University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Outsourcing technology and support in higher education

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Outsourcing technology and support in higher education

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Content Running head: OUTSOURCING TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

i

Outsourcing Technology and Support in Higher Education
by
Michael Thomas

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

Dissertation Chair - Dr. Guilbert Hentschke
Committee Members: Dr. Katharine Strunk, Dr. Patricia Burch, & Dr. Patrick Crispen
August 2014

Copyright 2014 Michael A. Thomas
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study would not have been possible without the support of countless individuals, all
of whom I could not account for briefly, but to whom I am eternally grateful. I would like to
thank my dissertation chair, Dr. Gib Hentschke, who was the driving force, navigating me
through this process. I would also like to thank Dr. Patrick Crispen, whose gracious guidance has
proven indispensable to both this study and to myself personally. Additionally, I want to thank
Dr. Patricia Burch and Dr. Katharine Strunk for participating on my committee, providing
valuable feedback to my work. Moreover, I would like to thank Katy Lin and the other staff of
the Rossier School of Education for their tireless support of their students. I also thank the
stakeholders of WGU and the vendors I interviewed, without whom this dissertation would not
have been possible.
I’d like to thank my ‘families’ in their various forms. I thank both my cohort family of
dissertation colleagues under Dr. Hentschke as well as my ‘Crew’ cohort family of 2011 in the
program. We were privileged to share our first year with Dr. Crew, who really shaped the
remainder of our Rossier experience. I would also like to thank my family and friends, including
my parents, Allen and Nora Thomas, my sisters, all my nieces and nephews, and my friends
Bobby Velasco, TJ Mendoza, and Jack Yuen for supporting me through this process.
I thank my colleagues, the faculty and staff of Claremont Graduate University (CGU), for
supporting my efforts over the years, both for my masters and now doctorate. In particular, I
thank my friend and colleague, Dr. Kiriko Komura, for tirelessly supporting my academic efforts
throughout this process. I also thank Provost Yi Feng, my coworker Sunny Chau and my former
supervisors Susan Roig and Carlos Miranda for encouraging me to pursue my educational
endeavors and supporting me to that end.
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Finally, I want to thank three people, whom have had a profound affect on my life. First I
want to thank Dr. Shahnaz Lotfipour, my chair for my MA in Educational Multimedia from Cal
Poly Pomona, the person my mother calls ‘my school mom.’ From the day I met her in 2007,
encouraging me to enroll in her program, through encouraging me to pursue a doctorate, even to
today as an advisor and confidante, she has made the most significant change in my academic
life, the likes of which I could never repay, though will at least attempt to emulate through my
own works. Hopefully, this degree is in some way a sign of my gratitude to her years of
guidance.
To my father, this dissertation is an expression of my admiration for his hard work. He
has lived a life to be admired, one of respect and dedication. No matter how difficult, my father
has met every challenge with a smile and thoughtful tact, teaching his children, like myself, the
value of that hard work and deference. While I could not replicate his incredible career of
military service and professional leadership, I hope this demonstrates how much I value his
example.
The final woman I want to again thank is my mom, my ‘nanay,’ who in spite of her
personal hardships throughout her life from lacking education, to learning to speak English to
moving to another country, has been by far the greatest teacher I have ever had. While she could
never really help me with my homework growing up, the most valuable lessons I ever learned in
life were from her, which contributed to my successfully completing this study and degree.
Completing this dissertation and this doctorate is a tribute to the values she instilled in her
children. Thank you mom!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ II
LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................... VI
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ VII
CHAPTER 1 .................................................................................................................................. 1
OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY ................................................................................................... 1
BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM .................................................................................................. 2
CONCEPTUAL UNDERPINNINGS FOR THE STUDY ........................................................................... 3
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ...................................................................................................... 4
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY ............................................................................................................... 5
RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................................................................. 6
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ....................................................................................................... 6
LIMITATIONS, ASSUMPTIONS, AND DESIGN CONTROLS ................................................................ 7
LIMITATIONS ................................................................................................................................ 7
ASSUMPTIONS .............................................................................................................................. 8
DESIGN CONTROLS ....................................................................................................................... 8
DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS .......................................................................................................... 9
SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................. 12
CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................ 13
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ................................................................................. 13
TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION ..................................................................................................... 14
TECHNOLOGY AND STUDENTS .................................................................................................... 18
REDUCED COSTS OF EDUCATION ‘BUSINESS’ ............................................................................. 19
TRANSACTION COST ECONOMICS ............................................................................................... 27
OUTSOURCING ............................................................................................................................ 28
IT OUTSOURCING IN EDUCATION ............................................................................................... 29
CHAPTER 3 ................................................................................................................................ 45
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ..................................................................... 45
RESEARCH DESIGN ..................................................................................................................... 47
POPULATION AND SAMPLE ......................................................................................................... 48
DATA COLLECTION AND INSTRUMENTATION ............................................................................. 52
COLLECTION PROCESS ............................................................................................................... 53
DATA ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................ 61
SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................. 62
CHAPTER 4 ................................................................................................................................ 63
ANALYSIS OF DATA AND FINDINGS ................................................................................ 63
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ORGANIZATION OF DATA ANALYSIS .......................................................................................... 63
DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF RESPONDENTS ................................................................... 64
RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND ASSOCIATED FINDINGS .................................................................. 65
ANALYSIS OF DATA .................................................................................................................... 66
SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................ 106
CHAPTER 5 .............................................................................................................................. 107
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .............................................................................. 107
SUMMARY OF THE STUDY ........................................................................................................ 107
CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................................... 108
IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH ................................................................................... 116
SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................ 117
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 121
APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW GUIDE .................................................................................... 132
WGU CONTRACT ADMINISTRATOR ......................................................................................... 132
APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW GUIDE .................................................................................... 139
WGU IT PERSONNEL ................................................................................................................ 139
APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW GUIDE .................................................................................... 145
WGU FACULTY ....................................................................................................................... 145
APPENDIX D: INTERVIEW GUIDE .................................................................................... 151
WGU STAFF (NON-TECHNICAL) ............................................................................................... 151
APPENDIX E: INTERVIEW GUIDE .................................................................................... 157
LMS VENDOR CONTRACT OR SALES REPRESENTATIVE ........................................................... 157
APPENDIX F: INTERVIEW GUIDE .................................................................................... 162
LMS-1 CONTRACT OR SALES REPRESENTATIVE ...................................................................... 162
APPENDIX G: INTERVIEW GUIDE ................................................................................... 167
LMS VENDOR SUPPORT STAFF ................................................................................................ 167
APPENDIX H: OBSERVATION PROTOCOL .................................................................... 173
APPENDIX I: DOCUMENT ANALYSIS PROTOCOL ...................................................... 177

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Data and Instruments: Proposed 53
Table 2: Data and Instruments: Actual 54
Table 3: Interview Phase: Timeline and Respondents 55
Table 4: Observation Phase: Details 57
Table 5: Document Phase: Types of documents 59
Table 6: Analysis Coding 61
Table 7: Themes and categories by stakeholder group 76
Table 8: Stakeholder group and Value Priorities 101

