The centralisation of elearning resource development within the New Zealand vocational tertiary education sector

Abstract

The tertiary education sector is subject to significant and rapid change such as disruption from technology, diminishing government funding, demand for more personalised learning, and the need to meet the demands of a rapidly changing workplace. These changes create challenges. The centralisation of skills and resources has been mooted as potentially contributing to solutions for some of these challenges such as maintaining quality at scale, and maximising cost effectiveness. The lack of research, however, around centralised development of elearning resources makes it difficult to argue that such a claim applies to elearning resource development. This article describes the extent and form of functional centralisation of elearning resource development in the vocational tertiary education sector within New Zealand. Findings established that three categories of organisational centralisation exist; decentralised, centralised, and highly centralised. The majority of the institutions in this study fitted the centralised or highly centralised categories. These findings can be used to inform decisions around organisation of elearning resource development, the composition of central teams, and the centralisation of entire sectors within tertiary education.