs with four-year undergraduate programs offered full online degrees at the bachelor's or master's levels. That's up from 12 in 2006, according to a study by Roy L. Beasley, academic systems analyst at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University.

[See U.S. News's HBCU rankings.]
Some HBCUs say they're just using 21st century technology to meet their historic mission of educating disadvantaged and remote Americans. But Beasley says they're also following the money: "Financial pressure is causing private HBCUs to now take a second look [at online education] and I think that's a good thing," he says. "Private HBCUs had [previously] shown very limited interest in nontraditional students." 
[Read about other challenges facing HBCUs.]

Hampton University, in Hampton, Va., started offering online graduate degrees a decade ago, and has since expanded its online reach. The school now offers an array of bachelor's and master's programs ranging from business management to nursing, but Cassandra Herring, dean of Hampton's College of Education and Continuing Studies, maintains that the school didn't broaden its reach to nontraditional students for the sake of the bottom line. "We've been able to extend the campus, so to speak, so that individuals who are not able to study on the main campus still have access to our academic programs," she says. "Profit was not the motivation. It was really to serve this group of folks who we were not serving." 
As proof Hampton wasn't interested in maximizing profits, Herring notes that the school relies on its professors to develop the courses with the aid of the school's in-house online education team, which has put in place an online bookstore and offers online tutoring services. Tapping full-time professors and creating an online infrastructure is costlier than outsourcing the program, but ultimately more beneficial to students, argues Herring. Unlike Hampton, other private HBCUs have opted to outsource the online program's infrastructure to outside firms in recent years. Companies like Education Online Services Corp. have recently established relationships with private HBCUs like Virginia University in Lynchburg, Va., and Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Miss., to develop their online programs at a lower cost than they could have on their own. 
[Consider these five tips before you pursue an online degree.] 

While the private HBCU sector may have financial incentive to start a potentially lucrative online program, most of the HBCU online programs are housed at larger state universities. In fact, 12 of the 20 largest HBCUs (in enrollment terms) offer some form of online degree according to Beasley's study. However, among the top 20 HBCUs with the highest graduation rates—a strong indicator of an institution's academic quality—only seven have adopted a full online degree program. 
[Learn more about online education.]

Among the top schools who aren't even considering offering online degrees is Atlanta's all-female Spelman College, which boasts the highest graduation rate—83 percent—among all HBCUs, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. "The mission of Spelman College is focused on developing the intellectual, ethical, and leadership potential of our students. We believe that we can do that best in the context of a residential campus experience where students can engage in a variety of meaningful learning opportunities with faculty, staff and each other, in and out of the classroom," Spelman President Beverly Daniel Tatum said in a written statement to U.S. News. "While we encourage the use of technology and support faculty in their use of the web and other technology-based teaching tools, an online degree program is not desired at this time because it falls outside of our current strategic focus."

Study: Online Education Continues Growth

Study: Online Education Continues Growth

While online enrollment increases, the pace has slowed.

November 11, 2011 RSS Feed Print The number of college students enrolled in at least one online course increased for the ninth straight year, according to the Babson Survey Research Group's annual survey of more than 2,500 colleges and universities—including both nonprofit and for-profit institutions.
The study, "Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011," reports that more than 6.1 million students took at least one online class during fall 2010—a 10.1 percent increase over the year before. An online class is defined in this survey as a course where more than 80 percent of all content is delivered online, and there are typically no face-to-face meetings with instructors.

While the growth is substantial, it is the smallest increase since fall 2006 when enrollment in online courses increased 9.7 percent. In comparison, during fall 2009, online education saw an increase of nearly a million students taking at least one online course—or 21.1 percent growth over the year before, according to the report, formerly known as the Sloan Survey of Online Learning.

[Read how online education may transform higher ed.]
The report acknowledges this dip in growth rate and speculates that the rapid increase of online enrollment may ultimately be slowing. "The slower rate of growth in the number of students taking at least one online course as compared to previous years may be the first sign that the upward rise in online enrollments is approaching a plateau," the report surmises.
Still, the growth of online education far exceeds the growth of higher education overall: Total enrollment in higher ed increased by nearly 120,000 students during fall 2010, a mere 0.6 percent increase over the year before. And, 31 percent of all students participated in an online class during the semester—up from 9.6 percent in fall 2002, when the survey was first administered.
[Get tips on how to maximize an online education program.]

Certain disciplines within online education saw gains and losses in enrollment between fall 2010 and fall 2011. A larger proportion of education and psychology programs saw declines in enrollment, while conversely, engineering, which had the highest proportion of declining enrollment in 2010, saw marked improvement in 2011, according to the study. Disciplines such as business and computer and information sciences have seen steady enrollment year over year, while the health professions discipline "stands alone, as it appears to be the fastest growing."

Online education has become an integral part of many colleges and universities, according to the study, with 65.5 percent of all chief academic officers reporting that "online education is critical to the long-term strategy" of an institution in 2011, up slightly from the previous year.
The reputation of the quality of online courses has also continued its upward climb—albeit only a slight increase in positive perceptions in recent years. Sixty-seven percent of academic professionals rated online education courses as the same or superior to face-to-face instruction, an increase from 57 percent in fall 2003, when this rating was first published. While this may be a positive step for proponents of online education, the study is quick to note that roughly 10 percent of the respondents have historically been detractors of online courses.