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Abstract
In Education, where monetary gain is not the main motivation for conducting ‘business,’
large amounts of computing, Internet and other technologies and related services are being
provided and used, but how decisions are made by administrators of institutions to acquire those
products and services is in question. The risk of making the wrong decision can literally mean
the cost of someone’s education. Administrators need more examples from within the niche of
higher education to make these decisions. Williamson’s (1973) take on Transaction Cost
Economics (TCE) provides a framework for these decisions. He argued that there were factors to
consider, in addition to monetary, in making these types of outsourcing decisions and in forming
relationships with other organizations like vendors. Ngwenyama and Bryson (1999) took the idea
a step further by discussing why non-profit organizations, like colleges, and information
technology (IT) outsourcing are so rarely researched. They argued that non-profits were not
financially driven, hence their name, so there was no marker for their motivation or success in
these decisions. Moreover, they claimed that IT was knowledge centric and niche specific,
making the field difficult to assess by decision makers and researchers alike.
This study used TCE as the lens to analyze the buy or make decision of an educational
institution for a technology good/service. In particular, this study looked at the existing
relationship between Western Global University (WGU) and the college’s learning management
system (LMS) vendor, LMS-1. Moreover, the study followed along WGU’s evaluation process
of LMS-1 and two other LMSs – LMS-2 and LMS-3. Through interviews, observations and
document analysis, this study analyzed factors within this process via four guiding research
questions. Themes were developed to address those questions providing more research for higher
education institution administrators to make better informed LMS outsourcing decisions in the
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future. The literature suggests that while sourcing is occurring across education, strategic
approaches to outsourcing are still infrequent. From triangulated qualitative data collection and
analysis, in WGU’s case, deciding as a team, time, and both peer acceptance and product
difference were assessed as contributors to final outsourcing decisions. Considerations such as
functionality, organizational resources, support, product reliability, user experience, relationships
and organizational mission were major factors being weighed by various institutional and vendor
stakeholders. In the end, vendor and institutional values were revealed to be more similar than
different, with the priority being on the experience of the faculty with the product and service.
However, many questions remain due to the unique nature LMSs and Educational Technology
play at institutions as opposed to other Information Technologies.
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CHAPTER 1
OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) are becoming more and more
important to every day education. Traditional lecture-based classroom settings are making way
for newer forms of instruction, which include the use of computer-based and computing related
technologies in the conducting of classes. Moreover, information technologies (ITs) are
becoming ubiquitous across college and university campuses for not just in-classroom activities
but also for activities beyond the classroom. Almost every aspect of daily business within the
college and university settings is becoming more and more enveloped with the use of computing
technologies to conduct those activities, from the management of student residence halls to the
admissions and applications processes, to even facilities management. IT is becoming more and
more engrained into every fabric of the academic atmosphere from core services, including
student counseling, to non-core academic services such as housekeeping.
IT is increasing and changing/evolving rapidly. Adoption by legacy users, such as more
established faculty, professional development on the use of technology for faculty, staff and
students, and support for these technologies have become major issues in today’s environment
(Goldstein, 2010; McCord, 2002; Moe, Hanson, Jiang, & Pampoulov, 2012; Powell, 1990). As
such, more and more time, energy and funding is being dedicated to IT related activities, and
college administrators including presidents, chief financial officers (CFOs), provosts, and chief
information officers (CIOs) are finding themselves weighing the decisions to operate these IT
related programs (adoption, development and support) internally or seek resources externally.
The aim of this study was to better understand how higher education administrators
determine technology-related decisions through the lens of the Transaction Cost Economics
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(TCE) framework, analyze that data, and identify important considerations in making those
decisions through empirical research (Williamson, 1973).
Background of the Problem
Making an important decision is usually difficult. Making a decision for others is even
more difficult. College and university administrators must make decisions for their students, staff
and faculty regularly. They decide over everything from institutional missions to budgets. Some
of the main decisions they make are over technology-related goods and services. Whether the
colleges buy, purchase services from an external source, or build, provide those services
internally, the administrators’ decisions over technology goods and services for their
stakeholders can have both positive and negative consequences.
The case of Pepperdine University presents an excellent example when weighing this
decision, presenting both positive and negative effects on faculty, staff and students (Chester,
2011), where traditional services hosted entirely internally met a severe fiscal cost to the
university at reduced support services to the customers. However, the opposite option of all
services being provided externally met social and political distaste. In the end, Pepperdine chose
a hybrid model, keeping some services internal and others external. This decision led to a fiscal
savings for the university but also increased services to customers (Chester, 2011). Terms of the
contract, risk, relationships and mission are just some of the factors that Pepperdine weighed,
and are examples of what many educational enterprises weigh in their decision to buy a
product/service or make/build their own. This study sought to look deeply into another example
of this type of decision.
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Conceptual Underpinnings for the Study
Making important decisions such as creating and operating Information Technology (IT)
services internally versus seeking services from outside vendors can be very arduous. In order to
make sound choices, college and university leaders must seek scholarly and empirically based
evidence of how to make sound decisions over buying the products/services versus making said
products/services. In order to do so, these leaders must look to frameworks such as Williamson’s
(1973) research into Transaction Cost Economics (TCE). In his work, Williamson (1973)
presents a lens from which to look at why and how organizations enter into agreements with one
another. Rather than looking strictly at the economic and financial inputs and outcomes of the
agreement, Williamson (1973) and others suggest looking at the transaction as the individual unit
of analysis, where the focus revolves around several factors including the terms of the contract,
the relationships involved and the specificity of the assets among other key areas such as risk and
opportunism.
In terms of the outsourcing of IT products, goods and services, scholars, practitioners and
researchers including Ngwenyama and Bryson (1999) make use of Williamson’s (1973) work on
TCE as a model for making IT related buy versus make decisions. Specifically, they present the
focus of these decisions as being more than just cost. Though cost is the major motivation to
purchasing goods and services, they also weigh other factors, such as core mission of the
organization, specialized knowledge within the core mission versus the good/service being
purchased, and human factors, including loss of employees with specialized knowledge, into
making the decision to provide the good/service internally or purchase said product externally, or
a hybrid of both (Ngwenyama & Bryson, 1999). They propose that these factors, and others like
them, must be addressed and confronted in order to make sound outsourcing decisions.
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Very real world applications of these concepts have been and are currently being
analyzed and approached within the framework of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE). For
example, in a survey of 319 IT leaders with 235 respondents, Goldstein (2010) found 37 discrete
responses by IT leaders to today’s shrinking budgets due to recent economic downturns, all of
which can be traced to TCE. For example, in their attempt at cost management, the industry term
for managing increased costs, IT leaders pursued everything from managing personnel costs, by
eliminating redundancy, to halting maintenance and new projects, but most IT leaders found that
contracting out some if not all services was a key solution to cost management. A key example
includes the efforts of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Pepperdine University in the early
part of the 2000’s, where the IT department went through many difficult decisions but finally
decided to source out their online and over-the-phone services to an IT support solutions
provider to offset the costs of training and compensating after hours personnel onsite as well as
the costs of utilities and infrastructure to support those onsite personnel, at a $300,000 per year
costs savings to the department and university (Chester, 2011; Goldstein, 2010). Using cost
management frameworks such as Transaction Cost Economics, colleges and universities like
Pepperdine can better make those buy versus make decisions to outsource, especially IT related
goods and services.
Statement of the Problem
The complex nature and cost of Information Technology related services in
organizations, especially in higher education, make knowing the best way to provide those
services difficult and can have negative consequences if not properly addressed. In higher
education, providing IT services has become a major problem for administrators and executives.
At smaller institutions, the ability to fund IT services that compete with larger institutions has
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become a serious problem. Conversely, larger institutions have larger, more diversified
infrastructures that require maintenance and funding, compounded with the need to fund new and
innovative technologies to remain at the forefront of the industry in a constantly changing
technology world. Based in Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) theory, this study sought to
analyze the reasons why college and university administrators choose to either host specific IT
services internally or purchase those services from an outside vendor. Specifically, this study
focused on the relationship between a single outsourcing vendor of an IT service and the service
provider’s customer, an institution of higher education, analyzing the benefits and drawbacks to
the relationship between the two organizations. The educational institution being analyzed in this
case study, Western Global University (WGU), has maintained a contractual relationship with
LMS-1, the industry’s leading learning management system (LMS) provider for many years.
However, as the contract renewal approached in 2015, the institution initiated an evaluation
process of LMS vendors who were working with WGU’s peer institutions at the time. Through
interviews, document analysis and observations, this study analyzed this evaluation process from
implementation to onsite demonstrations of the three invited LMS vendors.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this qualitative case study was to determine the benefits or possible
drawbacks of an educational institution’s IT services being hosted in-house or being delivered by
a third party or some hybrid relationship where some services were provided internally and
others externally. Using Transaction Cost Economics as the lens, one can see that there are costs
and benefits to outsourcing any good or service, including increased services, decreased cost and
even better efficiency, but understanding who benefits and what the costs are to the various
parties is important. Additionally, understanding the manners in which the decisions are being
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made in light of the missions of the higher educational institutions is also important. Guided by
TCE, this study sought to expand on the existing literature and attempted to present a discussion
as to how to better understand and make technology-outsourcing decisions.
Research Questions
The four original research questions that guided this study were:
1. How is the decision to provide certain IT services internally versus seek those
services from an outside vendor being determined? (Original question, changes
reflected in Chapters 3 and 4)
2. Which IT services are being provided internally and externally, and what is the
rational for each service, and what benefits or drawbacks are associated with the
decision as perceived by the various stakeholders? (Original question, changes
reflected in Chapters 3 and 4)
3. What kinds of values are weighed by different positional stakeholders in the decision
to outsource, including students, staff and faculty, and what importance is given to
those values? (Original question, changes reflected in Chapters 3 and 4)
4. What factors do the different parties weigh to continue the relationship, especially at
times of contract renewal, and why? Further, are the values of both the institution (the
customer) and the service provider (the vendor) the same or dissimilar, and why? If
the decision is to pursue a new relationship, why? (Original question, changes
reflected in Chapters 3 and 4)
Significance of the Study
While this study may not have had a direct significance to the stakeholders being studied,
that of the members of the educational institution or vendors studied as this study was analyzing
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a process which they already were undertaking, the significance of this will be seen in the
contribution to future technology-outsourcing decisions in any education context. The benefit of
this dissertation study will be an example of a thorough examination of how a world class, large,
undergraduate and graduate institution makes outsourcing decisions, demonstrating what both
the institutional stakeholders and vendors valued through the process. The study attempted to
demonstrate why the parties chose to participate in this process and show what other institutions
may want to replicate or adapt to their own setting. In the end, the significance of this study is
through the addition of further research into outsourcing in education-related technology.
Limitations, Assumptions, and Design Controls
Limitations
A case study such as this contained a number of limitations. The primary limitation of
this study was access to documents and data pertinent to the contractual relationship. For
example, the individuals involved in the formation of the existing contract were for the most part
no longer employed within the organization. Moreover, concerns over confidentiality and
existing agreements hindered access to information and personnel on both the vendor and
institution sides. Accessing important documents also presented problems. For example, data
available over the internet became inaccessible during the study, and great lengths were made to
regain access to most, but not all said data.
Specific limitations to this study also included limited access to individuals with
knowledge of the evaluation process, particularly mediated through the learning management
system administrator at the institution as he coordinated the process. The length of the process
also limited access to knowledgeable stakeholders, such as faculty, who could inform the study.
Access to documents and observation opportunities was also limited. Finally, the most
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significant limitations to this specific study were that the final decision to continue the
relationship with the existing vendor or pursue a new relationship was not determined by the end
of data collection, so this study focused primarily up to the point of the vendor on site
demonstration; moreover, the study focused on LMSs, a very specific type of technology making
the conclusions and possible implications difficult to generalize to other technology decisions.
Assumptions
The main assumption of this qualitative case study was the ability of the participants to
know and be able to recall reasonably accurately and provide feedback about the nature of their
relationship, including their explicit and implicit roles, their goals of continuing that relationship
and the other factors involved in said relationship, such as the individual staff and departmental
relationships. Using interviews and documents as the main sources of data to analyze the existing
relationship between the provider and the consumer or possible new relationship between a
different vendor, the study was reliant on the honest feedback by the stakeholders involved,
especially the contract administrator (CA) and others involved in the existing relationship and
evaluation process, such as the vendor sales representatives. Since the vendors and institution
were also providing most of the documents and artifacts, how well these items represented all of
the stakeholder communities was also an assumption. Also, the major assumption of this study
was that all parties value and wish to continue their relationship with the existing vendor and/or
build a new one with one of the new vendors. These assumptions were addressed with design
controls.
Design Controls
In this type of case study, there was no control group from which the study could be
measured. As will be seen in the review of the literature, little has been done in the area of this
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study. Moreover, no comparison groups of non-clients to clients could be measured in the scope
of this study. However, this study did use the terms of existing documents such as available
evaluation, survey and other documents as the control for the study.
Moreover, the anonymity of specific respondents and their responses was kept with
utmost priority, to alleviate any possible pressures on the respondents due to management or peer
related pressures. For example, observations and interviews as well as documents was used in
this study, but much of this information was sensitive to the university or vendors, so
pseudonyms were applied prior to presenting the data in this study.
Definition of Key Terms
Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Normally, the CFO is the individual in charge of
purchasing, funds and accounting related functions within a business, organization or educational
institution.
Chief Information Officer (CIO). Normally, the CIO is the leader of technology related
functions within a business, organization or educational institution.
Cloud Computing. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on demand network access to
a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications,
and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or
service provider interaction” (Mell & Grance, 2011, p. 2).
Contract Administrator (CA). The contract administrator is the individual in charge of the
contract between the vendor and the customer (the educational institution).
Cost Management. This is the industry term for managing increased costs (Goldstein,
2010).
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Firm. The firm is the customer (the educational institution).
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Software that operates backed by the idea of the
‘freedom’ to use software likened both to that of the ‘freedom of speech’ and the ‘free cost’
(Pfaffman, 2008). Open source software (OSS), defined below, and Free and Open Source
Software (FOSS) for all intents and purposes mean the same and are used interchangeably.
Examples include the Mozilla Firefox browser (formerly Netscape), OpenOffice.org (a Microsoft
Office alternative) and the Linux Operating system.
Free Software. Software that does not require purchase; however, free software is not
necessarily the same as open source software (Pfaffman, 2007). Examples of free, but not open,
software include Dropbox.com, Microsoft’s Skype, and Adobe’s Flash Player.
Information Technology. This is computer and computer related technology
Instructional Technology. Instructional technology is the term that applies to information
technology used for the purposes of delivering or mediating instruction, including examples such
as course management systems (CMSs) and/or computers in the classroom setting.
IT. For this study, this is the term to encompass both Instructional Technology and
Information Technology (Benke & Otte, 2006).
License. Licenses protect software, define how the software is to be used, and define how
the software can be distributed (Greenstein & Wheeler, 2007).
Open Source Software (OSS). Software that is freely developed, distributed and used
under a public license (Lakhan & Jhunjhunwala, 2008). Specifically, open source software
makes the ‘source code’ of the software available to the public. The most popular OSS is the
World Wide Web (WWW) accessed through the Internet, as web pages’ source codes are openly
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accessible to users. The Learning Management Systems Moodle and Sakai also fall into this
category.
Outsourcing. The term to describe the procurement of goods or services from an external
vendor for services that may or may not be able to be provided by the customer, the educational
institution.
Proprietary Software. Software that does not provide the source code to the public, and
software that is not distributed under a public license, though some parts of the software may be
developed from OSS (Pfaffman, 2008). The Microsoft Windows operating system and Office
Suite are two prime examples. In addition, Apple’s Mac OS is also proprietary, though built
upon a Linux/Unix OSS backend. Finally, in terms of LMS’s, Blackboard’s system would be the
best example, though the system does allow for OSS integration.
Service Provider. This is the vendor contracted to supply a good or service to the
customer. With educational institution customers, there are many service providers. Follett
Higher Education is a provider of campus student store services to many colleges. Sodexo
provides dining services to institutions’ dining halls and eateries. Finally, Ellucian, formerly
Datatel and SunGardHE, provide technology such as middleware and technology support
personnel services to universities.
Users. This is the industry term for faculty, staff and students and others who make use of
IT (Goldstein, 2010).
Vendor. Vendor is another term for service provider, meaning the vendor contracted to
supply a good or service to the customer, the educational institution.
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Summary
Information and Instructional Technologies (ITs) have become more and more important
to all sectors of the global economy, especially education. Providing those technologies and
support for those technologies has become an everyday challenge for educational institutions.
These institutions must weigh factors such as their size, their available resources, and their goals
to determine whether or not they should outsource their technology and services or they should
build those services internally. Using Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) theory as the lens, this
study sought to analyze the reasons why college and university administrators choose to either
build or host specific IT services internally or purchase those services from an outside vendor.
Focusing on a single relationship between a vendor of an IT service and the service provider’s
customer, LMS-1 and WGU, as well as the relationships with possible new vendors, this study
analyzed the benefits and drawbacks to the existing relationship between the two organizations
or the possible benefits and drawbacks with the new vendors and factors involved in either
continuing the contractual relationship or building a new relationship.
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CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Increased demand for new computer, software, Internet and other forms of technologies
are requiring educational institutions to provide new products and services to their customers at a
faster pace than their budgets can accommodate (Lowendahl, 2012, 2013; Rust, Weiner, Harris,
Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). Sourcing technology products and services from other
organizations, particularly service providers, is increasing in popularity across industries, and
educational institutions are no exception. However, according to a Gartner survey of higher
education institutions between 2009 and 2012, while more than 90% of higher education
institutions are involved in some sort of sourcing, primarily with free or co-sourced applications,
only 20% of institutions’ Chief Information Officer’s (CIOs) have created strategic plans for
outsourcing (Lowendahl, 2012). The campus culture and focus on people issues are some key
considerations for deciding to outsource, others include human resources, financial, service
quality, legal and ethical factors, mission, control and efficiency (Lowendahl, 2012; Merisotis &
Phipps, 2005). All of these considerations play important factors in outsourcing decisions.
Moreover, poor perceptions by stakeholders on the disparate nature of education compared to
other industries like business has also affected those decisions, but the costs of conducting
business today as well as other pressures have pushed educational organizations to outsource,
especially in terms of Information and Instructional Technology (IT) (Lowendahl, 2012, 2013;
Merisotis & Phipps, 2005; Rust, Weiner, Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). This literature
review will discuss two seemingly discrete topics, the role of technology in education and
Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and their associated sub-topics, and will demonstrate the
relationship between the two.
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Technology in Education
Technology is becoming more important than ever in education, and outsourcing is a tool
to reduce the costs of acquiring new technology goods and services and maintaining those goods
and services (Lowendahl, 2012, 2013; McCord, 2002). Available data on institutional
Information Technology (IT) related leadership and spending is limited, especially in the private
higher education space, but there is important information available (Kirshstein & Wellman,
2012). In two reports on the cost of education by the Delta Cost Project done in 2009 and
similarly presented to Educause in 2012, the Delta Cost Project demonstrated that the cost of
education, known as the sticker price, is increasing, and colleges need to account for these costs.
According to the 2009 report, in order to pay for additional functions, private colleges are
instituting technology-related fees that are not accounted for as part of tuitions. Additionally, the
2012 report discusses a new focus on the changing role of IT and that IT specific expenditures
are rising.
Encompassed within the technology goods and services within higher education are both
the computing hardware, software and support services of user technology, known as
Information Technology support, such as a university help desk, and the technology used to
deliver instruction or help deliver said instruction, known as Instructional Technology, including
data projectors and smart boards in classrooms. As technology rapidly changes education, both
Instructional and Information Technologies both synonymously incorporate within the term IT
and will both be discussed in this literature review (Benke & Otte, 2006).
Technology Support
IT support services are paramount to the use and adoption of technology in education.
However, to stakeholders involved in education, they have traditionally been seen as non-
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essential to the core mission of the institution, but this traditional myth is changing (Goldstein,
2010). Traditionally, IT leaders have been reluctant to discuss extensive outsourcing in
education, namely for the negative perceptions of education not wanting to be known as a
business as well as other factors such as the human considerations including the roles and
relationships of student, staff and faculty personnel (McCord, 2002; Rust, Weiner, Harris,
Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013).
Moreover, newer developments in technology in other industries and greater demands by
users (faculty, staff and students) to use more technology in the classroom and on campus has
necessitated the need to reevaluate IT related ventures and allocations of resources (Goldstein,
2010). According to a survey of 319 IT leaders across 235 campuses in 2009, Goldstein (2010)
found that IT cost management has become a major trend in education, especially given the
recent economic downturns. Outsourcing is a highly viable option to mitigate costs due to budget
freezes or reductions. An example of a viable case study solution of outsourcing in education
includes Roosevelt University’s Help Desk, where they moved from an in-house system during
normal business hours to an outsourced 24x7 help desk via phone and online support augmenting
their on-site staff, increasing the support services to the university’s user base while decreasing
the cost to the university (Sultan, 2010). Another example that has gained in popularity recently
has been cloud computing, where universities move certain services off-site to specialized online
firms who deliver services via the Internet not because of the difficulty in the task but because
the specialized nature of the firm increases expediency to address the specific type of issue and
deliver the service (Sultan, 2010).
As Sharer (1998) indicates, each moment of customer downtime can literally cost the
organization money, or even worse, stop work all together, making IT Help Desks very
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important to the functioning of any organization that uses technology. A review of the literature
on the topic of customer satisfaction with Information Technology (IT) Help Desks demonstrates
that the relationship between the two is not a new topic as indicated by Marcella and Middleton
(1996). They demonstrated in their studies of 145 various IT organizations that traditional help
desks are in many ways reactive and focus little on technology in general and even less on
customer service and communication skills; however, given the changing environment of
technology in the contemporary worlds of business, academia or any other sectors, Help Desks
must adapt and be proactive in their approach to customer services. Guskey and Heckman (1998)
continue this argument in their qualitative study based on interviews of IT Help Desk customers
by identifying factors that affected the interviewee’s satisfaction with IT Help Desks, identifying
major factors that contributed to customer satisfaction such as attitude, communication, speed
and extraordinary behavior, noting that competence was not identified as much by the customers
since competence was the expectation of the technicians by the customers; however,
competence, or knowledge of the topic, was one of the main routes affecting all the factors that
the interviewees noted as being important (p. 84). Further, González, Giachetti, and Ramirez
(2004) demonstrated in their study of Fortune 500 companies that when a knowledge
management-centric model of a Help Desk is applied, time to resolve an incident drastically
decreased, as did the staffing needs per issue (p. 402).
What this evidence demonstrates is that customer satisfaction is greatly affected by the
service orientation and knowledge of the IT Help Desk, which is often more business focused
than customer focused (Chester, 2011; Marcella and Middleton, 1996). However, focusing on
customer satisfaction by having pleasing and positive service-encounters can greatly improve
customer satisfaction and in turn improve the functions of the customer’s work, making customer
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satisfaction with IT Help Desks so important (Guskey & Heckman, 1998). In the case of
outsourcing technology support services in education, the more satisfied the customer, otherwise
known as the student, staff or faculty member, the more attention can be focused on the mission
at hand, that of the education.
Technology for Instruction
Technology provides new opportunities for instruction in higher education as well
(Chester, 2011). After an initial up-front investment, technology access and usage provides
economies of scale for users – per user technology costs severely decrease after the initial
investment (Garlick, 2006; Massy & Wilger, 1998). This means that after the initial adoption of
the technology and services, the university can provide services to users, also known as
customers, at reduced costs, making the service more competitive. However, adoption of
technology by academicians tends to follow an s-shape, where innovators take the lead, the
majority of stakeholders follow, and stragglers, such as legacy faculty, tend not to adopt until the
very end (Massy & Wilger, 1998). This trend is not unique necessarily to education but has been
demonstrated as in need of change, since education is supposed to prepare students for jobs in
industry, but that preparation can be with outmoded or obsolete technology.
According to the Campus Computing Project’s 2010 report of a national survey of 523 IT
leaders at institutions across the country on higher education institutional spending and priorities
on technology, at private colleges and universities, the impact of IT services and projects on
institutional effectiveness in teaching has increased from 30% to above 50% (p. 17). Moreover,
according to a similar report by the project in 2012, spending is increasingly moving into
technology-enabled learning (Green, 2012). A survey of institutional leadership beliefs of IT
effectiveness on instruction versus administrative systems demonstrated that institutional leaders
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see IT departments as lacking in effectiveness in complimenting instructional efforts (less than
50% effective) whereas they see IT as much more effective in administrative efforts (more than
70%) (Green, 2012).
Part of the above findings is that technology is changing education in many ways,
including the way students attend classes, the way staff supports instruction, the way faculty
teach and the direction of the industry in general. Investing in instructional technology is no
longer optional (Chester, 2011; Lowendahl, 2012, 2013; Moe, Hanson, Jiang, & Pampoulov,
2012). Technology is influencing the delivery of education in ever changing ways and
institutions must adapt to survive. For example, hybrid classes, those courses taught with a
portion of instruction conducted in person and a portion done through the Internet, technology-
based professional development delivery and even entirely online institutions are increasingly
being developed and institutions must adapt to these changes to remain competitive (Moe,
Hanson, Jiang, & Pampoulov, 2012).
Technology and Students
Times are changing, and so is education. There is now a new and different type of student
growing up in this technology ubiquitous world, now needing education relevant to this new
world (Agre, 1999; DenBeste, 2003; Hanna, 2000; Lowendahl, 2012, 2013; Rust, Weiner,
Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). Unlike the students of the past where formal education or
vocation was the main source of knowledge attainment, students are growing up in a world
where information is readily available to them through technology. Information is literally
available at the palms of their hands. Colleges are struggling to meet the demand of providing
appropriate education to these individuals. Students transcend both the technology support and
technology for instruction areas. Not only are they the customers of the university in receiving
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the institution’s good, education, but they are also some of the customers of the institution’s IT
support group for using that technology. In a study conducted by Pepperdine on their own IT
initiatives, they found that increasing technical efficiency in user support not only increased
student satisfaction but also allowed Pepperdine’s IT department to allocate more funds to
instructional technology innovations that also increased student satisfaction (Chester, 2011).
Their increase in efficiency was due in no small part to outsourcing, as previously discussed.
Other studies of high performing private institutions have also demonstrated the importance of
technology on student outcomes such as Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, and Whitt’s 2005 national study of
700 colleges and 20,000 students, staff and faculty, which later focused on 20 colleges and 2,700
faculty, staff and students, where they found that campus ecology and technology access, among
others, were key indicators of higher than expected performing institutions across the nation
(Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2005). Technology support and technology for instruction are
integral to the students of today’s world.
Reduced Costs of Education ‘Business’
Colleges and universities are faced with a need to reduce costs, and outsourcing
technology and technology services provides that ability by allowing institutions to reallocate
resources to the institution’s primary function of providing education (Lowendahl, 2012, 2013;
Massy & Wilger, 1998). However, in order to pursue these new avenues, leadership buy-in is
needed to inspire the other stakeholders to not only use technology but also recognize the
benefits of outsourcing the technology (Benke & Otte, 2006; Hall & Lietdtka, 2005; Rust,
Weiner, Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). With both academic and administrative leadership
support, more of the college and university stakeholders will recognize the need for more
technology use and support the acquisition of more technology and related goods and services.
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New(er) Forms of Education
For profit, online and distance education. Technology and outsourcing models are also
affecting education as a whole. Newer and alternative, particularly service oriented, forms of
higher education have been propping up in recent years, both nationally and globally. Where
traditional education lacks, these forms of education seem to excel. However, they do have their
own weaknesses, in which higher education remains strong.
Benefits. According to the literature, while there are other benefits such as ease of access
and availability, for profit, online and distance forms of education boast four key benefits that are
undeniable, including: 1) location, 2) cost, 3) relevance and 4) flexibility (Educause, 2012, 2013;
Ehrmann, 1999; Hanna, 2000; Hartley & Bendixen, 2001; Lucas, 2006; Marginson, 2006;
Naidoo & Jamieson, 2005; Selwyn, Gorard, & Williams, 2001; U.S. Department of Education,
2010; Zhong, 2006). Location has become almost the most important factor in the proliferation
of these forms of higher education. With the increase of alternative forms of education, academic
studies and development have become available to students who otherwise could not receive
advanced education, such as those who reside large distances from urban centers or places with
traditional institutions. These newer higher education systems fill the void for those who desire
to learn but who cannot physically attend traditional universities.
Moreover, many, but not all, of these forms of education tend to cost less (Educause,
2012, 2013; Ehrmann, 1999; Hanna, 2000; Marginson, 2006; Selwyn, Gorard, & Williams,
2001). While they do cost quite a bit, they tend to be less expensive than traditional institutions,
which add additional attendance costs such as campus life fees. The high costs of traditional
education institutions drive students to pursue these alternative forms of education, which these
institutions provide.
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Further, unlike the more traditional institutions that may have ulterior missions in
addition to teaching, such as research or athletics, these institutions tend to be professionally
and/or profit driven, providing education with an emphasis on career preparation, almost
completely disparate to the academic preparation one receives in traditional institutions (Lucas,
2006; Marginson, 2006; Naidoo & Jamieson, 2005). Traditional institutions have tended to be
more academically driven, leaving vocations as an aside, but these newer institutions focus on
career preparation.
Finally, because of their program focus on career preparation, their low cost business
models and their lack of physical limitations to a region, these types of institutions tend to be
dynamic and change their curricula with the changing markets (Educause, 2012, 2013; Hanna,
2000; Hartley & Bendixen, 2001; Marginson, 2006; Selwyn, Gorard, & Williams, 2001). Unlike
the feeling of being trapped in a rigid system in the traditional model, these institutions are
market driven.
Drawbacks. While there are many benefits to these forms of institutions, the literature
discusses how they are replete with criticisms as well, partly due to the embedded nature of
traditional institutions but mainly due to societal demands. The main criticism of these
institutions is with regard to their quality in terms of their academic rigor and acceptance policies
flexibility (Ehrmann, 1999; Hanna, 2000; Hartley & Bendixen, 2001; Lucas, 2006; Marginson,
2006; Naidoo & Jamieson, 2005; Selwyn, Gorard, & Williams, 2001; U.S. Department of
Education, 2010; Zhong, 2006). These criticisms include their content delivery, well
roundedness of the education and level of degree granting.
A problem with technology driven education in particular has been whether the content
can be delivered in an appropriate way (Hanna, 2000; Marginson, 2006; Naidoo & Jamieson,
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2005; Selwyn, Gorard, & Williams, 2001). Some fields such as healthcare or dance are difficult
to teach without hands-on experience. Examples like these cause some critics to question if these
institutions can provide the appropriate delivery of the education for the degree they advertise.
Another critique of these types of educational institutions is their lack of a similar student
experiences than those of traditional institutions. Often, these students do not get the same
interactions with each other or the faculty, or have opportunities to have extra-curricular college
experiences that they would have had in a traditional environment. This lack of a well-rounded
experience is counter to current national beliefs in a recommended education, as demonstrated by
the U.S. Department of Education Report (2010) on higher education in the 21
st
century, arguing
that while technology enhanced education is important, student personal development is equally
if not more important (Hanna, 2000; Hartley & Bendixen, 2001).
Finally, while the major benefit online and distance education, which is being widely
adopted in the for profit education market and slowly being adopted by traditional institutions,
has been access and availability to education for those who do not have such with traditional
institutions of higher education, the major opposing argument against this type of education is
that along with questions of the quality of distance education are those of quantity as well, due to
the tendency of these types of education to graduate students with similarly named and leveled
degrees more rapidly and in higher quantity than traditional institutions. To this point, studies
have shown that often students of these new institutions obtain degrees but do not pursue careers
that require said degrees, deflating the value of the degree (Hanna, 2000; Marginson, 2006;
Psacharopoulos, 1994; Spring, 2008). For example, Psacharopoulos (1994) demonstrated in his
analysis of national investment in higher education versus economic growth, that there is an
oversupply of graduates, and he further finds that of those graduates, there is an over education
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of individuals given their career choice, stressing that quality not quantity of education is most
important. Distance and other newer forms of education have contributed to this over attainment
of education of workers by making the education far more tenable and with degrees and curricula
of questionable rigor as previously discussed.
Corporate education/universities. Technology, education and outsourcing models are
even affecting other industries that have not traditionally be aligned with education. A relatively
new and little discussed development in post-secondary education is corporate education. This is
education provided by businesses and organizations for their employees, and this form of
education provides many notable benefits and some drawbacks as well.
Benefits. Driven by technology and cost considerations, Corporate Education presents
many of the same benefits as for profit, online and distance education such as flexibility,
relevance to career and cost; however there are two important benefits that formal, independent
education cannot provide (Hanna, 2000; Lucas, 2006). Immediate relevance is a major factor that
no other form of education currently provides. Corporate education tends to be immediately
applicable in one’s profession as they are already employees of the corporation (Hanna, 2000).
While other forms of education focus on career preparation, if they have a vocational aspect at
all, corporate education is immediately applicable, as the education is provided within one’s
current vocation.
Compounding the argument is that while some forms of newer education tend to be much
cheaper than traditional education, corporate education has little to no cost to the
student/employee. As the employer provides the education programs/universities, they tend to
have little to no cost to the employee, freeing the student from the cost-related issues of
education (Hanna, 2000).
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Drawbacks. While there are many benefits to this type of education as well, the literature
also discusses how corporate education presents many of the same drawbacks as for profit,
online and distance education (Hanna, 2000). Special emphasis is placed on academic freedom in
this case, as corporate education programs/universities require employees to study what they
currently pursue as a career, where both traditional and newer forms of education allow for
freedom of choice in their academic pursuits, though there is a financial cost to that choice
(Hanna, 2000).
Recommendations based in the literature
In spite of the changing environment, traditional education has retained many of the
strengths that have made these universities what they are today, and newer forms of education
are filling the gaps that these institutions cannot fill; however, these institutions bear their own
downfalls as well. Based on the benefits and drawbacks from the literature of these various forms
of higher education, the literature also presents recommendations for more optimal forms of
higher education, coalescing the benefits of the various forms and mitigating the drawbacks.
These recommendations include even newer forms of hybrid education, more diversified
education and more flexible and relevant education for learners.
Hybrid education. Considering the new demographic of students and availability of
information and technology, studies have shown that there are many benefits to incorporating
technologies into curricula within the traditional settings of ‘brick and mortar’ universities and
colleges (DenBeste, 2003; Educause, 2012, 2013; Ryan, Carlton, & Ali, 2004; Selwyn, Gorard,
& Williams, 2001; U.S. Department of Education, 2010; Zhong, 2006). While these forms of
education are taking route, they need to be expanded, by combing the strength of the long history
of the traditional university and applying newer models of education to the traditional model. For
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example, complementing in class instruction with online interaction. These are what Hanna
(2000) terms extended universities, combining the strengths of both types of education and
making traditional universities more relevant to current times.
Well-rounded education. Incorporating technology is not enough however. Other
studies have shown that the real challenge is to use technologies in new and different ways,
rather than repeating old methods (Goodyear & Ellis, 2008; Lowerison, Sclater, Schmid, &
Abrami, 2006; Naidoo & Jamieson, 2005). Using technology is insufficient. Faculty must
develop new ways of teaching with that technology. In addition, some studies suggest that all
forms of education should be well rounded, incorporating not only the course of study but also
other important areas such as the sciences and languages, making these students better future
participants in the global economy (Selwyn, Gorard, & Williams, 2001; U.S. Department of
Education, 2010; Zhong, 2006).
Flexible and relevant education. The biggest challenge is to find a student centered way
of incorporating a flexible and professionally relevant way of delivering various forms of
education (Brustein, 2007; Littlejohn & Stefani, 1999; Naidoo & Jamieson, 2005; Selwyn,
Gorard, & Williams, 2001; Spring, 2008). For example, a study conducted by the University of
California Los Angeles about course articulation (Agre, 1999) suggested allowing students to
take courses between disciplines and institutions. While there would still be traditional
universities, the students would be able to pursue the strengths of the newer form of education by
having the entire University of California system at their fingertips, not just an individual
campus.
Moreover, training in practical skills has become particularly important, so the literature
suggests an effort should be made to incorporate those skills in traditional forms of education
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(Jorgonsen, Ho, & Stiroh, 2005; Zhong, 2006). An example would be emphasizing increased
computer and research skills in a music class or history in engineering class.
Finally, the literature suggests that academic programs and institutional beliefs must be
shifted to prepare employees to be life long learners (Barrow, 1996; Selwyn, Gorard, &
Williams, 2001; Spring, 2008). Education is no longer a stop on the way to a successful career.
Continuing education in whatever fashion that is available is now a necessity for continued
career success.
MOOCs
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a new form of education, starting to be
popularized in the late 2000’s. They represent a new and disruptive form of education with
opportunities for existing, traditional forms as well. According to EDUCAUSE, a MOOC is a
method of educational synchronous and asynchronous content delivery primarily offered through
the Internet usually with no monetary cost, open to those who wish to access the content.
(Educause, 2012, 2013; Kelvin, 2011). MOOCs have developed over time, some through
educational institutions like Stanford and MIT and others through organizers such as Coursera
and edX, and while they lack a specific model, as some provide paid certifications, known as a
freemium where the courses are free but the recognition is not, where others are targeted toward
personal fulfillment and lifelong learning, they tend to follow the methodology of online
education institutions (Educause, 2012, 2013). MOOCs are a disruptive innovation according to
Yuan & Powell (2013) because of what they represent to other forms of education. What is most
controversial about MOOCs is their open nature, making available educational content to the
masses, directly in contrast to long standing traditional forms of education (Educause, 2012,
2013; Skiba, 2012). On the one hand, MOOCs require a considerable investment in terms of
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monetary cost and strategic planning by administrators and IT leaders (Educause, 2013; Harris,
2013). On the other hand, institutions are experimenting with incorporating aspects of MOOCs
into their curricula such as new forms of computer mediated learning, like those discussed
previously (Educause, 2012, 2013). For example, some course content and curricula can be
accessed from other MOOCs or institutions. Regardless of one’s feelings on them, MOOCs
represent the melding of technology, education, and the changing world (Educause, 2012, 2013;
Skiba, 2012; Yuan & Powell, 2013).
Education Technology Conclusion
There will always be a battle between traditionalists and revolutionaries. In the case of
higher education, the struggle between traditional ideals and foundations with new global
dynamics and changing technologies presents a losing battle. Based on the arguments for and
against traditional and new forms of education, a compromise must be drawn, where traditional
forms of education must adapt to the times while newer forms must increase their academic rigor
and demand on student effort. In this changing world, the argument can be made either way, for
increased availability of free or for profit education or maintaining the values of traditional
institutions. There will always be a market for both, but in this technology-driven changing
world where education is becoming more and more the differentiator of those who succeed and
those who do not, traditional institutions will need to adapt with the times or risk becoming a
niche market (Educause, 2012, 2013; Jorgonsen, Ho, & Stiroh, 2005; Naidoo & Jamieson, 2005;
Spring, 2008; Zhong, 2006).
Transaction Cost Economics
Given the tenet that goods and services encompass more than simple, single transactions
to more complex and ongoing transactions, Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) is used as a way
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of looking at the transaction as the unit of analysis rather than simply exchanges of goods or
services for monetary gain (Tadelis & Williamson, 2012; Williamson, 1973). Understanding that
markets and hierarchies are opposite poles between which is a continuum of possible ways to
organize is key to TCE. Finding the optimal location along this continuum, otherwise known as
minimizing transaction costs, is dependent on our situation-specific context, and often an
organization finds itself creating networks of relationships rather than resorting to one extreme or
another (Powell, 1990). This analysis is done via the lens of the contract. Governance is a key
factor to TCE, where the contracts stipulate the terms of the relationship between the vendor and
the customer (Macher & Richman, 2008; Williamson, 2010). Moreover, Supply Chain
Management (SCM) is also important where managing groups of transactions into chains leads
to benefits if the contract is highly adjustable (Williamson, 2008).
Markets and hierarchies play the key role in determining the efficiency of a good or
service (Tadelis & Williamson, 2012; Williamson, 1973). Markets represent the buy and
hierarchies represent the make factors involved in determining whether or not to pursue a
transaction with another party or in some cases, continue that relationship. Larger organizations
that are more vertically organized tend to choose to keep goods and services internal, while
smaller organizations tend not to maintain those services internally. In order to compete, they
pursue those same services that they cannot provide themselves externally (Lamoureaux, Raff, &
Temin, 2002; Williamson, 2010).
Outsourcing
Outsourcing, procuring services from a provider that an institution may or may not be
able to secure oneself, is increasing in popularity, especially as those services draw away from
the core mission of the institution of providing an education to students (Gupta, Herath, &
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Mikouiza, 2005; Lowendahl, 2012, 2013; Rust, Weiner, Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013).
According to multiple sources in the literature, there are a number of reasons to outsource,
including both tactical and strategic motivations (Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009).
These reasons include: reductions in operating costs, increased availability of funds, cash
infusion, lack of internal resources and problematic functions, as well as improved business
focus, access to world class capabilities, accelerated business benefits, shared risk, and
redirection of resources (Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009). Particularly, in private
organizations, the major consideration for outsourcing has been market and cost reduction
(Gonzalez, Gasco, & Llopis 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006).
IT Outsourcing in Education
IT outsourcing plays a particularly unique role when considered with Transaction Cost
Economics (TCE) especially in education. Within TCE, transaction costs are determined by 3
factors – asset specificity, transaction frequency and uncertainty (Hancox & Hackney, 1999).
However, outsourcing of IT goods and services is problematic, especially in education, as there
is a great deal of uncertainty and very little asset specificity within the transaction, as IT is
primarily uniquely knowledge centric, but not the same knowledge that is necessary for the
customer (the educational institution) to provide the service of education to the students. Instead,
the asset of IT knowledge is unique to the context of the customer’s environment but not part of
the mission of the customer. This balance of factors requires contract administrators to weigh the
risks/hazards of uncertainty with the need for services in absence of specificity (Ngwenyama &
Bryson, 1999). Further, technology also affects how TCE decisions are made, since as
technology becomes more available to consumers, more of the decisions resides on the
knowledge-centric portions of the needed services, such as the ability of a consumer to do the
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work themselves with relative ease or the unique nature of a specific problem, such as computer
networking, that can only be provided by the services provider (Drnevich, Brush, & Shanley,
2010).
González, Giachetti, and Ramirez (2005) in their study of fortune 500 companies
demonstrated that a knowledge-centric help desk, where documentation of issues and sharing of
knowledge were paramount, had drastically higher ticket closure rates and improved technician
and customer satisfaction, over help desks that did not prioritize knowledge. What they found
was that the more shared knowledge between help desk technicians, with appropriate systems of
support, the more rapidly tickets could be addressed and the higher the satisfaction of the
customers. Moreover, more tickets would remain at the entry levels because those initial
technicians were also privy to the shared knowledge. Further, Garcia-Perez and Ayres (2009) in
their study of an engineering organizations’ help desk and the knowledge management model
found that while the help desk personnel had become ‘experts’ on certain subject areas, because
they attended to those areas so often in their regular work, there were still gaps in performance,
much of this due to communication and motivation. Lack of communication of knowledge or
asymmetry of knowledge often was found to be due to lack of motivation to share knowledge
and competition between group members or lack of interest in sharing knowledge. Both were
seen as major contributing factors causing the lack of motivation. However, outsourcing such
services and removing sources of conflict can improve performance.
When considering outsourcing through the lens of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE),
education contains some specific factors to consider when making outsourcing decisions. Areas
such as the nature of education, values and future business all play a part of the decision to
outsource.
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Nature of Education
Private and for profit businesses have always been the focus of TCE literature for good
reason (Merisotis & Phipps, 2005; Rust, Weiner, Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). They
provide a clearly economic lens from which to look through; however, education is different.
Education is a niche market (Davies & Hentschke, 1994). Education, with the exception of for-
profit institutions, is not in the business of making money, so the motivations to pursue economic
enterprises such as contracting are different (McCord, 2002; Rust, Weiner, Harris, Lowendahl, &
Thayer, 2013). Generally, according to a study of the United States’ IT outsourcing market in
2000 spending over $56 billion on IT outsourcing and a 2001 EDUCAUSE survey of IT leaders,
McCord (2002) found that aside from cost, non-profit and public organizations, especially
education organizations, tend to frame political considerations as to reasons whether or not they
outsource or co-source IT services (Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006). A similar study of
educational institutions’ IT leaders, conducted by Gartner from 2009-2012, found similar results
(Rust, Weiner, Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). These political reasons play into all other
factors of considering outsourcing within education.
Values versus Uncertainty
Part of the political consideration in education is the values within the institutions. For
example, internal markets exist where faculty, staff and even students’ opinions and
relationships internally play key factors for considering outsourcing externally (Kahraman,
Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006; McCord, 2002). While one may be
incentivized to outsource goods and services by customers and leaders due to demand for more
services and greater efficiency, IT leaders in education also weigh other political values unique
to education such as the effect on their human capital, such as loyalty to their employees
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(Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006; McCord, 2002).
Uncertainty plays an important role in the balance between markets, hierarchies and more
complex networks (Powell, 1990). In IT outsourcing in particular, where much work is filled
with project markets, areas where there are a number of small vendors providing a specified
service for a short term, and other work is extremely firm-specific, where the knowledge needed
is gained through on the job, hands-on work within the specific context of the firm, uncertainty is
one of the major factors for decision makers to consider when choosing to outsource or not
(Powell, 1990). Deciding what to outsource and what to keep internal is important when
considered in the contexts of institutional values and culture (Nagpal, 2004; Rust, Weiner,
Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). Nagpal’s (2004) mixed-methods study of 4 year’s of
existing TCE literature on Information Systems and Technology outsourcing and Ngwenyama
and Bryson’s (1999) landmark study re-conceptualizing Williamson’s 1973 work on TCE related
to IT outsourcing decisions both agree that making the decision to outsource IT requires
weighing many more factors beyond the fiscal, and those studies have shown that continuing to
outsource IT with one vendor over another may actually come at a greater direct fiscal cost to the
institution, but may realize other benefits that are not directly monetary.
Pepperdine University presents an interesting example, as their decision to outsource was
not entirely monetary, though they did realize a monetary result in the end (Chester, 2011). With
a team of stakeholders including faculty, staff and students, they weighed their decision upon
multiple factors, such as service availability and reliability, vendor reputation, and customer
satisfaction as major portions of their decision to outsource their phone and online IT help desk
services (Chester, 2011). However, they chose to specifically outsource what they termed
transactional (not to be confused with Transaction Cost Economics or TCE) services but keep
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internal those services that were heavily knowledge centric such as the services of personnel in
major projects like the work of the staff supporting the student information systems (SIS). They
viewed basic, generic and replicable services such as resetting passwords as services that could
easily be sent off site and allow better internal resource allocation to other areas, and as a result
they not only realized increased customer satisfaction, as indicated earlier, but also were able to
invest in new technologies like an instructional technology center (Chester, 2011).
The promise of more business
Part of the goal of the vendor is to seek continued business, and education is not so
unique from other industries in that case; however, education does portray remarkable ability to
provide business opportunities for vendors to new customers or for added services (Rust,
Weiner, Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). For example, educational institutions tend acquire
the same businesses and services that other institutions have acquired and have had success with,
such as IT services (Goldstein, 2010; McCord, 2002). Moreover, for the political considerations
of the faculty, staff and students who tend to dislike change, educational institutions endeavor to
maintain the same services as long as they are successful to mitigate disruptive changes
(Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006; McCord, 2002). This
begs the question if all new and continued business is not only good but also equal or if some
business is more valued by stakeholders than others. Thus far, the literature has demonstrated
that political considerations have driven decisions to pursue new and added business in the
education industry, such as the value to faculty of undisruptive, easy to use continued services,
but this study will further analyze these questions through a case study of such a scenario
(Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006; McCord, 2002).

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Decision Rights
Politics, values, future business, and all other factors boil down to who has the right to
make the decision to outsource (Davies & Hentschke, 1994). As Davies and Hentschke (1994)
present in their ‘taxonomy of managerial decisions’, complimented by other works in
Transaction Costs Economics, especially regarding Information and Instructional Technology
(IT) outsourcing, various factors ranging from the core mission of the business, to
business/production processes, to human/personnel factors, to cost, play into the manager’s
decision (Nagpal, 2004; Ngwenyama & Bryson, 1999). The individual making the decision may
not be the individual closest to the context of the decision, but the decision maker must account
for these factors when evaluating the decision. For example, balancing the mission of the
educational institution versus the clients being served by the decision to outsource.
Open Source Versus Closed Source, A TCE Consideration
As will be seen later in this study as some of the major decision factors for the
institution’s evaluation process of learning management systems (LMSs), an educational
institution's choice to build its own resources like the use of open source software or buy those
resources from others, such as purchasing software, is difficult, can be controversial and is
replete with factors that must be weighed. Like the factors discussed in Transaction Cost
Economics (TCE) literature, there are quite a few financial, political, pedagogical, and social
benefits and drawbacks considered for both the users and the institutions using freely available
open source software over purchasable, closed source, mainstream solutions (Pfaffman, 2007).
Most of the benefits and drawbacks of the development and use of open-source software go hand
in hand.
The paramount factor involved with the open-source software is money. A great benefit
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to the use of open source software is the fact that said software is freely available to the users;
however, this directly correlates to the fact that those developing the software are not being
monetarily compensated for their time, work, or intellectual contributions to the software, which
can be both a benefit and a drawback, considering that the lack of monetary gain brings into
question the ‘quality’ of this software with no financial or institutional backing or oversight, but
on the other hand, there is also a sense of superiority over proprietary software in the open-
source community, considering that there are a great number of people with far more altruistic
goals in mind. Scott McNealy, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems, described the free cost of OSS
to free like a puppy not like beer discussing that there may be no upfront costs, but there may be
difficulties as adoption of the products grows
(Garlick, 2006). If the product is nurtured and
intentionally cared for, the returns are great, but if poorly implemented and supported, the costs
can be incredible. So the lack of monetary exchange plays an important role for both the
developers and the users of the software (Markus, Manville, & Agres, 2000).
According to the literature, probably the most important reason as to why users and
organizations choose not to make use of open source is the lack of ‘support.’ Proprietary
software is perceived as better because there is corporate support involved with the software;
however, because the organization of the open source community is so fluid, there is no formal
support system available (Goldman, 2007). On the other hand, the support system in place for
open source software is in many ways far superior to that of mainstream software (Markus,
Manville, & Agres, 2000). If fixes are needed, users can go to the community of developers and
“patches” can be created to repair any issues that may exist, rapidly, without the need for a full
update of the program, unlike mainstream distributors (Pfaffman, 2007). Further, if the software
requires customization to better address a specific need, the code is available to do so, without
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the need to purchase any ad hoc software add-ons unlike the mainstream products (Markus,
Manville, & Agres, 2000).
Further, “open-source licenses prohibit the sale, collection of license fees, of open-source
software and serve to ensure that no one party can unfairly monopolize the commercial rewards
from others’ voluntary labor. The approach removes powerful reasons professionals might have
for not contributing to an open-source project,” so due to the very nature of open-source
licensing the threat of monetary loss does not exist, and more developers are encouraged to
contribute to the software, ensuring a higher quality product (Markus, Manville, & Agres, 2000,
p. 19).
There are other extremely important benefits to the use of open source software,
especially in educational endeavors. With the use of a wider variety of available software options
in their educational endeavors, students become more prepared and capable of using more
educational tools in their daily lives (Fester & Steckroth, 2004). Open source software is created
by the same people who would be using said software; moreover, the software is created to meet
the needs that mainstream software simply cannot meet, allowing developers to create tailored,
easy to use, understandable software with generic graphical interfaces that will allow students to
be able to not only use the open source products but also the proprietary products that the user
may come across in their school, professional, or social environments, especially because open
source software tends to use generic, understandable terms and naming conventions when
documenting their software. Open source software encourages the development of new technical
skills in students, allowing students to be more ‘worldly’ in terms of their software knowledge,
rather than being dependent on specific, proprietary software applications (Guhlin, 2007)
Because of the ideas of intellectual property rights and software pirating, licensing of
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software is extremely important and has become an important issue within the open source
software movement (Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Though open source software licensing is
extremely explicit in its very nature as to what can and cannot be done with the software, there
are quite a few drawbacks to allowing anyone to use the software source code, because much of
the time, code can be generic in terms of portions of an application like calendaring, scheduling,
clocks, information forms, and so on, so the chances of copying code from proprietary software
companies or from other open source software under different license agreements can negatively
affect the development and use of open source software (Greenstein & Wheeler, 2007).
Institutional use and sponsorship of open source software also encourages students to make use
of legal open source software as opposed to ‘pirating’ software, illegally, which is often the way
students obtain software they cannot otherwise afford (Guhlin, 2007). By having higher
education institutions support the use of open source software by means of technical support for
the students, training for students and faculty, and encouraging students to use the software,
institutions can inspire these students to use free, widely accessible software rather than
essentially ‘stealing’ the software that they cannot afford but need for their coursework
(Pfaffman, 2007).
A disadvantage to open source software, which will probably always exist, is the lack of
standardization in the software environment (Guhlin, 2007). Though open source software offers
a great deal of benefits in terms of use and availability, there are still a great many issues in terms
of solidarity. The Open Source Initiative attempts to assuage many of these issues by
disseminating guidelines; however, there is still quite a bit of disparity between different
software developers (Lakhan & Jhunjhunwala, 2008). Moreover, because organizations and
institutions tend to make use of different types of software (proprietary, built in-house, and open
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source), there is no viable means of judging and supporting which software is most used and
appropriate for which application; however, Apache, Linux and other more well known open
source applications tend to be the most heavily concentrated on pieces of software, due to their
relative fame, usefulness and cost/benefit (Coombs, 2007).
Build or Buy Software in Education
Technology greatly influences the success of students in education. According to Cradler,
McNabb, Freeman and Burchett (2002), evidence has shown that technology can enhance a
student’s educational experience by promoting their educational understanding, but if used
incorrectly, technology can deter students’ educational success by hindering their understanding,
not addressing their needs, or overwhelming them. According to these authors, software
applications both specific to a field/specialty and generic can enhance higher-level thinking and
critical thinking skills on the part of the students, with the guidance of the educator and/or the
institution. Use of technology in schools can prepare students for the workforce by giving them
real-world experience with programs similar to those that they will be exposed to in the
contemporary workforce (Cradler, Freeman, & Burchett, 2002). Because of this important point
about technology use in education, choosing to build software like open source software or
purchase prepared and packaged software can prove to be extremely useful and important.
Moreover, use of software, especially open source, has expanded exponentially in the higher
education arena due to a great many factors, such as customization, budgeting, and variability
(Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Similar to the considerations in the TCE literature, a number of
factors get involved in choosing to buy or build software.
Cost is one major factor as to why institutions look to open source software over closed
source (Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Setup, maintenance, updates, purchasing of new revisions,
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and so on, are all reasons why colleges and universities gain distaste for proprietary, mainstream
software. Commercial software tends to require frequent and costly upgrades (Courant &
Griffiths, 2006, p. 9). Goldstein and Caruso (2004) describe how educational institutions’
budgets are consistently decreasing, while student demand is in fact increasing, forcing
institutions to seek alternative sources to supplement their educational needs, without incurring a
big footprint in their overall budgets, which has forced them to turn to lower cost and open
source software as a result.
Performance is another reason why institutions choose open source. Mainstream,
proprietary software is not designed specifically for the education industry, and thus tend not to
meet all the needs of the students or organizations (Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Software tends to
be designed for as many applications as possible, so addressing specific needs is very difficult, if
not impossible.
Control is yet another reason why institutions are seeking alternatives to the current
standards (Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Because of the growing ‘norm’ of software in higher
education institutions, there is a growing fear that these software companies are gaining a
monopoly on software resources available to these institutions, allowing these companies to
charge incredible costs for services, products and support (Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Moreover,
there is an added cost in terms of changing from one system to another proprietary system.
Open source can provide an alternative to commercial software by giving buyers more
leverage (Courant & Griffiths, 2006, p. 16). When educators use proprietary software, said
software tends to become more valuable, due to the systematic training and requirement of
educators to use the software, who in turn require their students to use said software, and so on
and so forth (Pfaffman, 2007).
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‘Interoperability’ between different software and platforms is important for institutions to
streamline the use of available software (Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Interoperability allows for
multiple software packages to work alongside other applications fairly seamlessly. When
students and professionals can use software more easily with other software, the
work/educational process is made that much easier.
Adaptability, controllability and customizability are also very attractive aspects of open
source software. Open Source software presents a viable alternative to mainstream choices
because many institutions house Information and Instructional Technology (IT) departments that
are more attuned to the needs of the students and faculty than the mainstream software
developers (Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Open Source software allows institutions’ various IT
departments to act as a middleman between the users and the developers, allowing users to voice
their needs and concerns to the developers, and allowing developers to address said needs
quickly and easily by means of ‘revisions’ and ‘packages,’ otherwise known as updates to the
software (Courant & Griffiths, 2006). Moreover, open source software is developed by
programmers with a more practical and commiserating feel for student and faculty needs,
because they tend to also have been or are the individuals who are also using said software
(Courant & Griffiths, 2006). This is the major difference between open source software and
proprietary software, because open source software exists in what Raymond (2006) originally
termed the ‘Bazaar’ style, where updates and revisions of the software are created immediately,
and with relatively little censorship, while proprietary software companies issue ‘releases’ that
require purchase of new software, as apposed to continuing to use the software that institutions
have already purchased, known as the ‘Cathedral’ style (Raymond, 2006). This is also the
drawback as well, since software provided by software vendors are tested and supported while
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open source software has no formal structure of support.
Larger higher education institutions tend to create their own software when available
purchasable software does not meet their needs, which lends to the open source model. “One of
the nice things about open source software systems is the opportunity for local developers to fix
problems and build new components without waiting for full release changes” (Beatty &
Ulasewicz, 2006, p. 44). For smaller institutions, open source software can solve many issues in
terms of cost; however, if there is a small technical department supporting this software, open
source may present problems of providing support (Courant & Griffiths, 2006).
Though implementing proprietary software can take time, money and planning in higher
education institutions, namely culminating into the purchase of an expensive software suite, open
source software is easily obtainable, deployable, and relatively minor in cost, therefore easy and
fast to implement (Guhlin, 2007). Open source software can be an operating system, an
administrative tool, or a server; however, open source software is often also software that can run
both on Windows and Macintosh based operating systems as well.
According to Judith Pirani (2004) who wrote “Keeping Options Open: Governments
Grow Comfortable with Open Source Software,” technology or lack thereof can greatly affect
student’s experiences in higher education, in distance education or e-learning, specifically,
because many students lack technical knowledge, computing power, or access to commonly used
computing and productivity software like Microsoft Office and Excel. It is inconvenient for
students not to have the same software at home and at school (Pfaffman, 2007, p. 39). Open
source software can meet these needs. Students who cannot afford the mainstream software can
use the open source alternatives, and students who can use the mainstream software will be
exposed to a new application for future professional development, allowing benefits for all
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involved.
In terms of software use, educational institutions pretty much have three options: to buy,
borrow or build their software (Coombs, 2007). They can buy software, which is the most
common means of conducting business. The greatest benefit to purchasing software is the
corporate support that is intrinsic to the software. Moreover, there is an assurance that other
institutions are using the software; however there is also a problem where students may or may
not have access to the same software used at school (Coombs, 2007). The second option is to
borrow software and modify the software to fit one’s needs. This is the most practical approach
and is directly related to how open source was intended to be, with certain limiting factors such
as the software’s license such as the End User License Agreement (EULA) or the General Public
License (GPL) and governing bodies or legislation like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA). Finally, right along with the borrow mindset is the build option where universities
develop their own software, and distribute the software themselves (Coombs, 2007). Any of
these options have intrinsic issues; however, each has benefits as well.
CMS’s, A Special Buy vs. Make Decision in Education
Content Management Systems (CMSs) are not unique to education. They are used
throughout almost every industry that maintains computers and networks; however, there are
some CMSs that are used for very specific purposes in education. Particularly as the subject of
this study, systems known as Learning Management Systems, or LMSs, and Course
Management Systems, also known as CMSs, are uniquely important to higher education. They
are the manner in which students today interact with the institution. Blackboard, and the now
defunct Web CT which Blackboard purchased, holds almost the monopoly on the LMS/CMS
market, offering the most comprehensive portfolio of educational content management systems
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to the largest number of institutions in the world; however, there are some widely used open
source alternatives to these products. Sakai is a course management system developed by a
consortium of institutions around the world who contribute to the development, maintenance and
financial support for the project (Pfaffman, 2007). The project is a system that allows for
asynchronous communication via text, online resources, messaging, sharing, and HTML editing
(AACSB International, 2006). Moodle is a product developed within the higher education
community by Martin Dougiamas, an educator and a developer (Courant & Griffiths, 2006).
Moodle stands for “Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Antonenko, Toy,
& Niderhauser, 2004). Moodle is a system, designed in PHP, an open source scripting language,
developed on pedagogical tools in order to address the needs of the students and faculty of higher
education (Beatty & Ulasewicz, 2006). Moodle is customizable, allowing educators to alter the
application with relative ease and little training to address the needs of the students (Pfaffman &
Perkins, 2006). There are many other open source LMS and CMS applications; however, these
are the two most widely discussed.
Weighing the decision to buy, borrow or build a learning management system (LMS) is a
Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) decision unique to the education field that can be found at
almost any institution. In the case of this study, weighing these options becomes the main
endeavor by the stakeholders. The interactions with the vendors and the various stakeholders,
their values, and their needs were all be weighed, leading to the decision as to whether or not to
continue their existing relationship with the existing LMS/CMS or buy/borrow/build a new one.
Summary
After reviewing the literature, the lack of available information on Transaction Cost
Economics (TCE) or even outsourcing in general in education or in the non-profit/public
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industries is clear, though outsourcing is being conducted throughout education (Rust, Weiner,
Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013). While much work has been done in the areas of private/for
profit outsourcing and information systems and technology services, there is a dearth of literature
on those services, particularly in education. However, outsourcing is actively being conducted,
and is increasing in education. As the literature has demonstrated, education is changing, and
more data and information is necessary to make outsourcing decisions soundly in the changing
environment, with TCE as just one example of an available framework. As will be seen through
the following sections, this study attempted to fill this gap of lack of knowledge, or lack of
knowledge use, in this particular area by examining the case of a single institution and the
institution’s existing relationship with a single vendor and the factors considered between the
two in order to make the sound decision of an educational institution contracting services from a
vendor or evaluate and pursue a relationship with a new vendor. In the case of this particular
study, the lens will not only look at continuing the relationship between the institution and the
existing vendor but actually adding services or pursuing a relationship with a new vendor, and
the factors weighed into that decision, as previously discussed.