"The view that online education is 'just as good as' face-to-face instruction is by no means universally held," the study acknowledges. "While there has been a slow increase in the proportion of academic leaders that have a positive view of the relative quality of the learning outcomes for online courses as compared to comparable face-to-face courses, there remains a consistent and sizable minority that see online as inferior."

Sunday, January 8, 2012

U.S. News Online Degree Program Rankings Launch January 10

U.S. News Online Degree Program Rankings Launch January 10

January 3, 2012 RSS Feed Print

U.S.News & World Report will launch its first-ever ranking of top online education degree programs. The rankings will be featured exclusively on usnews.com starting Jan. 10, 2012.

U.S. News has redesigned and expanded its online education section to not only develop top degree program ranking lists, but to also build online degree program profiles and advanced online program search functionality.

The number of students enrolled in online degrees is growing rapidly. Those prospective students—a very large proportion of whom are working adults—lack needed information to help them determine the relative strengths and weaknesses between online degree programs that they are considering attending. U.S. News undertook this project in an effort to begin filling this information gap.
U.S. News determined that strong online programs share many of the same academic standards as reputable traditional programs. These include having institutional or program-level accreditation and significant numbers of Ph.D.'s employed by the institution. These programs do well for distance learners when they pair such inputs with online practices that ensure students are truly engaged in their courses and grant them remote access to key program resources and services found in traditional brick-and-mortar environments.

As this is the first time U.S. News has ranked top online education degree programs, we expect that the rankings methodology will evolve and become far more sophisticated over time as online programs are better able to report information that can be used to measure the academic quality of their programs.
Five disciplines at the master's degree level have been ranked: business, computer information technology, education, engineering, and nursing. Additionally, U.S. News ranked online bachelor's degree programs combining data from all undergraduate level disciplines. Within each graduate degree program there are four indicator rankings; within the undergraduate ranking, there are three indicator rankings. These rankings are all at the program degree level.

These are 23 top online degree program indicator rankings that will be published:
1. Online Bachelor's: Student Engagement and Assessment
2. Online Bachelor's: Student Services and Technology
3. Online Bachelor's: Faculty Credentials and Training
4. Online Business: Student Engagement and Accreditation
5. Online Business: Student Services and Technology
6. Online Business: Faculty Credentials and Training
7. Online Business: Admissions Selectivity
8. Online Nursing: Student Engagement and Accreditation
9. Online Nursing: Student Services and Technology
10. Online Nursing: Faculty Credentials and Training
11. Online Nursing: Admissions Selectivity
12. Online Education: Student Engagement and Accreditation
13. Online Education: Student Services and Technology
14. Online Education: Faculty Credentials and Training
15. Online Education: Admissions Selectivity
16. Online Engineering: Student Engagement and Accreditation
17. Online Engineering: Student Services and Technology
18. Online Engineering: Faculty Credentials and Training
19. Online Engineering: Admissions Selectivity
20. Online Computer Information Technology: Student Engagement and Accreditation
21. Online Computer Information Technology: Student Services and Technology
22. Online Computer Information Technology: Faculty Credentials and Training
23. Online Computer Information Technology: Admissions Selectivity

There will be no numeric rankings on overall program quality this inaugural year. Instead, U.S. News created non-numerical honor roll lists of online programs. There will be one honor roll list for each of the six surveyed areas (with the exception of master's in computer information technology). Each list includes programs that performed well across a series of the numeric indicator rankings listed above. Detailed methodology explanations of the indicator rankings—which are based solely on statistical data gathered directly from each program—and the honor roll lists will be announced January 10.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Relationship Marketing Strategies that Defines Great Customer Service and Repeated Business

The whole idea behind Relationship Marketing is building a foundation for consumer commitment to help solidify the brand as well as saturate the market.  The foundation cores of Relationship Marketing is guaranteed  customer satisfaction, uniqueness and value of the brand, and to develop and retain customer relationships. With in depth understanding and knowledge of these foundation cores of Relationship Marketing success will surely follow along with profitability. Once the customer is satisfied and you exceeded their expectations you will see an influx of repeated business as well as new customers.


One of the greatest relationship marketing strategy is the use of social media. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ebay are some of the major social networks that will increase growth of your customer base along with building your brand. In order to build your brand equity your marketing strategy has to captivate your consumer based on their needs and wants (interests, likes and don't likes,etc.). Establishing rapport with your customers will be a major factor when it comes to making your brand and service unique in this competitive market.  For example, knowing the customer's name, where they are originally from, family background,work, and birthday are few things you can address every time you interact with them. You may not get the luxury of knowing every detail but at least you have a common ground to stand on when it comes to making them feel comfortable and appreciated. This will not only ensure their business again, but most importantly you have gained their trust that you keep your commitment as well as theirs.

Loyal customers are more profitable and word of mouth is golden. This will lead to higher market shares and excellent ratings for your brand. So go the extra mile and make your product superior then expand globally. Commitment, Trust, Communication, Customer is always right, Product Knowledge, and Conflict Resolution will be your guide and foundation of relationship marketing that will guarantee success.  For more information and help with your business contact me at www.drkaygreen.com