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CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
Information and Instructional Technology (IT) is becoming more and more important to
all sectors of the global economy, especially education where students, staff and faculty are
driving technology use through personal devices (Goldstein, 2010; Lowendahl, 2012, 2013;
Moe, Hanson, Jiang & Pampoulov, 2012; Rust, Weiner, Harris, Lowendahl, & Thayer, 2013).
Providing those technologies and support services has become an everyday challenge for
educational institutions. These institutions must consider factors such as size, available
resources, and goals to determine whether or not they should outsource their technology and
services or they should provide those services internally. Using Transaction Cost Economics
(TCE) theory as the lens, this study sought to analyze why college and university administrators
choose to either host specific IT services internally or purchase those services from an outside
vendor. This study focused on the existing relationship between a major Learning Management
System (LMS) vendor and Western Global University (WGU) and the evaluation process being
conducted by WGU for possible alternate LMS vendors. The study analyzed the benefits and
drawbacks of the existing relationship between the two organizations as well as the perceived
desires and values by the institutional stakeholders for a new relationship with a different vendor
and factors involved in continuing the contractual relationship or implementing a new one.
Through interviews, observations and document analysis, this study discusses and makes
recommendations for future similar implementations.
In higher education, providing IT services has become a major problem for
administrators and executives. At smaller institutions, the ability to fund IT services that compete
with larger institutions has become a serious issue. Conversely, larger institutions have larger,
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more diversified infrastructures that require maintenance and funding, compounded with the
need to fund new and innovative technologies to remain at the forefront of the industry in a
constantly changing technology world (Goldstein, 2010; Lowendahl, 2012, 2013; McCord, 2002;
Moe, Hanson, Jiang, & Pampoulov, 2012; Powell, 1990). Based in Transaction Cost Economics
(TCE) theory, this study sought to analyze the reasons why college and university administrators
choose to either host specific IT services internally or purchase those services from an outside
vendor (Ngwenyama & Bryson, 1999; Williamson, 1973). Specifically, this study focused on the
relationship between a single outsourcing vendor of an IT service and the service provider’s
customer, an institution of higher education, analyzing the benefits and drawbacks to the
relationship between the two organizations based on their contract. Moreover, this study
followed along the process being conducted at the time of the study by the institution to evaluate
new possible learning management systems (LMSs) and vendors from initial implementation to
on site demonstrations.
The purpose of this study was to determine the benefits or drawbacks of an educational
institution’s IT services being hosted in-house or being delivered by a third party or some hybrid
relationship where some services would be provided internally and others externally. Guided by
TCE, this study sought to expand on the existing literature and attempt to present a discussion as
to how to better understand and make technology-outsourcing decisions.
Four modified research questions guided this study:
1. How is the decision to provide certain Educational Technology services internally
versus seek those services from an outside vendor being determined? (New, revised
from original)
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2. Which Educational Technology services are being provided internally and externally,
what is the rational for each service, and what benefits or drawbacks are associated
with the decisions as perceived by the various stakeholders? (New, revised from
original)
3. What kinds of values are weighed by different positional stakeholders in the decision
to outsource, and what importance is given to those values? (New, revised from
original)
4. What values of both the institution (the customer) and the service provider (the
vendor) are dissimilar, and why? (New, revised from original)
Research Design
To address these guiding research questions and strive toward working hypothesis, a
qualitative case study was proposed. The case study employed interviews, observations and
document analysis to address the questions to the best of the researcher’s abilities, as the
questions were nuanced and context dependent to the experts in the environment in question
(Flyvbjerg, 2006). Merriam (2009) further discusses several established definitions of case
studies, but identifies several unique factors requiring a case study including the case being
particular, descriptive, heuristic and bounded. Corbin and Strauss (2008) suggest asking what
was known and unknown about the area of interest and developing research questions that can be
addressed through a qualitative study. In the case of WGU’s relationship with the current LMS
vendor and evaluation process of two other vendors, to fully understand the context and disparate
motivations by the different stakeholders involved, a case study was required using the main
available forms of data collection, including interviews, observations and document analysis. As
Maxwell (2013) and Merriam (2009) suggest applying a framework is useful in guiding a
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qualitative study, especially when looking into a new area, in this case, TCE was chosen as a
tried and tested framework to look into the new area of outsourcing technology and services in
higher education.
Population and Sample
There were two types of groups but three populations analyzed in this case study – the
vendor in the existing relationship, the possible new vendors and the customer. The customer
was the recipient of the service. To encourage participation and protect institutional and vendor
identities, the use of pseudonyms was suggested by the dissertation committee and employed in
this study. The customer was designated Western Global University (WGU). The vendors or
firms were the providers of the technology service to the educational institution. The vendors
being studied were LMS-1, LMS-2, and LMS-3.
The Institution
According to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) 2012 Data
Feedback Report provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Western
Global University (WGU) was a private university located near the downtown area of a major
city in the southwestern United States, offering Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctor’s degrees with
both professional and research focuses (IPEDS Data Feedback Report, 2012). At the time of the
study, the university reported a total population of nearly 41,000 students with almost half
undergraduates (IPEDS Data Feedback Report, 2012).
WGU was a university of high expectations and aspirations, counting amongst the
institution’s peers some very renowned universities (IPEDS Data Feedback Report, 2012). The
institution was substantially larger in student population size than the peer group but
comparatively similar in price and size of faculty with relatively fewer support staff, compared to
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the size of the institution (IPEDS Data Feedback Report, 2012). This implied that the university
must strive to provide more services for the population with relatively fewer resources, placing a
heavy burden on decision makers such as those in Information and Instructional Technology
areas, one of the largest areas of expenditure for the university at nearly 10% of the institution’s
operating budget, specifically dedicated to IT, not including indirect IT-related costs.
The customer was the recipient of the service being provided. In this study, the customer
institution in the relationship with LMS-1 was Western Global University (WGU). Specifically,
the study focused on WGU’s Information Technology Services (ITS) group’s evaluation and
continued use of LMS-1’s products and services for the university as a whole.
Information & Instructional Technology at the Institution
Within Western Global University (WGU), there were a number of Information and
Instructional Technology (IT) departments housed within the central administration as well as
various academic and non-academic services and departments within the university. The central
entity providing services to all students, faculty and staff within the university will be termed
Information Technology Services (ITS), under the Chief Information Officer (CIO). ITS
provided a number of services to the campus community as a whole, including network
infrastructure, information systems, and help desk support. An example of a service provided by
ITS included email, which they reported as having thousands of users exchanging millions of
messages each day. In addition, ITS reported an average of more than 70,000 computer-related
issues from users, including faculty, staff and students, each year. Along with ITS, the various
academic and support departments also maintained their own IT departments which work closely
with ITS, providing similar or other specialized functions.
University Participants
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To answer the research questions, individual subjects within the university were studied.
The study began with the learning management system contract administrator (CA) who was
responsible for the ongoing relationship based on the contract between parties. The administrator
was also responsible for coordinating the evaluation process for other possible LMSs. Based on
this initial interview, additional interviews were conducted with key stakeholders affected by or
participating in this relationship and evaluation process through snowball sampling, including
both faculty and staff (Merriam, 2009), discussed in following sections. Additionally, with
support from the LMS CA of WGU, the researcher conducted interviews with representatives
from the companies as well. In addition to the interviews, more than twelve hours of
observations of the stakeholders were conducted at the LMS vendor demonstrations scheduled in
April of 2013. The vendors were demonstrating their products to stakeholders including the
faculty and staff. Finally, documents, including websites and both institution and vendor
produced reports, were analyzed.
Vendors
The vendor or firm was the provider of the technology service to the educational
institution. The specific technology being provided to the institution is a learning management
system (LMS). The vendors of the learning management systems included LMS-1, LMS-2 and
LMS-3. LMS-1 was the existing vendor with WGU. LMS-2 and LMS-3 were alternative
vendors, which WGU invited to be evaluated by onsite stakeholders.
LMS-1 was the vendor in the existing relationship with the institution. Founded in the
late 1990’s, LMS-1, through a series of transactions, deals, mergers and acquisitions in addition
to LMS-1’s own innovations in education technology content management, has grown to be the
world’s leader in technology products and services to the education industry. In total, the
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company provides three (3) specific types of services. The three services include the company’s
technology in education guidance service, the company’s remote hosting service, providing
services such as content and learning management systems for clients, and the company’s
student-related services such as financial aid coordination and managed help desks for
institutions.
In addition to services, the company also makes available five (5) specific products.
These products range from their flagship LMS to distance learning tools. They also provide new
tools, such as cashiering and accounting services. In total, LMS-1 provides goods and services to
more than 20 million users and more than 3000 institutions in over 170 countries as customers.
There are a number of other education technology providers participating in this
evaluation process, including open source solutions, such as Sakai and Moodle, vendors of open
source solutions such as Moodle Rooms, and proprietary, closed-source solutions providers,
including Angel and Pearson Learning Studio. In particular, the final three LMS providers
invited to the onsite demonstration of their products LMS-1, who was the institution’s existing
vendor, LMS-2 and LMS-3.
LMS-2 was much more recently founded than LMS-1, in the late 2000’s. The company is
much smaller than LMS-1, supporting only a few hundred institutions with only a few hundred
employees.
Also founded in the late 1990’s, LMS-3 is another LMS company and system that reports
to provide solutions for hundreds of clients and millions of ‘learners,’ as opposed to the industry
terms of students or users, across multiple industries, not just higher education.
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Data Collection and Instrumentation
This study made use of several instruments to thoroughly answer the research questions
stated earlier. For example, to address how the decision was determined to provide certain IT
services, namely LMS-1 services, internally versus seeking those services from the outside
vendor, LMS-1 themselves or the new vendors, interviews were conducted with the LMS
administrator, and others, to gather data about the existing and possible new relationships with
LMS vendors (See Appendices A and B). Available documents were first reviewed, such as
formal and informal communications as well as formal documents such as brochures to see what
was publicly available. Any missing or inadequate information was retrieved through semi-
structured interviews.
Following on the first question, to determine which services were being provided
internally and which were being provided externally, and what the rational was for each service,
and what benefits and drawbacks were associated with the decision, and to determine if the
opinions of the stakeholders were uniform with regard to the decision, interviews were
conducted with the LMS administrator and other stakeholders to determine what was and was
not being provided. Documents were again also used, particularly the lists of services, such as
the ITS website to determine what was and was not currently serviced. Moreover, documents
were also analyzed from the possible new vendors as well to see what services could be offered.
Observations were also conducted of the vendors’ on site demonstrations, particularly observing
disparate types of stakeholders who attended the LMS vendor demonstrations, such as faculty,
staff, IT personnel and the vendor personnel themselves, to determine their perceived values of
the LMS services. This also led into the third research question of what kinds of values are
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weighed by different positional stakeholders in the decision to outsource, including students,
staff and faculty, which were particularly sought through the interviews process.
Finally, to address the most important question for this study of what factors do the
different parties weigh to continue the relationship, especially at times of contract renewal, and
why or look at the factors involved in pursuing a new vendor, further research was conducted.
For example, to address the question regarding whether the values of both the institution (the
customer) and the service provider (the vendor) are the same or dissimilar, and why, more data
collection was conducted. Interviews, observations and document analysis of both the decision
makers, such as the IT manager, and the LMS representatives were conducted to determine the
individual parties’ values with regard to continuing the relationship.
Collection Process
Table 1
Data and Instruments: Proposed

Phase Method Time Frame Possible sites/subjects
P1 Interviews
April-August
2013
LMS Administrator
IT personnel
Faculty
WGU staff
Students
Vendor Representatives
P2 Observations
April/May
2013
3 Vendor demonstrations

P3

Document Analysis
April -August
2013
(Throughout
process)
WGU websites
Vendor websites
Requests for Information (RFI)
Committee documents
Vendor documents
Other communications

As can be seen in Table 1 and 2, data collection took place in three phases. Table 1
illustrates the originally proposed phases and timeline of the study. Table 2 depicts the actual
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progression of the study during the conducting of the study. Phase one included an initial in-
person interview with the gatekeeper, in this case the LMS administrator. Through snowball
sampling, given the political climate of the institution, initial contacts with additional
institutional and vendor representatives for interviews were initiated by the LMS administrator
and coordinated between the researcher and the respondents, keeping the LMS administrator
aware of each. Phase two comprised of four observations totaling more than twelve hours, and
phase three included analysis of a number of documents and artifacts, which actually occurred
throughout the process. The following sections will discuss all three phases. Within each section,
the sample will also be discussed.

Phase One: In-Person Interviews.
After permission from WGU’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) was secured, interview
subjects were sought through snowball sampling. Convenience was the main basis for which to
determine appropriate subjects, as they needed to be available and willing to participate
(Maxwell, 2013; Merriam, 2009). However, there were other conditions for selection, namely
familiarity with campus technology and technology support services, particularly the LMS
Table 2
Data and Instruments: Actual

Phase Method Time Frame Sites/subjects
P1 Interviews
May -
September
2013
LMS Administrator
IT personnel
Faculty
Vendor Representatives
P2 Observations
April/May
2013
3 Vendor demonstrations

P3

Document Analysis
April -
November
2013
(Throughout
process)
WGU websites
Vendor websites
Requests for Information (RFI)
Committee documents
Vendor documents
Other communications
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evaluation WGU was undertaking. Initially, this study made use of an unstructured interview
with the LMS administrator and review existing documents to inform the study of the context.
Information regarding the specific relationship between the existing vendor and the educational
institution as well as the new vendors being evaluated was sought (see Appendix A). The LMS
administrator overseeing the LMS product as well as the evaluation process was the primary
source for information. From that interview, additional interviews were sought from institutional
and vendor stakeholders who were familiar with the LMS products as well as the WGU
evaluation process.
After the meeting with the LMS contract administrator (CA), the CA sent out an email
invitation to six (6) individuals, three institutional stakeholders and three vendor representatives,
one from each vendor, to participate in the interview process. Between May and September of
2013, interviews with 8 separate individuals were conducted, the timeline of which can be seen
in Table 3.
Table 3

Interview Phase: Timeline and Respondents
Interview Month Organization Stakeholder Position Method
1 May LMS-1
Customer Relations
Executive (CRE)
Phone
2 May WGU Faculty member (FM) Phone
3 July LMS-3 Sales Representative (SR) Phone
4 July WGU Help Desk Manager (HDM) In Person
5 August WGU
Enterprise Applications
Support representative
(EASR)
Phone
6 August WGU
LMS Contract Administrator
(CA)
In Person
7 September LMS-2 Support Executive (SE) Phone
8 September LMS-1
Infrastructure Support
Executive (ISE)
Phone

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The duration of each individual interview ranged from 44 minutes to nearly 2 hours.
Respondents were comprised of a WGU faculty member (FM), three IT members from WGU,
including the Help Desk Manager (HDM), The LMS Contract Administrator (CA) and an
individual representing Enterprise Application Support (EASR). Vendor respondents included
two executives from LMS-1, one representing Customer Relations (CRE) and one representing
Infrastructure support (ISE). An executive from LMS-2 also representing support (SE)
participated as well as a sales representative from LMS-3 (SR).
Using the interview protocols to guide the conversation but given the expressed time
constraints by each respondent, the interviews were conducted either over the phone or in person,
but adapted given the readily available information about the interview respondent and their
individual familiarity with the WGU LMS evaluation process being conducted. For example, all
but one of the respondents maintained publically available information about themselves and
their current and previous work, either on their company websites or through personal
social/business network profiles, such as LinkedIn.com, so many of the demographic questions
were unnecessary during the conversations. The exception to this was the Enterprise
Applications Support Representative (EASR), whom maintained no publically available
demographic information, so this individual was explicitly questioned about this information
during the interview. Additionally, both LMS-1’s Customer Relations Executive as well as LMS-
2’s Support Executive (SE) did not attend nor were actively involved in WGU’s LMS evaluation
process, though they were highly imbedded in their companies’ relationships and histories with
WGU, so questions specifically relating to the onsite demonstrations were not employed during
their interviews.
Additionally, while the consent was proposed to be read and orally discussed with the
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interview subjects at the time of the interview, several of the preliminary respondents requested
that a digital copy be sent to them along with a summary of the study/abstract and a copy of the
interview questions prior to the time of the actual interview. Since this was a request of the first
four interview subjects, the researcher decided to standardize on this methodology, and continue
to do so with each of the interview subjects, by emailing the documents to each subject ahead of
time, and discussing with them at the beginning of the interview about the documents to ensure
their consent to participate. Finally, with the permission from each of the respondents notes were
taken during each interview and each interview was recorded and transcribed later.
Phase Two: Observations.
Six two-hour observations were also conducted, mainly based on both convenience and
availability (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003; Fink, 2013; Maxwell, 2013; Merriam, 2009; Weiss, 1994).
For this study, the six observations conducted were of the vendor demonstrations on the WGU
campus in April. The three afternoon demonstrations for IT staff were observed in person, and
the three morning demonstrations to faculty, and some students, were viewed as observations
through recorded videos. Field notes and memos were documented throughout this process.
These observations were conducted to record the values and perceptions expressed by each of the
stakeholders. See Table 4 for a timeline of the observations phase.

Table 4

Observation Phase: Details
Organization Demonstration Week Time Intended Audience Type of observation
LMS-2 1 Morning Faculty Video
LMS-2 1 Afternoon IT Staff In-person
LMS-3 2 Morning Faculty Video
LMS-3 2 Afternoon IT Staff In-person
LMS-1 3 Morning Faculty Video
LMS-1 3 Afternoon IT Staff In-person
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To address the research questions, observations of the vendors and their products,
particularly how the institutional stakeholders perceive them, were needed. Moreover, in this
multi-year evaluation process by the institution, the two culminating features were the on campus
demonstrations and the final report to the CIO. Observing the demonstrations was paramount to
the overall understanding of the context and better address the research questions.
Phase Three: Document Analysis.
Bogdan and Biklen (2003) and Merriam (2009) discuss the usability of documents and
artifacts as easily accessible subject-produced data that are not subject to the limitations of other
forms of data collection, as documents are not influenced by the researcher. They present
insightful information into the context of the subject/situation and can support the other forms of
data collection. This study employed several documents throughout to assist in finding additional
supporting data for the other methods of data collection.
The types of documents that were used cover several documents discussed by Bogdan
and Biklen (2003) and Merriam (2009), including official documents, personal documents,
internal communications, and online data sources. Mainly, the sources chosen for this study will
be documents, which will be provided by the institution and the vendors. The documents
included the initial committee documents from the original needs assessment that occurred in fall
of 2012. IT reports and Requests for Information (RFIs) were used. Other documents and
artifacts include recorded video meetings between the institutional stakeholders discussing the
LMS process and committee roles. Finally, the WGU and IT websites, the vendor websites as
well as vendor and institutional documents will also be analyzed. Table 5 illustrates a more
complete list of data used for analysis.

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Methods for Individual Questions
The specific methods used to address the research questions were as follows:
1. How is the decision to provide certain Educational Technology services internally
versus seek those services from an outside vendor being determined?
To address this question, interviews with the LMS administrator were paramount.
Beginning with an unstructured meeting with the CA, analysis of the provided documents
describing the process of evaluating the LMS vendors was conducted. Additional information
was asked of the CA, other institutional IT stakeholders and LMS-1 representatives to fill in the
picture.
2. Which Educational Technology services are being provided internally and
externally, what is the rational for each service, and what benefits or drawbacks are
associated with the decisions as perceived by the various stakeholders?
While the initial unstructured meeting with the LMS administrator pointed the study in
the direction to address this question as did the evaluation of documents. The interviews,
particularly with the IT representatives, were able to confirm what services were being provided
Table 5

Document Phase: Types of documents
Type Source Organization
Artifact 3 hours of Recorded Stakeholder Video WGU
Document WGU Website WGU
Document LMS-1 Website LMS-1
Document LMS-2 Website LMS-2
Document LMS-3 Website LMS-3
Document LMS Request for Information (RFI) WGU
Document LMS RFI IT Summaries WGU
Document LMS Evaluation Report and Recommendations WGU
Document 2010-2011 LMS Needs Assessment WGU
Document LMS landscape document WGU
Document LMS RFI Cumulative Results WGU
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to the institution by LMS-1. The observations compounded these interviews’ data with the
perceptions of the wants and desires of services from the other institutional stakeholders.
3. What kinds of values are weighed by different positional stakeholders in the
decision to outsource, and how important are those values being weighed?
As each of these values is perceptual to the stakeholder, the primary means of judging
this data was through analysis of documents and observations. The IT summaries of the
documents generated by each of the nine committees involved of stakeholders were analyzed to
determine those stakeholders’ values. Moreover, the individual stakeholders were observed at the
vendor demonstration for added perceptions and values based on what they attended to, voiced
orally, and physically responded to in the presentations. Interview responses by the stakeholders
also helped give context to the answers to this question. However, as determined by the
dissertation committee, students were not analyzed and removed from the research question.
Moreover, through the discussion with the LMS administrator and other institutional
stakeholders, while some non-IT staff members were present at the meetings and were discussed,
they were not discussed with enough detail to be addressed in this study.
4. What values of both the institution (the customer) and the service providers (the
vendors) are dissimilar?
The initial meeting with the LMS administrator and the more formal semi-structured
interview later was likely the most paramount in terms of starting to analyze this data, as the
LMS administrator was not only the gatekeeper to this information but also the final decision on
this topic. However, the analysis of the committee generated needs and wants as well as
observations of the stakeholders in the vendor demonstration and interviews with each
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stakeholder on both the institutional and vendor sides were also very fruitful to address this
question.
Data Analysis
After the initial unstructured meeting with the LMS contract administrator (CA), and
throughout the additional interviews, transcription of the recorded interviews was conducted.
The recorded data was sent to Rev.com, a site that ensures confidentiality of recorded data, and
transcripts were returned to the researcher. Textual and document analysis of the interviews as
well as available documents and transcripts of observations was conducted to triangulate the
answers to the proposed research questions. The analysis itself was aided via use of the
qualitative research software NVivo (QSR International, 2013) by loading the transcripts of the
interviews, observations and documents into the software and allowing the software to compile
the data for coding and analysis.
Table 6
Analysis Coding

Code Category Theme
Code 1A
Code 2A
Code 3A
Code 4A
Code 5A
Code 6A
Category 1A
Category 2A
Category 3A
Theme A
Code 1B
Code 2B
Code 3B
Code 4B
Code 5B
Code 6B

Category 1C
Category 2C
Category 3C

Theme B
Code 1C
Code 2C
Code 3C
Code 4C
Code 5C
Code 6C

Category 1C
Category 2C
Category 3C

Theme C
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The data was initially analyzed via open coding as Merriam (2009) discusses where
specific units of data were culled from the data. These units were coded as they arose without
prejudice to the type of data. Merriam (2009) suggests that groups of data would appear to
become significant, termed categories. After these categories became apparent, selective coding,
coding for specific types of information, was conducted between the different forms of data to
locate similar codes, categories and themes (Merriam, 2009). Analysis coding (Table 6)
demonstrates a sample of the coding process that took place. A large number of codes were seen.
From those codes, categories began to take shape, and from those categories, themes were
derived. Merriam (2009) discusses how this process can be used to address qualitative research
questions. Moreover, the researcher agrees with Merriam’s (2009) discussion of how the themes
should be both exclusive and exhaustive, so determining the themes that can be drawn from
studying the WGU evaluation process was explicit. From this theme development, responses to
each of the research questions were derived and compared to the established literature on TCE.
Summary
Using Transaction Cost Economics as a lens, this qualitative case study made use of
interviews, observations and document analysis to attempt to understand the decision to buy or
build a technology service by an educational institution. The relationship WGU has with LMS-1
and the evaluation process WGU was conducting with LMS-2 and LMS-3 was analyzed for
themes. These themes were used to address the research questions guiding this study. Moreover,
this study will better inform both the fields of technology in education and outsourcing in general
by providing a better understanding of how to use a framework such as TCE to inform
outsourcing decisions.

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CHAPTER 4
ANALYSIS OF DATA AND FINDINGS
The purpose of this study was to determine the benefits or drawbacks of an educational
institution’s IT services being hosted in-house or being delivered by a third party or some hybrid
relationship where some services would be provided internally and others externally. Guided by
Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), this study sought to expand on the existing literature and
attempted to present a discussion as to how to better understand and make technology-
outsourcing decisions.
A qualitative case study of Western Global University’s (WGUs) Learning Management
System (LMS) Evaluation was conducted using observations, semi-structured interviews, and
document analysis to answer the driving research questions.
Organization of Data Analysis
In this chapter, data are presented based on each research question. After a coding
process to determine major and minor themes to address the research questions, qualitative data
such as quotes interviews and observations are used to support the themes presented with each
research question. The data presentation is organized such that the research question will be
presented, then an explanation of what was found through the themes. Immediately following
each major or minor theme are supporting qualitative data.
In the process of evaluating responses during the stage of data collection, several of the
original research questions were reframed. Research question 2 was modified to exclude student
stakeholders and study subjects, as discussed in chapter 3. Further, due to the similarity of
research questions 3 and 4, after the coding process, research question 4 was altered to reflect
what was perceived to be the most important question, discussing the difference between the
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stakeholders, as stakeholder similarities were derived in research question 3. So question 4 was
changed from “What factors do the different parties weigh to continue the relationship,
especially at times of contract renewal, and why? Further, are the values of both the institution
(the customer) and the service provider (the vendor) the same or dissimilar, and why? If the
decision is to pursue a new relationship, why?” to “What values of both the institution (the
customer) and the service provider (the vendor) are dissimilar, and why?” to better assess the
most important piece of the question and differentiate the question from Research Question 3.
All four research questions were altered to more specifically address the unique nature of
Educational Technology, changing from focusing on Information Technology (IT) to
Educational Technology (ET), also discussed as Instructional Technology, because, as will be
discussed later in this chapter, the data revealed how Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are
very important to the institutional stakeholders and the approach to LMSs and ETs evaluation
and use is much more thoughtful, complex and controversial than other traditional IT solutions.
Descriptive Characteristics of Respondents
The study was conducted according to what was proposed in chapter 3. Accordingly
Tables 3 and 4 in chapter 3 describe the study participants and settings. To review, three
representatives from various capacities within WGU’s IT organization were interviewed as well
as a faculty member. Four representatives of each of the invited LMS providers, two from the
current provider, were also interviewed. In addition observations were conducted of all six onsite
demonstrations of the LMS vendors. Finally, a review of video artifacts, websites and other
documents provided by WGU and the LMS’s was conducted.
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Research Questions and Associated Findings
The following are the four research questions employed in this study, immediately
followed by the corresponding results found through the data analysis.
Research Question 1: How is the decision to provide certain Educational Technology
services internally versus seek those services from an outside vendor being determined?
Based on the data, the factors that would be most important in determining the decision
were deciding as a team, the importance of time and whether the product/vendor was good
enough for institutional peers but different enough.
Research Question 2: Which Educational Technology services are being provided
internally and externally, what is the rational for each service, and what benefits or
drawbacks are associated with the decisions as perceived by the various stakeholders?
Organizational resources, product functionality and institutional stakeholder values,
discussed in question 3, determine what products and services have been outsourced and what
have not. A number of services were outsourced to vendors, but the institution maintains many
of the services themselves, because either the institutional representatives feel that providing
those services internally is important or the institution simply cannot outsource the services.
Research Question 3: What kinds of values are weighed by different positional
stakeholders in the decision to outsource, and what importance is given to those values?
A number of themes were derived from the coding of the data, but the most important
appeared to be understanding of context, which led to better informed decision making, product
and service reliability, user experience, finding the best fit by focusing on ‘abilities,’ stakeholder
relationships, support and institutional mission, with several subthemes.
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Research Question 4: What values of both the institution (the customer) and the service
providers (the vendors) are dissimilar?
From coding the data, two themes of note were derived. On the LMS side, the theme of
balancing business, relationships and opportunity became prevalent. On the institutional side, the
faculty just wanted the LMS to work.
Analysis of Data
Below is a more detailed look at the data analysis as presented by each research question.
Research Question 1: How is the decision to provide certain Educational Technology
services internally versus seek those services from an outside vendor being determined?
The final decision makers for the institution, including the President, the Provost, the
Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Associate CIO, were not available to discuss finitely
how the decision would be determined to either acquire a new LMS solution or continue using
the existing solution. Moreover, with the exception of the WGU Enterprise Applications Support
representative (EASR), none of the respondents were employed at WGU at the time of initial
adoption of the first LMS. However, based on the analysis of the data collected, three factors,
coded as themes, emerged that suggest an answer to this research question. In addition, other
factors contributing to the final recommendation to the decision makers are discussed in the
findings for question 3.
In discussions with the various stakeholders involved through interviews, the issue that
became clear was the enormity of this decision. According to the WGU LMS Contract
Administrator (CA), during the formal interview in late August, “it would be a huge decision.
It’s a huge cost decision but it also going to require some expense in downtime” (WGU LMS
Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013). Based on the data, the factors
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that would be most important in determining the decision were deciding as a team, the
importance of time and whether the product/vendor was good enough for institutional peers but
different enough.
Deciding as a team
While the decision itself would be up to a few, namely the senior administration, a
common thread throughout the data collection was that there was a concerted effort to make the
best recommendation possible to the decision makers. According to the WGU Help Desk
Manager (HDM):
In terms of the decision making, the way that the process is done usually I would say is
by consensus with myself and other directors involved and with that the person that will
ultimately be responsible for that application probably puts forth their recommendation of
perhaps the top one or two or three, uh, services or applications. And it would go forward
to our CIO and the, associates CIOs for the final decision

(WGU Help Desk Manager, personal communication, July, 2013). The HDM’s comments are
supported by the LMS CA, who commented similarly that “one of the CIOs, or one of the
associate CIOs will go to provost. He just makes the recommendation so, and we’ll, I’ll give all
of the data, have a really good explanation supported by everybody up the chain of command.
We just hand a report over and, you know, and say ‘This is what we need. It’s going to cost this.
Let’s make this happen’” (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication, August,
2013).
Importance of time in the decision making process
The importance of time repeated itself throughout the data. The decision would hinge on
the ability to not interrupt service, make decisions in a timely manner and deliver support
immediately. The urgency of making decisions in a timely manner was revealed throughout the
data. According to the WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) when discussing factors that he
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perceived affected the decision most, “the decision would have had to been made by the end of
summer. If we’re really going to pursue a new LMS solution… … I need it too by November
15th, if I don’t have by November 15th, it’s, it changes a lot of things come spring,” which was a
feeling echoed by the WGU Enterprise Applications Support Representative (EASR) on a
separate interview, saying there were absolute milestones that the decision needed to be made by
in order to really consider changing LMS solutions (WGU Enterprise Applications Support
Representative, personal communication, July, 2013; WGU LMS Contract Administrator,
personal communication, August, 2013).
Making decisions by a certain time were not the only consideration. Availability of the
service also added to the time consideration. The LMS CA, along with many of the other
respondents, indicated that mitigating downtime was of the utmost importance, saying “it would
be a huge decision. It’s a huge cost decision but it also going to require some expense in
downtime” saying that “the only time I can do that without impacting instruction is, Christmas
and even [then] I do it on a two system approach” to mitigate downtime (WGU LMS Contract
Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).
History of the institution with the LMS.
History, and learning from history, a factor that will be discussed more thoroughly in
response to question 3, was prevalent throughout the data. Within the finalized recommendation
to the administration, the EASR feedback was again used as a summation of the overall
Information Technology group’s feelings, saying, “if this was done a decade ago, I would pick
[LMS-2] as the vendor; they seem to be the most extensible and while that does present a unique
challenge to the support staff (much like an open-source solution for an application), I would
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echo the faculty's desire for this product,” but time spent and lessons learned motivates IT to
recommend remaining with LMS-1 (Document, LMS evaluation recommendation, 2013).
Good enough for our peers, but different enough for our institution
The major theme derived from the coding of the LMS evaluation data was the conflicting
but imperative nature of being competitive with institutional peers while still being distinct
enough to justify the move. The premise of the LMS evaluation process began by assessing the
LMS solutions used by WGU’s peer institutions, which include “the top 25 colleges and
universities based on US News and World report, the top 10 public and private campuses in the
US” (Video Artifact, Enterprise LMS Evaluation Meeting, 2012).
Good enough for our peers.
Remaining competitive with other peer institutions continually was commented upon
throughout the data. From how the LMS evaluation began to determining the final candidates to
be invited to campus, all of the stakeholders seemed concerned with what other institutions were
using. For example, at a recorded task force meeting, a female faculty member asked if the task
force was looking at MIT’s open courseware, but the LMS CA said no, because that solution
“was not designed as an enterprise LMS, rather an open course MOOC…” saying that “MOOCs
are relatively new and are meant for 1 off courses, not for enterprise solutions” and continuing
“that [WGU] was looking at what a ‘preponderance’ of the peer group was using, and that was
not one of them” (Video Artifact, Enterprise LMS Evaluation Meeting, 2013). Similarly, the
WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA), himself in an interview said, “I want to know that I’m
not going alone. I want to know what my peers have done…” continuing by saying, “if none of
them are using that platform, that’s a big warning sign to take because there are a lot of smart
people around the world who are all asking the same question. I don’t want to be the first to do a
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platform and I don’t want to be the last,” saying that “Cost is important but I think we’ve now
gotten into the point where that shouldn’t be the only determining factor (WGU LMS Contract
Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).
Different enough for us.
Changing providers was not as much of a concern for the staff of the Information
Technology department, as the idea was to faculty. Faculty tended to be more emotional about
specific tools, or lack there of, within the LMS or with the name, history and experience of an
LMS, discussed in question 3, than with the LMS itself. What resounded throughout the data was
that the decision would be bent on the idea that the new solution, whatever the solution was,
would need to be so different, and so much better to justify the move to a new LMS vendor
because of the criticality of the LMS. The WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative
(EASR) discussed the issue best, when he said “since we have invested so much into it, so much
money, so much time, so much, so many resources um, and we know it so well, I don’t see that
happening,” as he was commenting about certain faculty dislike of LMS-1 (WGU Enterprise
Applications Support Representative, personal communication, July, 2013). From his
perspective, the institution was too entrenched in the system to not have a very compelling
reason to move systems. The LMS EASR continues by saying “like I was talking about before
about them, the utter criticality of the LMS now, whatever it is, that can never happen from now
on. You know it’s, we’re at the point ... this isn’t 1998, we cannot not have a learning
management system you know…” commenting on how essential the system is to the institution.
He also goes so far as to say that “I think a lot of the decision making process and a lot of this is
sort of now colored by that fact because it’s not like you can just say well, we don’t want to do
any learning businesses anymore. There’s just no way to do that, it’s just too entrenched in a part
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critical core business of what the university does to have it disappear” (WGU Enterprise
Applications Support Representative, personal communication, July, 2013). He continues by
saying, “while they’re you know, again as you asked different people, they’re going to say well, I
want to do this because I know that product and that’s legitimate. But if there’s one person
saying that and a hundred people saying but we all know this other product and we like it and
we’re already running it. Why would we, why would we switch” (WGU Enterprise Applications
Support Representative, personal communication, July, 2013). He continues by saying “I mean,
whoever is actually going to make the decision that they need to weigh all of that and say is it
really worth it to, to change something that works because really, the bottom line for it is that it
works and it works well” (WGU Enterprise Applications Support Representative, personal
communication, July, 2013).
He concludes by reiterating “ So it’s the decision to move away from it, there really
needs to be a really compelling reason why, whether it’s a huge say, cost savings or a huge new
improvement in the way you do your business. I don’t see that there’s that kind of improvement
in the way that it does but I think they all sort of do the same thing one way or another. And I
don’t, I don’t know but I can’t imagine that these, that, any of the other applications are so much
cheaper that it will justify not only the, you know, the changing of who you send money to but
all the ... But paying for all the work that you’re going to have to do to move to a different
system whereas the cost of moving from [LMS-1] to [LMS-1] is essentially zero” (WGU
Enterprise Applications Support Representative, personal communication, July, 2013). As
presented earlier, the EASR feedback was used as a summation of the overall Information
Technology group’s feelings in the final recommendation based on the onsite vendor
demonstrations, saying:
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that we have invested a significant amount of time, effort, and money into LMS-1 is the
deciding factor for me to recommend that we stay with LMS-1. It may not be the "best"
of the 3, but unless we are really willing to invest the time, effort, and money (and that
should include new staff to handle the transition and then moving forward) I think that
we would be doing the University a disservice. Even if we are committing sufficient
resources to move, I think it may be more cost-effective to invest in our current
infrastructure (whether we stay in-house or hosted) (Document, LMS evaluation
recommendation, 2013).

The EASR’s comments were reflective of almost every IT service member interviewed and
observed. While IT was agnostic about who was finally chosen, moving away from the existing
LMS provider would need an absolute paramount justification that was yet to be revealed. The
IT staff members were so consistent in their view of the evaluation of the vendors that they on
separate occasions made nearly identical comments about the same vendor.
The EASR in the final recommendation was documented as saying “there's nothing
‘wrong’ with LMS-3, but if we were to move from LMS-1 I would recommend LMS-2 (there are
more similarities with the way LMS-3 and LMS-1 work, so a move to LMS-3 seems like just a
"re-brand" of our existing LMS),” which was similarly mentioned by the LMS CA after the
LMS-3 demonstration, walking out of the building as he commented that LMS-3 “seems like
‘new LMS-1’” (Document, LMS evaluation recommendation, 2013; LMS-3, Observation, April
7, 2013). So, being different enough to justify the move to a new product or service is suggested
to be a paramount issue in deciding whether or not to change vendors for this critically important
service.
Critical importance of the service.
Many of the EASR’s comments refer to the criticality of the system, intrinsically tied to
the decision. Changing products or vendors would hinge on a need for the new solution to be far
better and different. Like the WGU EASR, the WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA),
discusses how important the decision is based on the importance of the product and service to the
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institution, saying “[LMS-1] is the most important thing in the site” (WGU LMS Contract
Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013). The LMS CA discussed how “our
ultimate goal is to provide the best user experience and the best product for our faculty and
students. And we want to provide whatever program that is to do it,” continuing on to say that
the institution is not ‘married’ to LMS-1, but they have LMS-1 right now, and LMS-1 is
currently what best serves their stakeholders.
Research Question 2: Which Educational Technology services are being provided
internally and externally, what is the rational for each service, and what benefits or
drawbacks are associated with the decisions as perceived by the various stakeholders?
Through interviews, particularly with key IT stakeholders during interviews and review
of documents, the data revealed that there are a number of services outsourced to various
vendors, though mainly with various services provided by LMS-1’s company. The simple
answer to Research Question 2 can be drawn from the LMS Request for Information (RFI),
“[WGU] uses APIs to integrate three vendor’s services within the LMS: Turnitin (plagiarism
detection); OCLC EZProxy (library authentication); and Turning Technologies (student response
systems),” additionally, “[WGU], through a third party vendor, provides 24/7/365 tier 1
telephone-based LMS product support.” (Document, WGU RFI, 2012). However, based on
analysis of the data, a theme appeared out of detailing the services that were maintained
internally or provided by a vendor, stemming from a quote from the WGU’s LMS Contract
Administrator and interviews with other WGU IT personnel.
Organizational resources, product functionality and institutional stakeholder values
determine what products and services have been outsourced and what have not
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Weighing the costs of resources and opportunities to the benefits of outsourcing specific
functions appeared clear throughout the data collected. “I got a tier two which really is a tier one
and a half” was how the WGU LMS Contract Administrator discussed his services that he
chooses to outsource versus those he maintains internally (WGU LMS Contract Administrator,
personal communication, August, 2013). Throughout discussions with the WGU LMS CA, the
WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative (EASR), and the WGU Help Desk
Manager (HDM), there were a number of services revealed as being outsourced, but there were
specific reasons why certain services were kept internal, mainly based on the stakeholder values
discussed in the following section. In our in person interview, the WGU LMS Contract
Administrator (CA) discussed the various products that were outsourced, which included tier
one, meaning basic, phone support for students through another company which was purchased
by LMS-1. He also discussed how the institution made use of other LMS-1 products, including
their mobile solutions, added learning modules, distance communication tools, and others. His
justification for these decisions was “anything I can do to empower my faculty to be able to do
things” (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).
However, in some areas, the institution simply must provide the services for themselves.
Tier one support is essentially ‘basic,’ student phone support, such as questions about how to log
into the system. Tier two is more advanced support, such as support using features in the system,
often done in-person, and tier three support is expert level support, that which is provided by the
company to the institution’s IT staff. According to both the HDM and the LMS CA, tier one
support for students, and some faculty is provided by a third party vendor located geographically
elsewhere, which later became a part of LMS-1’s organization. Expert level, or tier three,
support, that requiring assistance with the software backend infrastructure for example, was also
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provided by the company to the ITS staff, but tier two support was a grey area. In discussing the
difference between tier one and two phone, email and in person support, the LMS CA said “I got
a tier two which really is a tier one and a half and it’s because I never actually pulled the trigger
on this. All e-mails automatically escalate to my tier two,” emphasizing the importance of direct
institutional support by saying “I will do tier one. I think tier two needs to be in-house, uh, just,
just to provide the support” (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication,
August, 2013). Like the LMS CA, the Enterprise Applications Representative also discussed
how tier one support was a phone call away, and tier three support was for the IT group to get
complex work done with the vendor, but “there are still going to be times where LMS-1 will get
a question and they’ll have to route it back to us. Because the question is like why aren’t my
students provisioned into a course kind of saying it, it’s like oh yeah, you got to come back to us
because we’re the one sitting between the student information system in LMS-1 and we can find
the answers” (WGU Enterprise Applications Support Representative, personal communication,
July, 2013). So, while a number of services are outsourced to the vendor, the institution
maintains many of the services themselves, because either they feel that providing those services
internally is important to show the users, meaning the students, staff and faculty, that their IT
support staff are there to assist the users in their work, building relationships with them, or the
institution simply cannot outsource the service due to the importance or unique nature of the
request/issue or limitations on the service level agreement (SLA) between the institution and the
vendor.
Research Question 3: What kinds of values are weighed by different positional
stakeholders in the decision to outsource, and what importance is given to those values?
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In addition to the considerations discussed in response to Research Question 1, including
the importance of time and whether the product/vendor was good enough for institutional peers
but different enough, as well as those in response to Research Question 2, the importance of or
need to provide certain support internally, due to the vendor’s inability to provide such services,
or the institution’s desire to provide them, other values are employed in the decision process. In
this section, key considerations will be discussed from the analysis of the data response
collected, where some themes will fall into larger themes, given their overall level of importance.
Moreover, the themes found in response to the first two research questions will resonate
throughout. A large number of themes were derived from the analysis of the data, but the seven
most important appeared to be: knowledge of context, which lead to better informed decision
making; product and service reliability; user experience, finding the best fit by focusing on
‘abilities;’ stakeholder relationships, support and institutional mission.
To illustrate the two part answers to the research question, two tables were created. Table
7 illustrates how the categories, derived from distinctly important codes lead to the theme
creation based on stakeholder group and organizational type. Codes were not included, as there
were too many to detail in an easily understood table; however, excerpts from the data are
discussed in the following sections. The levels of the section headings below present information
supporting each theme and subordinate categories of data, as presented in Table 7. Later, Table 8
presents the importance of those values/themes by each stakeholder group.
Table 7

Data Analysis: Themes and categories by stakeholder group
Theme 1: Intimate knowledge of local context leads to better informed decisions.
Category Stakeholder Group Organization Type
Context
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
The Institution’ understanding of the vendors
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
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Its easy to be unhappy WGU Faculty Institution
The vendors understanding of themselves LMS Vendors Vendor
Institutional history and reputation
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
Better informed decisions
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
Growing importance of the LMS
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
Institution helping inform itself
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
Vendors helping inform the institution LMS Vendors Vendor
Theme 2. Reliability of the product.
Category Stakeholder Group Organization Type
Reliability
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Table 7 (continued)
Control
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Implementation
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Account control
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Grading and Assessment
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
Security
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Location
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Recovery
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Theme 3. The user experience of the product and service.
Category Stakeholder Group Organization Type
User experience
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Access
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Accessibility
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Communication
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Stakeholder involvement
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Meet the students where they are WGU Faculty Institution
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Need to Evolve
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Not going to interrupt or diminish capabilities
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Theme 4. Finding the best fit for the institution, by focusing on ‘abilities’.
Category Stakeholder Group Organization Type
Ability
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Usability
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Value added
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Features/functions
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Table 7 (continued)
Beneficial tools
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Theme 5. Relationships are important.
Category Stakeholder Group Organization Type
Relationships between organizations.
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Relationships between IT and faculty.
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
Theme 6. Support in various forms.
Category Stakeholder Group Organization Type
Support by vendors.
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Support by Institutional IT staff. WGU Faculty Institution
Other forms of Support.
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Theme 7. Mission versus cost.
Category Stakeholder Group Organization Type
Core mission
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Monetary Cost
WGU IT Staff Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Knowing your business
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor
Teaching and Learning
WGU IT Staff Institution
WGU Faculty Institution
LMS Vendors Vendor

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Intimate knowledge of local context leads to better informed decisions
Understanding of institutional, vendor and industry histories and reputations became a
recurrent topic throughout the data. The LMS evaluation process began with an environmental
scan, which the LMS CA repeatedly presented to the stakeholders at various meetings and
presentations as well as on the LMS evaluation process website, discussing changes in the LMS
marketplace since 1997 to the present, due to “global economy shifts, new entrants and new or
expanded concepts” (LMS evaluation website, 2013).
Vendor histories and reputations.
The history and reputation of each vendor as well as the institution itself were also
repeatedly discussed. In terms of the vendors, the LMS CA discussed how, since the late 1990’s
“[LMS 1] started getting bigger and bigger, buying up their competition and integrating their
code” (Video Artifact, Enterprise LMS Evaluation Meeting, 2012). In a separate meeting with a
separate task force, when presenting the final six candidates to be invited to campus, the LMS
CA discussed the individual LMS providers. In that discussion, a number of topics were brought
up, including how LMS-1 had just went from being public to private and how LMS-1 had just
purchased the company providing support for a different LMS and would likely start providing
support for a third LMS (LMS task force meeting, video, 2013). At the same meeting, a female
faculty member expressed her concern to the group, warning about LMS-1’s future financial
stability.
On an over the phone interview with LMS-1’s Customer Relations Executive (CRE), he
commented how their organization is always trying to expand their business and their
organization often gets “pigeon toed” as an LMS or other reputations because of the stakeholder
they are speaking to is either familiar with their company or familiar with a company or product
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that their company purchased (LMS-1 Customer Relations Executive, personal communication,
July, 2013).
In a discussion with the WGU Faculty member (FM), he repeatedly discussed the lack of
interest in the LMS evaluation process by faculty members. He argued that faculty simply do not
care about the LMS at all, as long as the LMS is working, a feeling that will be discussed later, in
response to Research Question 4. However, what interested faculty was what they disliked about
the current LMS, or other LMS solutions they had experience with, particularly with LMS-1. He
said that “its easy to be unhappy with LMS-1” because LMS-1 was like Star Trek’s ‘Borg’
character, where they just go around assimilating others (WGU Faculty member, personal
communication, July, 2013). His concern over LMS-1’s seeming monopoly over the learning
management system industry was shared throughout the recorded meetings and observations of
the onsite demonstrations by several faculty who voiced their opinions.
Even the vendors themselves insist upon understanding their own histories. In a phone
interview with LMS-2’s Support Executive (SE), while he was commuting home from work, as
he was discussing how LMS-2 became involved in WGU’s RFI process, he made mention that “I
think we certainly saw a shift about a year ago whereby, uh, you know institutions knew who we
were and some of them were in fact actively seeking us at. Uh, whereas before we, uh, we often
had to say, ‘Oh, yeah. We do LMS as well.’ we were just so new” (LMS-2 Support Executive,
personal communication, July, 2013). Relative to the other LMS’s being considered, LMS-2
was the youngest, and LMS-2 staff were aware of their age. The SE continues by saying:
In some instances we have struggled to, uh, you know to show that we are for real, that
we are legitimate and thankfully all of our existing customers and clients have essentially
vouched for us and proven our record even in a short amount of time, but on the flip side
of it too I, I think it would be, uh, I don't think it would be fair to presume that being new
to the market is, an, uh, doesn't interest people. There's something about novelty too that
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has worked for our advantage at least to a small degree (LMS-2 Support Executive,
personal communication, July, 2013).

Institutional history and reputation.
Understanding institutional history proved to be important as well. Institutional history
informed the overarching theme of context and aids in the theme of making informed decisions,
discussed later. The WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) provides a key perspective when
discussing the institutions LMS history. All of the other institutional stakeholders comment on
the institutional LMS history as well, including the HDM and the EASR, and the faculty
member. When prior to the adoption of LMS-1, or any LMS, the WGU EASR discussed how
individual faculty began putting course content on personal websites. Then the institution
adopted a free solution, which was a predecessor to LMS-1. In 2000, a faculty evaluation
committee unanimously chose to acquire LMS-1. In 2002, LMS-1 was integrated with the
Student Information System, and has become more important ever sense. In 2008, the then
provost, currently president, of the institution, mandated a disaster recovery plan in response to
natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, so all courses were duplicated with online backups
through the institutional LMS.
According to the WGU Help Desk Manager (HDM) in an in person interview, “ I think
that from being a leader in an organization, I think you want to consider the reputation of the
organization that you deal with through the RFI, through contacts that we have in the industry,
through meeting the leaders of that organization. I think you do your own kind of review
process” discussing the importance of understanding the context of the vendors (WGU Help
Desk Manager, personal communication, July, 2013). She continues by saying “I would say that
the image that’s reflected by the outsource company does matter to [WGU]” (WGU Help Desk
Manager, personal communication, July, 2013).
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According to the WGU Help Desk Manager (HDM) in an in person interview, “at the end
of the day though, WGU’s name its brand and so forth is so deep and so strong that if anything
this organization that we outsource with, in my view I think they are trying to make sure that
they come up to meeting at the standards that we have with this organization. (WGU Help Desk
Manager, personal communication, July, 2013). Even the LMS providers understand the
importance of context, reputation, and image. Representatives of all the LMS providers made
note of WGU’s image or prestige. For example, on a phone interview with LMS-3 Sales
Representative (SR), she indicated that “we definitely see you as WGU as a beacon prospect,
prospective client” due to the institution’s large size and industry standing, in addition to a desire
to build a relationship with the institution, a theme discussed later (LMS-3 Sales Representative,
personal communication, July, 2013). So, in the end, image, and understanding histories all
contribute to understanding the context and making better informed the decisions, the next
theme.
Better informed decisions.
At a task force meeting with institutional stakeholders, the LMS CA discussed how
“decisions that we made 12 years ago, have serviced the university well for 12 years but now a
time to reevaluate,” as he was presenting WGU’s LMS implementation history since 1999,
summarizes the idea of making better informed decisions, shared by all stakeholders involved. In
that time, the institution had gone from not having an LMS, to faculty ‘putting content on their
personal websites,’ according to the WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative
(EASR) in an interview, to having an independent, free, trial version of an LMS, to integration of
the existing LMS into the student information system (SIS) in 2002, to having a course shell
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made for every course on campus now, as discussed earlier (Personal Communication, WGU
EASR, 2013; Video Artifact, Enterprise LMS Evaluation Meeting, 2012).
Making better informed decisions was a theme derived from all parties. From the
institutional stakeholder side, better informed decisions meant understanding the context, the
major theme discussed previously, including the histories of all parties and the landscape of the
industry. On the other hand, the vendors’ desire to assist the institution to make better informed
decisions to pick the best product and service they could for their context was a recurrent
discussion as well.
Growing importance of the LMS to the institution.
The LMS at WGU is becoming more and more important. According to the WGU
Enterprise Applications Support representative (EASR), the LMS is now just as important as the
Student Information System in terms of the academic data the LMS contains, the LMS’s use by
students and faculty, and the ability to continue providing education to the students, a feeling that
is reflected by the LMS CA.
According to the WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA),” at least in size and scope,
you know, it’s up there with SIS In fact, if SIS goes down for an hour, it’s not going to be
terrible. If [LMS-1] goes down for an hour, I need to barricade my door. I’m going to be a dead
man…” continuing by saying “[LMS-1] is the most important thing in the site” (WGU LMS
Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).
Institution helping inform itself.
Making an informed decision repeatedly was revealed as important to the institutional
stakeholders. When asked why bother with such a lengthy evaluation process that could result in
no change, the WGU Help Desk Manager (HDM):
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through the whole process of pursuing, you end up learning and reviewing what the
mission is, what the vision is? You understand some of their historical background. You
get metrics on what they’ve done in the past. You try to relate to disclose as you can to
whatever your needs are. In this case the learning management system to see, gee, what
does this really mean? How is this really going to affect us? You know, does their Web
site isn’t user friendly? Uh, are they going to allow us to put our particular branding
there? How is this going to be a good experience because it’s all about the user
experience? (WGU Help Desk Manager, personal communication, July, 2013)

relating the importance of the thorough evaluation process to the user experience, discussed as a
theme later.
The WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative (EASR) affirms this statement
by discussing how important the evaluation and final decision is because of the importance of the
service, by saying:
Yeah, it’s yeah, I mean, now, and especially because we put so much effort into it and
we’ve invested so much and now we’ve done things like uh, total cost of ownership in
these and other DR things. We realized how central this tool really is for the business of
the university. I don’t think we really thought about it that way at the beginning and ...
had we have done this LMS 15 years ago. Or if we’re in the same place we were, we are
like making a decision, we might not have chosen LMS-1. We might have gone
something that was more open source like or whatever because it tends to you know, in a
university, you get that kind of ... there is a lot of that it’s better if it’s open source
although I don’t necessarily agree with that. (WGU Enterprise Applications Support
Representative, personal communication, July, 2013).

The WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) continues by saying:

I want to make sure that we’ve, we’re doing the best thing possible and my concern is
works best for the institution,’ and “that there are pluses and minuses for each so our
focus is got to be beyond the IT shop, we can, we can handle anything. In what’s in the
best interest of the institution. What’s going to assist the faculty best, what’s going to
assist the students best, what’s going to assist the compliance, analytics, all the different,
you know, key factors, we all lay all that… And that’s, that’s the reason why we taken
such a long time on our LMS evaluation. If you look at what we’re doing we take it so
much longer than anybody else. (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal
communication, August, 2013).

He ends by saying,
I want to be careful ‘cause I recognize everything I do effects 40,000 people, 40,000
students or 12,000 students and you know, somebody will come to me and say can you
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put this in LMS-1 and that’s first thing that I think about is how this is impact my 40,000
students… (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).

Vendors helping inform the institution.
The vendors appeared to share an interest in helping the institution make the best decision
possible. At the LMS-3 morning session with the faculty, one of the presenters thanked the
attendees for allowing the company to respond to the RFI, jokingly commenting on how
thorough the RFI was, which he commented showed that the institution demonstrated their level
of concern about the evaluation process (LMS-3, Observation, April 7, 2013).
Reliability of the product
Reliability appeared to be the overarching theme encompassing other repeatedly
mentioned issues, including security and recovery, including disaster recovery. The WGU
Faculty member (FM) bluntly pointed out that he did not think faculty cared about the LMS in
general, but what they did want is for the LMS “not to surprise them” (WGU Faculty member,
personal communication, July, 2013). Faculty desire to have the product work every time was
discussed throughout the observations, in the use scenarios presented, particularly discussing
areas like the grade book, assessments, and communication tools.
Control from system-wide to course and user specific.
Control and ease of implementation were ideas repeated throughout the data. However,
control comes in many shapes. While the Information Technology department was concerned
with controlling the possible implementation, the faculty were concerned with controlling the
content of the course, and both were concerned with controlling student abilities. The vendors
appeared concerned with all three issues.
In terms of implementation, LMS-1’s Customer Relations Executive (CRE) discussed
“So, a lot of times institutions have ways in which they want that technology rolled out for their
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institutions, right? There's certain departments that may decide that they're going to roll out
sooner than others, and so, and it depends again on the institution on whether they're ones in
which they just throw that product out there like, "Here, everybody use it," right?” (LMS-1 CRE,
personal communication, 2013). In a number of sessions, there were discussions of how the
product would integrate into the system, particularly emphasizing how well the product would
get data from the student information system.
With regard to user controls, during the LMS-3 demonstration, but reflected in all the
demonstration, the representatives discussed how at every level one can setup administrators,
they have permissions but they also have a ‘scope’ can access anything below them but cannot
see anything on another side of the tree and could customize admin permissions within separate
trees (LMS-3, Observation, April 10, 2013).
Repeated throughout the discussions at the onsite demonstrations was the use of the grade
book and assignments tools. The tools of particular interest to many faculty members were
controlling assessments and grading. When asked about the rubric tool at the morning faculty
session, the LMS-3 representative commented that faculty “can change to whatever granularity
you’d like to asses,” inferring that the LMS providers were understanding of the issue (LMS-3,
Observation, April 10, 2013).
Part of the discussion of control was user’s security, particularly of their data. During an
interview with the WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA), he discussed how he would need to
be mindful of issues of content security and user data with all three vendors because, using LMS-
1 as the example, some vendors may store data outside of their systems (WGU LMS Contract
Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013). His was one of several similarly voiced
concerns, also reflected within the Request for Information (RFI) itself, sent to the vendors.
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Throughout the discussions between stakeholders across the entire LMS evaluation
process, location proved to be a recurring issue. Beginning with one of the initial task force
meetings with various stakeholders concerning which LMS should be invited to conduct onsite
demonstrations of their products, the WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) presented the
differences in types of software hosting solutions, whether the product could be locally hosted or
hosted in the cloud, off-site, in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, as discussed in the
literature review, stating to the various faculty and staff stakeholders that, “part of evaluation
process is not just 3 types of software but also geographic locations…” (Video Artifact,
Enterprise LMS Evaluation Meeting, 2012). As will be discussed in the following section,
geographic location also had impacts on disaster recovery. Moreover, location of the vendor’s
headquarters and facilities also was a concern for some stakeholders. For example, the LMS CA
expressed a concern over one of the vendors being located in Canada, saying that he has a
concern about his data “going over the border” (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal
communication, August, 2013).
System, data, content, and disaster recovery.
Recovery, especially in cases of loss of information and disaster, were repeatedly
discussed throughout the data. As presented earlier, a disaster recovery plan for the institution
was repeatedly mentioned, but even in cases of individual information recovery, the faculty and
other stakeholders were more than vocal about their concerns. For example, in the LMS-1
morning faculty session, as in all the sessions, how to recover information from previous classes
or accidentally deleted course content was mentioned, and in response to a particular faculty
member’s question, the LMS-1 presented said “Anytime I copy from one course to another, its
always an additive process, so I’m never going to be in a position where I am going to
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accidentally destroying in anything” a function discussed by every LMS presentation (LMS-1,
Observation, April 24, 2013).
LMS-2’s Support Executive also discussed the issue when talking about Cloud tools and
locations of content servers, saying that the LMS understands that faculty and IT organizations
want ‘uptime’ and ‘redundancy,’ which is what their solution provided (LMS-2 Support
Executive, personal communication, July, 2013).
As part of the recovery discussion, not only of recovery of course content, disaster
recovery proved to be paramount, particularly as part of the institutional mission, discussed
earlier. In a recorded meeting of the LMS task force, the LMS CA discusses the 5 day disaster
recovery plan of the institution, getting teaching back up and running immediately in case of a
disaster (Task force Video, 2013). And this concept was mentioned throughout the evaluation
process. The WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative (EASR) describes the idea
best in his phone interview by saying “it's essential we could run LMS-1 off of the campus if
there was some sort of disaster” when discussing a consideration for choosing hosted services,
meaning the cloud, versus hosting the product locally, as they currently do (WGU Enterprise
Applications Support Representative, personal communication, July, 2013).
The user experience of the product and service
In terms of the technology, the experience of the users, the faculty, IT staff and students,
is a shared concern between the vendors and the institutional stakeholders, as described
repeatedly throughout the other themes. In a conversation over the phone with LMS-1’s
Customer Relations Executive (CRE)
Uh, it's not just about physical decisions, about why you move, you know, certain
technologies. It's also about the user experience, the student experience, the faculty
experience, are we going to get the most of it? I love talking about ... So, Malcolm
Gladwell has this, uh, he has this speech he gives and he talks about the iPod and he says,
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"You know, the iPod is not the best mp3 player in the market." It's not even close, right?
There's a lot better features of mp3 players that are out there. iPod wins because it's easy,
right? Because it comes in a white box and you open it up, and there's a headset and a
cord and an iPod inside, and that's it, right? And you hook it up and you download your
music, and they've just figured out a way to make it incredibly simple. And I think that,
that simple design and the simple, uh, aspect of getting online and using a product like
that, I think, is something that's a big driver for people who want to use that versus, you
know, one of the probably better mp3 players out there. (LMS-1 CRE, personal
communication, 2013).

In an effort to enhance the user experience, all the vendors made mention of improvements to
their system to provide faster and easier access to specific content. In the LMS-2 morning
demonstration, the founder said they were “trying to expand the user’s mind with what you can
do with content… similar to the matrix ‘there is no spoon’ (LMS-2, Observation, April 3, 2013).
Similarly, the LMS-3 representatives in their morning session said “don’t take a step backwards,
just for ease of use and usability, get both if you can,” describing how ease of use and usability
were part and parcel to one another (LMS-3, Observation, April 10, 2013). As quoted earlier by
the WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA), “our ultimate goal is to provide the best user
experience and the best product for our faculty and students. And we want to provide whatever
program that is to do it” (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication, August,
2013).
Access to the product, content, and others.
A major part of the user experience for all parties is access. Access to the product, access
to the content, and access to each other, all play into the user experience. The presenter for LMS-
3 made the point succinctly in his demonstration to the faculty by saying “we’re really trying to
remove barriers as to how and when you use content” (LMS-3, Observation, April 10, 2013).
Removing barriers and increasing access resounded throughout the data.
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At the same demonstration, the LMS-3 representative commented that the overarching
philosophy of LMS-3 is “why should the system dictate the way you’re going to teach your
programs, why cant it do what you need it to do” (LMS-3, Observation, April 10, 2013). At the
LMS-2 faculty demonstration, a female representative echoed LMS-3’s comments when
responding to a different faculty member about a communication tool by saying that students can
control the level of notifications they receive, and in fact they increase the notifications because
they want more access to data (LMS-2, Observation, April 3, 2013). Another representative of
LMS-3 discussed how “as you do stuff in [LMS-3], notifications are automatically going out –
one of the things students like is that there is a tremendous amount of teacher presence without
the teachers doing any additional work” (LMS-3, Observation, April 10, 2013).
Accessibility, part of access, was also a major concern of all stakeholders. Repeatedly,
various stakeholders throughout the demonstrations inquired about the accessibility of the
products. An IT member, part of the LMS CA’s team asked all three vendors about accessibility
in their products, and LMS-3’s representative responded that “accessibility was built into the
core of the system” (LMS-3, Observation, April 10, 2013). While all three vendors discussed
accessibility in their presentations, representatives from both LMS-2 and LMS-3 in phone
interviews went out of their way to mention accessibility as part of their missions, without being
asked. LMS-3’s representatives brought the point home when they said at their morning faculty
demonstration that they believe in “a different kind of accessibility,” by increasing accessibility,
“they increase usability,” so access and accessibility all lead back to the user experience (LMS-3,
Observation, April 10, 2013).

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Communication.
In the LMS-2 morning session to the faculty, the founder said “teaching and learning is
great but it all comes down to communication,” and continued by saying “I like to call it friction,
we’re lowering friction to give that feedback,” which is absolutely true of all the stakeholders in
the data (LMS-2, Observation, April 3, 2013). He went on to say that the key part of usability is
“the best software is the software that you choose to use and want to use” which is why they
increased communication channels between students and faculty (LMS-2, Observation, April 3,
2013).
However, communication does not just apply to student to faculty. Communication is
essential to the user experience from students and faculty to their institutional IT support, and
from the institutional IT support to the vendors. In the in person interview with WGU’s Help
Desk Manager (HDM), she repeatedly discussed the various forms of feedback and
communication the students and faculty have with their IT department from annual surveys to
customer service feedback, and how essential that communication was to their work (WGU Help
Desk Manager, personal communication, July, 2013). Communication works in both directions
as well. The LMS Contract Administrator (CA) in his interview mentions how essential
communication is to the campus, saying “I don’t think there’s a person on campus who doesn’t
know it” when discussing any changes to any system in IT (WGU LMS Contract Administrator,
personal communication, August, 2013).
Along with communication was the common thread that developed across the stakeholder
groups was the inclusion of all key stakeholders within the process. When discussing the process
to the attendees at one of the recorded institutional task force meetings, the WGU LMS CA
discussed how ‘an email was sent to all curricular deans for 1 faculty member from each school
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to review the vendor presentations,’ regardless of if that school made use of the enterprise wide
LMS solution.
Paying attention to stakeholder involvement was important to the vendors as well. LMS-
1’s Customer Relations Executive (CRE) notes how courting faculty is just as important as
courting the administrators, while still keeping an eye on the decision maker, as he discusses
how,
The academic technology director used to decide what deal they went with, you know, 10
years ago, but today, maybe that decision is being driven by a faculty committee. Well,
those are the people we need to directly access and you have to politically be careful
about going around that box there that you don't want to sort of upset or think of that,
"Hey, no, no, no, I still care about you and I recognize that you're part of this process as
well," but also realizing at the same time that they may not be the ultimate decision-
maker. And there are a number of times we've been through a process where we stuck it
out with the CIO and the academic technology director and those are the people that we
work directly with and sold to and convinced, ‘This is the right solution for you.’ And
then they come back and they're like, ‘Well, it wasn't really our decision. The faculty
voted and they went with the other product.’ And so it's like, ‘Well, why was I showing
to you then, in the first place, if you weren't the decision-maker?’ And so, I think during a
sales process, you got to figure out who are right people that, that, you know, are making
the decisions and, and if faculty are the ones that are doing it, then those are the people
you got to directly go to and, and sell to. (LMS-1 CRE, personal communication, 2013).

LMS-3 Sales Representative (SR) also discussed how in a process like the LMS evaluation by
WGU, “You need to get buy in from all levels” because there are three levels of influence,
administrators, IT staff and faculty with their own interests and needs (LMS-3 Sales
Representative, personal communication, July, 2013). Similarly, the Support Executive from
LMS-2 had almost exactly the same description, that each of the three groups had ‘common
interests’ as well as unique ones that all needed to be taken into account, such as IT’s concerns
about how well the LMS will integrate into the system with the faculty’s interest in whether or
not the tool will help the students achieve more (LMS-2 Support Executive, personal
communication, July, 2013).
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Meet the students where they are.
A part of the user experience is addressing the students the way they want to be met. The
WGU faculty member in his phone interview described this as “meet the students where they
are,” saying that faculty sometimes neglect the world around them, and sometimes they go
overboard with students, as “digital natives” by throwing “every bell and whistle at them, but the
students understand that.” He argued that faculty and institutions need to adapt to the students
needs, for example skillfully incorporating rich content (WGU Faculty member, personal
communication, July, 2013). He continued by saying that students are savvy and understand
when a faculty member is using technology pedagogically well and when he/she is not.
This faculty opinion was shared by the vendors. In the LMS-1 afternoon session, they
commented on how there was “a new pedagogical need and student desire for embedding video”
(LMS-1, Observation, April 24, 2013). They also said in the morning session that students want
to view their documents immediately in the manner in which the faculty will see the document
after upload, which they built into their system. All three of the vendors included new
technologies to enable students gain access to information easier and more quickly than
previously. By removing barriers and enhancing technologies, the providers are trying to inspire
users to become more student-centric.
Need to evolve.
Along with meeting the students where they are at is the need to evolve. The need to
evolve with technology was reflected throughout the study. In a conversation over the phone
with LMS-1’s Customer Relations Executive (CRE), he discussed how institutions need to
evolve saying “the problem is the world around higher education is undergoing significant
change. Um, and so, and, and really that's driven by a digital and technological evolution, right?
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Uh, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that people are really being driven by mobile devices
more than anything else and that's changing the way institutions are accessed and how education
is accessed” (LMS-1 Customer Relations Executive, personal communication, July, 2013). The
WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative (EASR) in his interview similarly
comments that “what’s going on in the whole undergraduate experience is completely built on
our online sort of um, point of view. You know, it’s, you’re connected in 18 different ways,”
stressing the need to have a solution to address the connected needs of students, which in turn
emphasizes the importance of the LMS (WGU Enterprise Applications Support Representative,
personal communication, July, 2013).
Not going to interrupt or diminish capabilities.
In her interview, the WGU Help Desk Manager (HDM) discussed how “we try to engage
with vendors that can convince us that that experience would be seamless” in terms of the
transition to a new possible LMS vendor (WGU Help Desk Manager, personal communication,
July, 2013). This is a theme that carried throughout the study. The vendors, IT staff and faculty
alike all seemed concerned with ensuring that the transition, if there was going to be one, be
absolutely without incident. The WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative (EASR)
concurred in his interview by saying “I would just say to the whole process system is that we
have to make sure we’re providing the same you know, same or better level of support, either
direction” (WGU Enterprise Applications Support Representative, personal communication,
July, 2013). And again by the WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) who said “I want make
sure that I’m not losing features” (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication,
August, 2013). Finally, the WGU faculty member, also discussed how, the only way faculty
would react to the LMS transition, if there was one, was if the transition interrupted their ability
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to use the system, for example if the interface was so drastically different. Even the LMS
vendors in their demonstrations repeatedly made mention of ensuring that any changes would be
slight, to ensure ease of use, discussed earlier.
Finding the best fit by focusing on ‘abilities’
Finding a product and service that best fit for the institution became paramount. One of
the 3 assumptions indicated by several documents generated by the LMS evaluation task force
stated that the “ideal LMS may not exist,” which was followed by another assumption discussing
how the “focus is ‘abilities’ trump tools” (Video Artifact, Enterprise LMS Evaluation Meeting,
2012).
In the effort to find the best fit and focus on abilities, there were slightly disparate
stakeholder areas of concern. While the faculty were focused more on abilities in terms of
usability, the Information Technology Services group were focused more widely, and the
vendors catered to both groups. The best examples of this came from the onsite demonstrations
by the vendors. The faculty sessions in the morning focused specifically on use scenarios,
beginning with uploading a syllabus quickly and including other areas like uploading content,
modifying grade books, and combining/separating rosters, grade data and other course content.
On the other hand the “IT afternoon meetings [were] not as bounded… …ITS will [evaluate] a
total cost of ownership, and additional dimensions of each vendor’s LMS platform including
estimated cost, infrastructure and staffing requirements, and value added,” according to the LMS
CA at a task force meeting (Video Artifact, Enterprise LMS Evaluation Meeting, 2012).
The focus on abilities theme carried throughout all the stakeholders. Even the LMS
providers understood that no solution was perfect. The LMS-1 Customer Relations Executive
even went so far as to say in his interview “I think of it as about features and functions. If it's
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about discussion boards versus grade centers then I don't think you're looking at the big picture
and I think that in the end of the day when people are decided on ERP systems or deciding a
different technology, technology is just generally disappointing, right? It never meets the
expectations, right?” (LMS-1 Customer Relations Executive, personal communication, July,
2013). He continues by discussing the best decisions about technology are not over certain
features, but over how well the technology incorporates into the technology plan in general.
LMS-3’s Sales Representative maintained a similar message by saying the need is to understand
the individual and “find the tools that are most beneficial to you” because in the end all the
LMS’s have similar features, though some may provide them better than others. Even LMS-2’s
Support executive echoed these comments in his interview, critiquing LMS-1’s corporate history
by saying they previously attempted to copyright the teacher role, so no other LMS could have
one, but in the end the focus should be on the abilities the product and service gives the
institution. The female representative at the faculty morning demonstration of LMS-2 brought
the concept home by saying to the faculty that they were “not forcing anyone to do anything,
giving them the tools they want to use” (LMS-2, Observation, April 3, 2013).
Relationships are important
In his in person interview, the WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) describes why he
enjoys his work, saying “technology is great but this job is about relationships and it’s about
building relationships and, and making everybody understand, you know, to look out there and
care for” them (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013). In
all the interviews with all the stakeholders, every one made mention of the importance of
relationships. Whether one was discussing the relationship between the vendor and the
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institution, the relationships between the IT staff and faculty or the relationships between
individuals, the theme of relationships repeated itself throughout the study.
Relationships between organizations.
The WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) described the importance of vendor relationships
best when he said “I want to know that I got a robust partner that’s going to be with me, that has
a long-term vision,” emphasizing that the contract is a partnership for the long term (WGU LMS
Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013). The LMS-2 Support executive
also commented on how important a collaborative relationship was for a long term partnership
(LMS-2 Support Executive, personal communication, July, 2013). When describing this
partnership, the WGU Help Desk Manager (HDM) “a big mistake all organizations like I’ve seen
if for years is that you hire a vendor and you think they’re going to be you and you think they’re
going to care like you care and they don’t. I think they … they would like to but you’re not their
only customer,” so actively monitoring the relationship is essential (WGU Help Desk Manager,
personal communication, July, 2013).
Relationships between IT and faculty.
The WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) mentioned the importance of letting the
faculty know they were being heard (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal
communication, August, 2013). He described how prior to his arrival, the LMS support team had
a legacy of being ignored, but actively listening to the faculty helped them build the relationship
they had today.
Along with IT listening to faculty was seen the need for faculty to trust in IT. In his
interview, the WGU Faculty member (FM) described how important trusting the LMS CA and
his team was to faculty, because as was mentioned earlier, faculty simply do not care or are not
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incentivized to care about the LMS (WGU Faculty member, personal communication, July,
2013). What the faculty concern themselves with is ensuring that they are able to deliver
instruction, saying “I think outsourcing is imperative but in terms of the actual experience for
faculty and for students, what really matters is, is do we have good people in-house who can
keep an eye on things? That, that to me is the fundamental criteria” (WGU Faculty member,
personal communication, July, 2013). This fundamental criterion is echoed by other institutional
stakeholders as well. The WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative (EASR),
discussed in his interview how “if everything works, nobody knows we exist,” as he described
the essential nature of IT staff between the faculty user and the LMS provider, saying that while
IT is not teaching classes, they have contact with both sides, and they see the big picture, helping
them to build the relationships and ensure support (WGU Enterprise Applications Support
Representative, personal communication, July, 2013).
Support in Various Forms
Support is an issue recurrent throughout the LMS evaluation process. Support by both the
local IT staff as well as the vendor staff were repeatedly discussed. Moreover, access to other
forms of readily available support was emphasized as well.
Support by vendors.
In a discussion with the faculty in one of the recorded task force videos, the LMS CA
discussed how WGU requires “four 9’s” or “99.99%” up time in their LMS service (Task force
meeting video, 2013). In the same discussion, one of the IT staff members noted to the faculty
that if the institution were to transition to a new LMS, the concern for IT would be lack of
support personnel, as they all required different types of infrastructure. Some other vendors were
in fact not considered because they ‘lacked depth’ in their support areas.
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Moreover, the LMS vendors themselves discussed their support capabilities. Both at the
LMS-3 afternoon demonstration and over her phone interview, the LMS-3 Sales Representative
(SR) discussed ‘Super Ninja Level Support’ that WGU was requesting. Moreover, in LMS-2’s
onsite demonstration, they also discussed their ability to provide “three 9’s or 99.9% uptime.”
Support by institutional IT staff.
Given the nature of her position, the WGU Help Desk Manager (HDM), in her interview,
discussed support from the LMS and support to the users in depth by describing how whatever
decision was made, the support would need to meet or exceed the standards that her team had put
in place over the last 12 years. At the same time, the WGU LMS CA also discussed how best of
breed support materials were generated and readily available to faculty and students through
training websites and other mediums.
Other forms of support.
In the LMS-3 morning demonstration, a female faculty member asks about a question
mark symbol on the LMS site, asking if the symbol was ‘just in time support,’ to which the LMS
representative confirmed, saying support was available throughout the product (LMS-3,
Observation, April 10, 2013). This was a recurrent theme throughout the collection. Support
when the user’s need support. The institution also went out of the way to provide support, the
LMS CA discussing how they discovered that providing short, easily understandable video
lessons to faculty, rather than formal workshops was more effective for faculty (WGU LMS
Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).
Mission versus Cost
The final factor that was discussed by every single interviewee was core mission
justifying the cost of outsourcing services. In a conversation over the phone with LMS-1’s
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Customer Relations Executive (CRE), he summarizes the idea by saying “at the end of the day, it
comes down to what you believe your core competency is, right? " comparing the mission of the
institution with the cost of the product, saying that the mission of educational institutions was to
teach and learn, and if the right tool was available to address that need was available, one should
acquire the tool, regardless of cost (LMS-1 Customer Relations Executive, personal
communication, July, 2013).
This core mission versus cost idea was repeated by every stakeholder. Every vendor
discussed how their mission was to provide the LMS service to the institution to aid the
institution in the institutional mission. While the institutional stakeholders respectively all
discussed how cost was not a concern for the right tool. For example the WGU Help Desk
Manager (HDM) in her interview discussed how “the biggest value [of LMS-1] is I do think they
know their business well,” as she discussed how the LMS provider can provide better support for
their products than the institution could; moreover, that in spite of what faculty desired, which
was tier one institutional support, the institutional IT could simply not provide that level of
support with current means (WGU Help Desk Manager, personal communication, July, 2013).
The WGU Enterprise Applications Support representative (EASR) compounded the argument by
saying regardless of whether the products were hosted onsite or by the provider, there would be a
cost either way, but the cost would be negligible, so what would be more important would be
look at what the institution would be getting in return, for example less infrastructure for better
service. (WGU Enterprise Applications Support Representative, personal communication, July,
2013).
The WGU LMS Contract Administrator (CA) finalized the argument when he stated in
his interview that “yeah, and I think one of the things that I appreciate about working at [WGU]
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is that if there’s a need and we can make the need, the university will make the resources
available to make it happen. You just have to prove the need” (WGU LMS Contract
Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013). He continued by saying “the nice thing
and I’m getting this from the CIO is that I shouldn’t be focusing necessarily on cost” rather to
focus on the need (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).
Importance of the values by group
While the values derived from the data analysis were just discussed, the second part of
the research question was to attempt to determine what importance the stakeholders placed on
the values/themes. Table 8 presents the values being weighed by each organization type and
stakeholder group. While all the stakeholders discussed areas within each theme, the analysis
revealed each stakeholder group emphasized certain themes more than others within their
interviews, discussions, documents and other data. Table 8, in the right column, lists the most
significant values discussed by the stakeholders, ranking their importance from top as most
important to bottom as least important. While the WGU IT staff members were weighing all
themes, the WGU faculty members were concentrating most on their user experiences, and
ensure the product was reliable. What the vendors seemed most concerned with was having the
institution focus on the business of teaching and learning, while allowing the vendor to focus on
the LMS product and related services.
Table 8

Data Analysis: Stakeholder group Value Priorities
Organization
Type
Stakeholder Group Theme/Values Considered Highly
Institution

WGU IT Staff
The user experience of the product and service.
Intimate knowledge of local context leads to better
informed decisions.
Finding the best fit, focus on ‘abilities’.
Relationships are important.
Support.
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Institution WGU Faculty
The user experience of the product and service.
Reliability of the product.
Vendors LMS Vendors
Mission versus cost.
Finding the best fit, focus on ‘abilities’.
The user experience of the product and service.

Research Question 4: What values of both the institution (the customer) and the service
providers (the vendors) are dissimilar?
Throughout the data collection, several factors seemed to be important to all the vendors
and institutional stakeholders, though in different ways, as discussed in response to Research
Question 3. However, what became interesting was the difference within groups. Within the
institution, the Information Technology group was for the most part agnostic about which vendor
was chosen, but focused more on the technical aspects of the product and services, while the
faculty representative was not concerned at all about the process, but just wanted the product to
‘just work,’ as discussed previously. On the other end, while all the vendors shared a desire for
business with building a relationship, one of the three vendors appeared to be much more
monetarily driven than the other two, who appeared to be more mission and relationship focused.
From coding the data, two themes of note were derived. On the LMS side, the theme of
balancing business, relationships and opportunity became prevalent. On the institutional side, the
faculty just wanted the LMS to work.
Vendors: Balancing business, relationships and opportunity.
As discussed earlier, balancing business with building relationships and expanding
opportunities seemed to be a challenge for the vendors. One vendor appeared to take a far
different perspective than the other two. In a conversation over the phone with LMS-1’s
Customer Relations Executive (CRE), toward the end of the interview, after being described the
study and the Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) framework, he commented “ I can't think of a
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situation that's not monetary related for a reason we would reject the contract” saying that, unless
there was a substantial amount of risk to the company, there would be little reason to not enter
into a contract with the institution or other organization (LMS-1 Customer Relations Executive,
personal communication, July, 2013). He continued by saying that the company would take a
‘marginal loss’ in one area if organization, like WGU, in the relationship made use of other
services, what he called ‘components,’ to make up for that loss. He continued by saying that the
hope for additional business would also be considered when taking a loss, saying “I mean, other
factors that they get associated in are also, you know, other product sales, right? Other product
opportunities, you know,” saying that the company would be willing to take a loss if the
opportunity for new business was there. In a separate interview a few months later, LMS-1’s
Infrastructure Support Executive (ISE) responded almost exactly the same, in many aspects, but
more bluntly, by saying “Well, I think, I mean the answer to that is actually very obvious, right?
I mean we need customers for this company to continue to survive, right?“ when discussing the
motivation of the company to participate in the onsite demonstrations of the products (LMS-1
Infrastructure Support Executive, personal communication, September, 2013). He even likened
outsourcing of an LMS to that of a campus food service, exactly the same as LMS-1’s CRE
(LMS-1 Infrastructure Support Executive, personal communication, September, 2013).
On the other hand, the LMS-3 Sales Representative (SR) in another phone interview said
“I would definitely say we're more mission driven. In fact, 40% of our staff members are in
research and development alone. So that's R and D, 40%… I cannot think of any company who
can say that. And also we have a 98% client retention rate. …We're really here to be the partner,
instead of just selling products,” discussing the mission of the company to help institutions find
better way to provide “opportunities for more people” (LMS-3 Sales Representative, personal
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communication, July, 2013). She argued that their corporate culture stemmed from their mission
and the support of their ‘CO,’ company leader. Understanding history and context, she went on
to say “we've been around for 14 years. Even though we know what we're doing, we're
constantly innovating. We're humbled by the 98% client retention rate. And we don't buy up the
competition, unlike another major competitor of ours. So we're not here just to be monopolistic
or oligo, oligopoly, oligopolistic, but we're here to, you know, do what we do best” comparing
LMS-3 to LMS-1 (LMS-3 Sales Representative, personal communication, July, 2013).
LMS-2 also appeared to prioritize mission and relationships over pursuit of business and
opportunities. One of the complaints repeated throughout the various meetings, documents,
observations, and interviews, was the use of third party tools and purchasable add-ons to the
service by LMS-1 and other LMS providers, but in the morning faculty session of LMS-2’s
onsite demonstration, in response to a question by a faculty member, a female member of the
LMS-2 sales team responds that “that [LMS-2] does not have add-ons, what you see is what you
pay for, there are no additional fees” (LMS-2, Observation, April 3, 2013). Similarly, in an
interview with LMS-2’s Executive in charge of Support, when jokingly discussing the reason he
returned to LMS-2 from years of working in higher education:
we say, ‘You know what? The best, the best way to run a business is to embrace both
open source culture and, uh, for profit capitalism.’ Right? You can achieve great things
by embracing both. You don't have to pick one or the other. You don't have to be so
driven by profit that, uh, everything else is kind of obscured. If you, if you keep your
roots in open source culture, which is like a culture of generosity and sharing then you'll
never forget, um, what it is that really matters. That's helping people with technology
(LMS-2 Support Executive, personal communication, July, 2013).

So the cultures of the three vendors appeared to be very similar in many ways, as described in
response to Research Question 3. They share common motivations and concerns. However, there
appears to be a fundamental difference in the motivations between these three companies.
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Throughout the interviews with representatives from all three, the two from LMS-1 were very
honest about their company’s monetary motivation. The representatives from LMS-2 and LMS-3
insisted upon a focus of building long lasting relationships.
WGU: Faculty want reliability.
In the phone interview with the WGU Faculty member (FM), when asked about the LMS
evaluation process and faculty beliefs, the FM responded by saying that “faculty want it to just
work,” discussing how:
the research, the reward structure in the Professoriate as you know is um, is primarily um,
one that privileges research. And typically to the three, you know the three legs of the
stool, in academe for the faculty are teaching, research, and service. That’s the way that
they're spoken. But uh, to paraphrase uh St. Paul um, uh Faith, hope, and love, the
greatest of these is love. Uh teaching research and service, the greatest of these is
research. So that’s what gets people hired. That’s what keeps people retained, and that’s
what gets them promotion and tenure. So with that understood, um the LMS becomes a
tool in the teaching category typically. That’s, that’s the extent of it. That most people
just don't pay attention. So um, it wasn't I think ... what you characterize the vendor
demonstrations of the faculty responses was right, was right on. And I think it’s an
accurate capturing of faculty desire for but disinterest in an LMS that um, that works
(WGU Faculty member, personal communication, July, 2013).

Saying that simply put, faculty are not incentivized to care about the LMS. He goes on to say that
the faculty are only going to really care if one of two things happen, either 1) the transition to a
new LMS (or upgrade to a new version in terms of LMS-1) were difficult or “onerous” or 2) if
the interface were so drastically different, the FM saying “That’s really what bothers a lot of
faculty where there’s a change and they feel uncomfortable. And they have to therefore think
about it and maybe look at a tutorial or uh, whatever it might be” as he discussed the major
difference between his perception of IT’s perspective of the LMS evaluation versus the faculty
perspective (WGU Faculty member, personal communication, July, 2013). The WGU faculty
member discussed how they are relying on the institutional IT to ensure the product works,
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which is why the institutional IT is conducting such a thoughtful process, as discussed in
response to Research Question 3.
Summary
In this study and in education in general, faculty members are the primary end users of
information and instructional technologies at educational institutions, with multiple demands on
their time, one of which being educating students. These demands incline faculty to have strong
opinions on technologies like learning management systems, particularly when those
technologies hinder the faculty member’s efforts. So IT organizations and vendors try to support
the faculty’s needs. Based on the changing needs of faculty and students, decisions as to what
technologies and services will be made available, procured, adopted, and discarded are being
made every day by administrators of educational institutions, drawing on institutional
stakeholder support. In terms of the Learning Management System at WGU, a number of factors
are contributing to how the decision is made to outsource or not, and a number of factors are
being weighed. Factors such as time, peer use and different tools are seen as important in the
final process when deciding to outsource. Additionally, factors such as support, reliability,
history, and user experience are also considered. In the end, vendors still want to push for more
business while faculty want their products to just work, all with the students in the balance.
Chapter 5 will draw on the literature presented in Chapter 2 and the findings in this chapter
(chapter 4) to discuss conclusions and implications of this study.

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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
The purpose of this qualitative case study was to determine the benefits or possible
drawbacks of an educational institution’s IT products or services being hosted in-house or being
delivered by a third party or some hybrid relationship where some services are provided
internally and others externally. Using Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) as the framework, for
this study the research followed along Western Global University’s ongoing Learning
Management System (LMS) evaluation. This process was conducted to understand the values
and motivations of the various stakeholders involved in the process both on the institutional
(customer) side as well as that of the vendors (the firms).
In the previous chapters, the reader was presented the background of the study, the
framework and a literature review to support the study. A detailed presentation of the study
methodology was then described. Finally, after data was collected and analysis was conducted,
findings and supporting data were presented. In this chapter, a brief summary of the study is
presented. A section of conclusions follows which compares and contrasts the findings of this
study with existing research, drawing particularly on the literature review in chapter 2. A section
on implications, or suggestions for practice, follows. Finally, a discussion of proposed future
research to address literature gaps will also be mentioned.
Summary of the Study
This study was designed to answer four research questions, in an effort to better
understand the factors that are involved in decisions over Information Technology (IT) products
and services procurement and delivery in higher education settings. In particular, this study
followed along a multi-year Learning Management System (LMS) evaluation process at Western
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Global University (WGU), beginning with an institutional needs assessment and culminating in
onsite demonstrations of three invited LMS providers. This study paid particular focus to the
process leading up to the onsite demonstrations.
Drawing on existing documents and video artifacts, this study made use of observations
and follow up interviews to inform the research. After document collection, observations of six
onsite demonstrations by three vendors with durations of two hour or more each were conducted
in April, 2013. Between May and September, 2013, eight interviews, two in person and four over
the phone, were conducted with four institutional stakeholders and four vendor representatives of
one hour or more in length. Open coding was conducted with the data sources, and themes
responding to each of the four research questions were derived. The following section will
present the research questions immediately proceeded by the findings related to each question.
With each finding, a discussion of the available literature will be presented.
Conclusions
Drawing on Williamson’s (1973) popularization of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE),
this qualitative case study endeavored to determine the benefits or possible drawbacks of an
educational institution’s IT services being hosted in-house or being delivered by a third party or
some hybrid relationship of both. This study also sought to understand the values and
considerations employed by stakeholders in contributing to these types of decisions. The study
was designed around four research questions, which slightly changed as analysis was conducted.
Findings were derived from analysis the data. The following sections will be presented in
segments based on research questions and findings. Following each research question, the
findings will be discussed in comparison to existing literature, on IT in general. Something
specifically revealed through this study was the importance and unique nature of the LMS to the
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campus compared to other types of IT systems, which will be discussed in the implications, so
the conclusions draw on the IT literature to relate the findings, but they are study and LMS
specific in scope.
Research Question 1: How is the decision to provide certain Educational Technology
services internally versus seek those services from an outside vendor being determined?
Three factors most important to LMS-outsourcing decisions were deciding as a team, the
importance of time and whether the product/vendor was good enough for institutional peers but
different enough for the institution’ specific needs. Each will be discussed in the following
section.
Deciding as a team, or involvement of the different “power centres,” is one of the key
factors to outsourcing information technology (IT) and systems according to Ngwenyama and
Bryson (1999) in their discussions of TCE and IT outsourcing. Benke and Otte (2006) describe
how senior administrators, middle managers, IT staff, deans and individual faculty all play a role
in decisions over technology use and adoption, because any of them can ‘bless’ it or ‘obstruct’ it,
or as the authors describe “given the need for players at every level, leadership is much more
about orchestrating the interaction of all the stakeholders than providing direction in a top-down
manner” (p. 23). Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, and Kaya (2009) illustrate this type of decision
making as “the fuzzy group decision making methodology,” where they describe how every
department or group have a right to participate in the IT outsourcing decision making and the key
was to obtain a significant enough level of consensus in order for the decision to be decision
acceptable (p. 835).
The importance of time to the decision was another factor. Chester (2011) describes the
various consequences of time best in his work “Outsource the Transactional, Keep the
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Transformative,” where he discusses various time-related aspects to deciding to outsource.
Institutional investment in time-consuming basic support services, need to minimize downtime,
wait time, all are presented as considerations leading to the decision.
Comparisons with peer organizations is common to outsourcing decisions across
industries but is of particular importance to higher education institutions (Goldstein, 2010; Hall
& Lietdtka, 2005; Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006;
McCord, 2002). Like WGU’s case, higher education institutions tend to procure the same goods
and services as their peers. However, the literature also reflects a need to be different as well.
Ngwenyama and Bryson (1999), and more recently Gonzalez, Gasco, and Llopis (2009)
and others, discuss how a main factor to consider in outsourcing IT goods and services is the
level of risk. One of the risks is that of transitioning to a new system. The authors argue that any
decision for a new good or service must weigh weather or not the new service is so substantially
better than the existing service that the risks associated with transition and implementation is
justified, for example the possibility of the inability of users to adapt to the new technologies.
Research Question 2: Which Educational Technology services are being provided
internally and externally, what is the rational for each service, and what benefits or
drawbacks are associated with the decisions as perceived by the various stakeholders?
Organizational resources, product functionality and institutional stakeholder values
determine what products and services have been outsourced and what is not. While a number of
services were outsourced to the vendor, the institution retained many of the services themselves
for two main reasons: a) they feel that providing those services internally was important or b)
they simply could not outsource the services at the time. In terms of the TCE literature, the LMS
product and services decision is a buy/make decision that is relatively ‘sticky’ in terms of the fact
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that that there are high costs to reversing the decision or changing products and/or services to
frequently.
In the case of both Chester’s (2011) discussion of Pepperdine’s outsourcing of certain
services to SunGard Higher Education, or Reese and Sutton’s (2007) discussion of Roosevelt
University’s outsourcing of the university help desk, both were reflective of the LMS Contract
Administrators sentiments and this theme. “Co-sourcing” as Reese and Sutton (2007) described
their solution was the best fit for all three organizations. According to Chester (2011), basic,
replicable and easily provided services such as password resets were outsourced, where
knowledge-centric tasks requiring highly skilled personnel and on campus, in-person services,
were kept internal for a number of reasons, including the need to provide an in-person user
experience to the faculty and students.
Research Question 3: What kinds of values are weighed by different positional
stakeholders in the decision to outsource, and what importance is given to those values?
The values stakeholders weighed included understanding of context leading to better
informed decision making, product and service reliability, user experience, finding the best fit by
focusing on ‘abilities,’ stakeholder relationships, support and institutional mission. Other themes
of what coded to be less value were also derived but are not discussed.
Intimate knowledge of local context leads to better informed decisions
Having a better understanding of one’s own organization is important to LMS
outsourcing decisions (Reese & Sutton, 2007). Factors such as organizational history and context
provide lessons learned to institutions in deciding to acquire or add services (Nagpal, 2004;
Ngwenyama & Bryson, 1999). The previous experiences of WGU as well as other institutions
affect how the decision will be made. Because the institution has a history with the current
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vendor’s products and services, as well as other similar histories with other vendors, the
institutional stakeholders have learned from their experiences, and have developed very strong
points of view as to what they want and do not want out of the goods and services in their
decisions. As both the WGU Enterprise Systems representative and the Help Desk manager
discussed in their interviews, had this decision to acquire an LMS been years earlier, the
institution may not have opted for LMS-1 at all; however, because of the time invested in
working with the vendor, building the infrastructure, and adjusting to the relationship between
the vendor and the users, the lessons learned from those experiences were greatly influencing
their decision process.
Reliability of the Product
Like WGU, cost, control, performance, interoperability, compatibility and adaptability
are all points of concern for higher education institutions in technology, particularly software,
purchasing decisions (Beatty & Ulasewicz, 2006; Coombs, 2007; Courant & Griffiths, 2006;
Cradler, Freeman, & Burchett, 2002; Guhlin, 2007). While there are risks involved in
outsourcing technology goods and services, such as product control, the goal of organizations is
to ensure product availability and reliability (Ngwenyama & Bryson, 1999). All of these factors
are considerations for both administrators as well as desires for faculty and students to ensure the
best user experience (Chester, 2011)
The User Experience of the Product and Service
According to the Campus Computing Project’s 2010 report of a national survey of 523 IT
leaders at institutions across the country on higher education institutional spending and priorities
on technology, at private colleges and universities, the impact of IT services and projects on
institutional effectiveness in teaching has increased from 30% to above 50% (p. 17). Moreover,
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according to a similar report by the project in 2012, spending is increasingly moving into
technology-enabled learning (Green, 2012). A survey of institutional leadership beliefs of IT
effectiveness on instruction versus administrative systems demonstrated that institutional leaders
see IT departments as lacking in effectiveness in complimenting instructional efforts (less than
50% effective) whereas they see IT as much more effective in administrative efforts (more than
70%) (Green, 2012).
Regardless of one’s perspective, there is no denying technology products like learning
management systems and services like over the phone support are having on the education
industry. Instructional Technologies, in particularly LMSs, are changing education in many
ways, including the way students attend classes, the way staff supports instruction, the way
faculty teach and the direction of the industry in general. Investing in instructional technology is
no longer optional (Chester, 2011; Moe, Hanson, Jiang, & Pampoulov, 2012). Technology is
influencing the delivery of education in ever changing ways and institutions must adapt to
survive unlike the students of the past where formal education or vocation was the main source
of knowledge attainment, students are growing up in a world where information is readily
available to them through technology. Information is literally available at the palms of their
hands. Faculty are finding themselves between deciding to adopt the technology or reject the use
of technology in their work, based on their experience using the technology. So the user
experience is becoming increasingly important to determining what technology is adopted, and
what is not, and the outcomes on student learning (Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2005).
Finding the Best Fit for the Institution by Focusing on ‘Abilities’
Understanding that there are various providers of similar goods and services, a focus on
increased or desired capabilities is one key advantage to outsourcing decisions (McCord, 2002).
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According to McCord (2002), deciding whether or not to outsource provides the opportunity to
acquire new capabilities. The author acknowledges there are risks, but presents increased
abilities as a benefit to the process. Balancing the risks with the benefits is a hallmark to
Transaction Cost Economics (Ngwenyama & Bryson, 1999; Williamson, 1973).
Relationships are Important
Part of the political consideration in education is the values within the institutions. For
example, internal markets exist where faculty, staff and even students’ opinions and relationships
internally play key factors for considering outsourcing externally (Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, &
Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006; McCord, 2002). While one may be incentivized to
outsource goods and services by customers and leaders due to demand for more services and
greater efficiency, IT leaders in education also weigh other political values unique to education
such as the effect on their human capital, such as loyalty to their employees (Kahraman, Engin,
Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom, 2006; McCord, 2002).
Support in Various Forms
As Sharer (1998) indicates, each moment of customer downtime can literally cost the
organization money, or even worse, stop work all together, making IT Help Desks very
important to the functioning of any organization that uses technology (p. 212). Whether onsite or
remote, availability of knowledgeable and accessible support has been paramount to IT
outsourcing decision making and success in multiple industries, but particularly in higher
education (Goldstein, 2010; González, Giachetti, & Ramirez 2005; Sultan, 2010).
Mission versus Cost
For educational institutions, in addition to monetary costs, transaction costs include
political, social, psychic and other costs not usually measured fiscally. Private and for profit
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businesses have always been the focus of TCE literature for good reason (Merisotis & Phipps,
2005). They provide a clearly economic lens from which to look through; however, education is
different. Education is a niche market (Davies & Hentschke, 1994). Education, for the most part,
is not in the business of making money, so the motivations to pursue economic enterprises such
as contracting are different (McCord, 2002). Generally, according to a study of the United
States’ IT outsourcing market in 2000 spending over $56 billion on IT outsourcing and a 2001
EDUCAUSE survey of IT leaders, McCord (2002) found that aside from cost, non-profit and
public organizations, especially education organizations, tend to frame political considerations as
to reasons whether or not they outsource or co-source IT services (Kremic, Tukel, & Rom,
2006). These political reasons play into all other factors of considering outsourcing within
education.
Research Question 4: What values of both the institution (the customer) and the service
providers (the vendors) are dissimilar?
Two themes became apparent to answer Research Question 4. For the LMS provider,
balancing business, relationships and opportunity was particularly notable. However, for the
institution, the faculty just wanted the LMS to work.
Balancing Business, Relationships and Opportunity
One of the goals of the vendor is to seek continued and increase business, and education
is not so unique from other industries in that case; however, education does portray remarkable
ability to provide business opportunities for vendors to new customers or for added services.
Because education value their peers’ decisions, institutions have limited budgets and institutions
often are slow to change, maintaining or increasing existing relationships with vendors tends to
be the norm (Goldstein, 2010; Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom,
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2006; McCord, 2002). Simultaneously, vendors endeavor to increase business opportunities as a
standard of their operation.
Faculty Want Reliability.
The WGU faculty member’s comments of just wanting the product to work were echoed
by all the stakeholders and also echoed by the literature. Because faculty tend to dislike change,
educational institutions endeavor to maintain the same services as long as they are successful to
mitigate disruptive changes (Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic, Tukel, & Rom,
2006; McCord, 2002). Faculty members do not want to use the technology if the technology
inhibits their ability to teach the students (Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009; Kremic,
Tukel, & Rom, 2006; Massy& Wilger, 1998; McCord, 2002). So ensuring that the technology is
easily usable and un-interruptive is paramount in terms of faculty concerns.
Implications and Future Research
While this study began as an attempt to discover what factors contribute to an IT
outsourcing decision in the Higher Education environment, this study revealed that the special
nature of a learning management system (LMS) in the context of an institution is to unique to
generalize to IT in general, though the decisions are informed by general educational IT-related
literature. As the WGU LMS Contract Administrator discussed, and the Enterprise Applications
Support representative (EASR) compounded, the LMS went from being something that the
institutional stakeholders randomly adopted 12 years prior to being the most important system on
campus (WGU LMS Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013). Unlike
other key technologies, like the Student Information System (SIS) or other employee
management systems, the LMS has become particularly important to all the stakeholders, and
has become the means of how the students interact with their educational experience, or to
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summarize quote the LMS CA, and summarize the EASR’s comments, “at least in size and
scope, you know, it’s up there with SIS In fact, if SIS goes down for an hour, it’s not going to be
terrible. If [LMS-1] goes down for an hour, I need to barricade my door. I’m going to be a dead
man…” continuing by saying “[LMS-1] is the most important thing in the site” (WGU LMS
Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).
This study has revealed many findings and conclusions, coalescing the study with the
available literature that were discussed earlier, such as the importance of building consensus in
the decision, and the various factors that different stakeholders consider in the process
(Kahraman, Engin, Kabak, & Kaya, 2009). However, due to the unique importance and purpose
of the LMS, many questions remain, including:
- Given the limitation of the study timeline, what was the result of the process?
- What makes a product or service significantly different enough from current offerings
to justify the move?
- At what point is there enough consensus or buy-in to make the decision?
- Finally, what LMS-specific outsourcing decisions related findings, as revealed in this
study, can be generalized to other IT-related decisions in education?
Summary
Guided by Williamson’s (1973) discussion of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE), and
Ngwenyama and Bryson’s (1999) later work on TCE and IT outsourcing decisions, this study
sought to expand on the existing literature and attempt to present a discussion as to how to better
understand and make technology-outsourcing decisions, though was later refined to LMS-
specific outsourcing after analysis. A qualitative case study of Western Global University’s
(WGUs) Learning Management System (LMS) evaluation was conducted using observations,
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semi-structure interviews, and document analysis to answer the driving research questions. Three
representatives from various capacities within WGU’s IT organization were interviewed as well
as a faculty member. Four representatives of each of the invited LMS providers, two from the
current provider, were also interviewed. In addition observations were conducted of all six onsite
demonstrations of the LMS vendors. Finally, review of video artifacts, websites and other
documents provided by WGU and the LMS’s was conducted.
The most significant factors found in determining the decision were deciding as a team,
the importance of time and whether the product/vendor was good enough for institutional peers
but different enough. Additionally, the study revealed that a number of services were outsourced
to vendors, but the institution maintained many of the services themselves, because of the
weighing of institutional resources, product functionality and stakeholder values revealed from
question 3.
In terms of the values weighed by the stakeholders, a number of themes were derived, but
the most important appeared to be understanding of context, which lead to better informed
decision making, product and service reliability, user experience, finding the best fit by focusing
on ‘abilities,’ stakeholder relationships, support and institutional mission, with several
subthemes. Finally, what was found significant were not the differences between the vendors and
the institutions. In fact the institutions and vendors concerns and desires were found to be quite
complimentary. What proved to be more important were the differences amongst stakeholders
within the groups. Two themes of note were discovered. On the LMS side, the theme of
balancing business, relationships and opportunity became prevalent. On the institutional side, the
faculty just wanted the LMS to work.
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In this study, all of the interviewees, whether on the vendor side or the institution,
responded similarly to the interview questions in terms of their beliefs that the mission of the
institution of teaching and learning justified and outweighed the discussion of the cost of the
good or service. The literature agreed, supporting many of the findings of this study. However,
what the literature also demonstrated was that while similar IT outsourcing decision processes
were documented by other industries and some other examples even in education, few discussed
the process in detail from beginning to end, and while institutions were sourcing products and
services from others, IT leadership was not doing so strategically. This study creates such an
example for others to follow, though the data revealed that the LMS has become uniquely
important to the institutional stakeholders, making the study difficult to generalize to other IT
outsourcing literature. Through the process conducted by WGU, the institution entered into a
time of self-improvement, by discovering other areas of need beyond those related to the LMS,
as discussed in their RFI process. However, analysis of data collected through the process and
from stakeholders revealed that vendors have actually a lot of similar interests to educational
institutions, with the user experience being a shared priority of all stakeholders. The major
differences were found internal to organizational types between stakeholder groups. Faculty
members just wanted their LMS product to work, while LMS products and services vendors had
different motivations.
The literature discussed and the interviewees unknowingly agreed that institutional
budgets were decreasing but IT needs and demand were increasing. Research like that just
presented and examples of similar processes are needed to better inform the decisions of other
organizations in similar situations, due to the increasing importance of such systems and the need
to make such important decisions. Or to put the argument in context, as the LMS Administrator
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said in his interview, “I want to be careful ‘cause I recognize everything I do effects 40,000
people,” demonstrating how important even the smallest IT decisions can be (WGU LMS
Contract Administrator, personal communication, August, 2013).

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Appendix A: Interview Guide
WGU Contract Administrator
Introduction.
Hello, my name is Michael Thomas, and I am a doctoral candidate pursuing a doctorate
of Education (Ed.D.) degree from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of
Education. I am currently working on my dissertation and conducting a study of the
implementation of technology services at Western Global University (WGU). The purpose of my
study is to analyze how WGU has implemented the learning management system at the
institution, and associated services, and how this implementation has affected your role at the
school. Moreover, I am interested in determining what factors are being weighed to continue the
relationship with LMS-1 or to pursue a new vendor of a learning management system. If you do
not mind, would you please consider participating in my study? Involvement would include
participation in interviews with possible follow up questions for further clarification if you are
willing. The total time needed for the initial interview/survey would be roughly 1 hour of you
time. Please be assured that your personal information (PI) will not be used, and information will
only be used in aggregate to determine and support findings for this study. Further, this study his
study has been approved by the USC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which ensures that this
study will be sensitive to your privacy and safety. Should you require further information, please
contact the Rossier School of Education at USC or my chair Dr. Guilbert Hentschke, who is
advising me on this study. He can be reached at ghentsch@usc.edu or by phone at 213-740-3491.
Thank you.
Questions.
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The below questions are meant to be used to better inform this study as to the perceptions
and interactions of students with Information and Instructional technology and support services
at your academic institution. All of these questions are open for you to respond to as detailed as
possible, so please do, so we can better inform this study. Thank you.
Experiences as a technology support provider.
• Do you assist users with Information or Instructional technologies (IT) at your
academic institution, such as computers, classroom technology, wireless internet or
anything along those lines?
• Do you provide IT support services, like the university Help Desk, to faculty, staff
and students at your institution?
• If so, what services do you provide and how often do you provide those services to a)
faculty, b) staff, and c) students?
• When providing support services for IT, which form of communication do you use:
In-person, over the phone, online (including email and instant messaging), or any
combination of these options? Please list:
• Which do you prefer and why?
• Did you know that some of the IT support services and technologies at your academic
institution are not provided by the institution directly, meaning they are outsourced?
• Do you know which services are provided internally and which are provided
externally?
• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you believe your interactions with those outsourced services affects your
performance as an IT support member?
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Individual Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you use the LMS-1 learning management system at WGU in your work, say in
support of faculty?
• Do you use LMS-1’s support services, like telephone or email support?
• If so, how often do you use the LMS-1?
• If you use support services, how often to you use those services?
• When seeking services from LMS-1, which form of communication do you use: In-
person, over the phone, online (including email and instant messaging), or any
combination of these options? Please list:
• Which do you prefer and why?
• Did you know that some of the LMS-1 support services at WGU are not provided by
the WGU directly, meaning they are outsourced to LMS-1 themselves?
• Do you know which services are provided internally and which are provided
externally?
• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you feel about LMS-1?
• What do you find valuable about the LMS-1 learning management system in the
course of your studies at WGU?
• What drawbacks do you find in using LMS-1 in your studies at WGU?
• If you use support services for LMS-1, how has your reaction been to those services?
• Do you find those services useful?
• Which parts of the LMS-1 learning management system do you find the most useful
and which do you find the least useful?
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• Have you used another learning management system before, say at WGU or another
institution? If so, how does LMS-1 compare?
• If you have used a different learning management system, have you sought support
for that system? If so, how do the support services compare?
• What recommendations can you provide to improve your experience with LMS-1 or
LMS-1 support at WGU?
• How do you feel LMS-1 affects your performance as an IT staff member at WGU?
• Do you wish to share anything else?
Decision considerations into implementing and continuing to use LMS-1.
• Why was LMS-1 originally approached?
• Were other service and system providers approached as well?
• How was the decision to adopt LMS-1 originally reached?
• Were you the original decision maker who determined to contract with LMS-1?
• If not, then who?
• How was the performance of LMS-1’s originally services, namely the learning
management system, judged?
• What factors were weighed at contract renewal to renew the contract?
• Why did you decide to expand services with LMS-1?
• How will those services be judged?
• What do you find most valuable about your relationship with LMS-1? Why?
• What do you find least valuable? Why?
Understanding of Faculty Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with faculty?
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• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• Were they consulted about renewing the LMS-1 learning management system?
• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Staff Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you work with or support WGU staff?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• Were they consulted about renewing the LMS-1 learning management system?
• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Student Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with students?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
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• Were they consulted about renewing the LMS-1 learning management system?
• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of values and perceptions involved in pursuing a new LMS and
associated services.
• If you were given the opportunity to acquire a new LMS service, what would you do?
• What would you find valuable in your decision making process?
• What would be the factors that you weigh as most important in deciding?
• What would you weigh as least important in deciding?
Additional demographic questions (Optional).
• Are you a member of WGU’s main ITS or of one of the academic IT departments,
and if the latter, what is the current academic program you work for?
• What is the main degree level of students you work with (bachelors, masters or
doctorate)?
• How many years have you been employed at WGU?
• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
• What is your national origin?
• Have you previously worked at another college at another institution?

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Contact Information for follow up (Optional).
• May we have your contact information for follow up survey and/or interview
information?
• If so, please provide your name, phone number and/or email address?
Closing.
Thank you very much for participating in this study. The feedback you provided will be
invaluable into looking into this area of research which has been tersely studies thus far. If you
would like to be kept informed of the results of this study, please let me know, and you will be
emailed a link to the finalized version of this dissertation study with all the data analysis,
findings and recommendations when the study is uploaded to ProQuest.com. Again, thank you
very much.

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Appendix B: Interview Guide
WGU IT personnel
Introduction.
Hello, my name is Michael Thomas, and I am a doctoral candidate pursuing a doctorate
of Education (Ed.D.) degree from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of
Education. I am currently working on my dissertation and conducting a study of the
implementation of technology services at Western Global University (WGU). The purpose of my
study is to analyze how WGU has implemented the learning management system at the
institution, and associated services, and how this implementation has affected your role at the
school. Moreover, I am interested in determining what factors are being weighed to continue the
relationship with LMS-1 or to pursue a new vendor of a learning management system. If you do
not mind, would you please consider participating in my study? Involvement would include
participation in interviews with possible follow up questions for further clarification if you are
willing. The total time needed for the initial interview/survey would be roughly 1 hour of you
time. Please be assured that your personal information (PI) will not be used, and information will
only be used in aggregate to determine and support findings for this study. Further, this study his
study has been approved by the USC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which ensures that this
study will be sensitive to your privacy and safety. Should you require further information, please
contact the Rossier School of Education at USC or my chair Dr. Guilbert Hentschke, who is
advising me on this study. He can be reached at ghentsch@usc.edu or by phone at 213-740-3491.
Thank you.
Questions.
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140

The below questions are meant to be used to better inform this study as to the perceptions
and interactions of students with Information and Instructional technology and support services
at your academic institution. All of these questions are open for you to respond to as detailed as
possible, so please do, so we can better inform this study. Thank you.
Experiences as a technology support provider.
• Do you assist users with Information or Instructional technologies (IT) at your
academic institution, such as computers, classroom technology, wireless internet or
anything along those lines?
• Do you provide IT support services, like the university Help Desk, to faculty, staff
and students at your institution?
• If so, what services do you provide and how often do you provide those services to
a)faculty, b)staff, and c) students?
• When providing support services for IT, which form of communication do you use:
In-person, over the phone, online (including email and instant messaging), or any
combination of these options? Please list:
• Which do you prefer and why?
• Did you know that some of the IT support services and technologies at your academic
institution are not provided by the institution directly, meaning they are outsourced?
• Do you know which services are provided internally and which are provided
externally?
• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you believe your interactions with those outsourced services affects your
performance as an IT support member?
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Individual Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you use the LMS-1 learning management system at WGU in your work, say in
support of faculty?
• Do you use LMS-1’s support services, like telephone or email support?
• If so, how often do you use the LMS-1?
• If you use support services, how often to you use those services?
• When seeking services from LMS-1, which form of communication do you use: In-
person, over the phone, online (including email and instant messaging), or any
combination of these options? Please list:
• Which do you prefer and why?
• Did you know that some of the LMS-1 support services at WGU are not provided by
the WGU directly, meaning they are outsourced to LMS-1 themselves?
• Do you know which services are provided internally and which are provided
externally?
• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you feel about LMS-1?
• What do you find valuable about the LMS-1 learning management system in the
course of your studies at WGU?
• What drawbacks do you find in using LMS-1 in your studies at WGU?
• If you use support services for LMS-1, how has your reaction been to those services?
• Do you find those services useful?
• Which parts of the LMS-1 learning management system do you find the most useful
and which do you find the least useful?
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• Have you used another learning management system before, say at WGU or another
institution? If so, how does LMS-1 compare?
• If you have used a different learning management system, have you sought support
for that system? If so, how do the support services compare?
• What recommendations can you provide to improve your experience with LMS-1 or
LMS-1 support at WGU?
• How do you feel LMS-1 affects your performance as an IT staff member at WGU?
• Do you wish to share anything else?
Understanding of Faculty Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with faculty?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Staff Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you work with or support WGU staff?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
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What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Student Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with students?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of values and perceptions involved in pursuing a new LMS and
associated services.
• If you were given the opportunity to acquire a new LMS service, what would you do?
• What would you find valuable in your decision making process?
• What would be the factors that you weigh as most important in deciding?
• What would you weigh as least important in deciding?
Additional demographic questions (Optional).
• Are you a member of WGU’s main ITS or of one of the academic IT departments,
and if the latter, what is the current academic program you work for?
• What is the main degree level of students you work with (bachelors, masters or
doctorate)?
• How many years have you been employed at WGU?
• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
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• What is your national origin?
• Have you previously worked at another college at another institution?
Contact Information for follow up (Optional).
• May we have your contact information for follow up survey and/or interview
information?
• If so, please provide your name, title, phone number and/or email address?
Closing.
Thank you very much for participating in this study. The feedback you provided will be
invaluable into looking into this area of research which has been tersely studies thus far. If you
would like to be kept informed of the results of this study, please let me know, and you will be
emailed a link to the finalized version of this dissertation study with all the data analysis,
findings and recommendations when the study is uploaded to ProQuest.com. Again, thank you
very much.
Interviewed by:
Date:
Location:

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Appendix C: Interview Guide
WGU Faculty
Introduction.
Hello, my name is Michael Thomas, and I am a doctoral candidate pursuing a doctorate
of Education (Ed.D.) degree from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of
Education. I am currently working on my dissertation and conducting a study of the
implementation of technology services at Western Global University (WGU). The purpose of my
study is to analyze how WGU has implemented the learning management system at the
institution, and associated services, and how this implementation has affected your role at the
school. Moreover, I am interested in determining what factors are being weighed to continue the
relationship with LMS-1 or to pursue a new vendor of a learning management system. If you do
not mind, would you please consider participating in my study? Involvement would include
participation in interviews with possible follow up questions for further clarification if you are
willing. The total time needed for the initial interview/survey would be roughly 1 hour of you
time. Please be assured that your personal information (PI) will not be used, and information will
only be used in aggregate to determine and support findings for this study. Further, this study his
study has been approved by the USC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which ensures that this
study will be sensitive to your privacy and safety. Should you require further information, please
contact the Rossier School of Education at USC or my chair Dr. Guilbert Hentschke, who is
advising me on this study. He can be reached at ghentsch@usc.edu or by phone at 213-740-3491.
Thank you.
Questions.
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The below questions are meant to be used to better inform this study as to the perceptions
and interactions of students with Information and Instructional technology and support services
at your academic institution. All of these questions are open for you to respond to as detailed as
possible, so please do, so we can better inform this study. Thank you.
Experiences with technology and services.
• Do you use Information or Instructional technologies (IT) at your academic
institution, such as computers, classroom technology, wireless internet or anything
along those lines?
• Do you use IT support services, like the university Help Desk, at your institution?
• If so, how often do you use the technology?
• If you use support services, how often to you use those services?
• When seeking services from IT, which form of communication do you use: In-person,
over the phone, online (including email and instant messaging), or any combination
of these options? Please list:
• Which do you prefer and why?
• Did you know that some of the IT support services and technologies at your academic
institution are not provided by the institution directly, meaning they are outsourced?
• Do you know which services are provided internally and which are provided
externally?
• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you believe your interactions with IT personnel and services affect you
performance as a faculty member?
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Individual Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you use the LMS-1 learning management system at WGU in your work, say in
your teaching?
• Do you use LMS-1’s support services, like telephone or email support?
• If so, how often do you use the LMS-1?
• If you use support services, how often to you use those services?
• When seeking services from LMS-1, which form of communication do you use: In-
person, over the phone, online (including email and instant messaging), or any
combination of these options? Please list:
• Which do you prefer and why?
• Did you know that some of the LMS-1 support services at WGU are not provided by
the WGU directly, meaning they are outsourced to LMS-1 themselves?
• Do you know which services are provided internally and which are provided
externally?
• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you feel about LMS-1?
• What do you find valuable about the LMS-1 learning management system in the
course of your studies at WGU?
• What drawbacks do you find in using LMS-1 in your studies at WGU?
• If you use support services for LMS-1, how has your reaction been to those services?
• Do you find those services useful?
• Which parts of the LMS-1 learning management system do you find the most useful
and which do you find the least useful?
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• Have you used another learning management system before, say at WGU or another
institution? If so, how does LMS-1 compare?
• If you have used a different learning management system, have you sought support
for that system? If so, how do the support services compare?
• What recommendations can you provide to improve your experience with LMS-1 or
LMS-1 support at WGU?
• How do you feel LMS-1 affects your performance as a faculty member at WGU?
• Do you wish to share anything else?
Understanding of Staff Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you work with staff, say as their supervisor?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Student Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with students?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
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• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of values and perceptions involved in pursuing a new LMS and
associated services.
• If you were given the opportunity to acquire a new LMS service, what would you do?
• What would you find valuable in your decision making process?
• What would be the factors that you weigh as most important in deciding?
• What would you weigh as least important in deciding?
Additional demographic questions (Optional).
• What is the current academic program you work for?
• What is the current degree level you instruct (bachelors, masters or doctorate)?
• How many years have you been employed at WGU?
• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
• What is your national origin?
• Have you previously taught college at another institution?
Contact Information for follow up (Optional).
• May we have your contact information for follow up survey and/or interview
information?
• If so, please provide your name, title, phone number and/or email address?

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Closing.
Thank you very much for participating in this study. The feedback you provided will be
invaluable into looking into this area of research which has been tersely studies thus far. If you
would like to be kept informed of the results of this study, please let me know, and you will be
emailed a link to the finalized version of this dissertation study with all the data analysis,
findings and recommendations when the study is uploaded to ProQuest.com. Again, thank you
very much.
Interviewed by:
Date:
Location:

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Appendix D: Interview Guide
WGU Staff (non-technical)
Introduction.
Hello, my name is Michael Thomas, and I am a doctoral candidate pursuing a doctorate
of Education (Ed.D.) degree from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of
Education. I am currently working on my dissertation and conducting a study of the
implementation of technology services at Western Global University (WGU). The purpose of my
study is to analyze how WGU has implemented the learning management system at the
institution, and associated services, and how this implementation has affected your role at the
school. Moreover, I am interested in determining what factors are being weighed to continue the
relationship with LMS-1 or to pursue a new vendor of a learning management system. If you do
not mind, would you please consider participating in my study? Involvement would include
participation in interviews with possible follow up questions for further clarification if you are
willing. The total time needed for the initial interview/survey would be roughly 1 hour of you
time. Please be assured that your personal information (PI) will not be used, and information will
only be used in aggregate to determine and support findings for this study. Further, this study his
study has been approved by the USC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which ensures that this
study will be sensitive to your privacy and safety. Should you require further information, please
contact the Rossier School of Education at USC or my chair Dr. Guilbert Hentschke, who is
advising me on this study. He can be reached at ghentsch@usc.edu or by phone at 213-740-3491.
Thank you.
Questions.
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The below questions are meant to be used to better inform this study as to the perceptions
and interactions of students with Information and Instructional technology and support services
at your academic institution. All of these questions are open for you to respond to as detailed as
possible, so please do, so we can better inform this study. Thank you.
Personal experiences with technology and services.
• Could you please describe how you use technology on a daily basis, say on your
phone, on your personal computer, for social networking?
• What kinds of software/applications do you use on your phone or computer or other
personal device?
• How often and what kinds of technology do you buy?
• Could you please describe your socio-economic level if you could? What effect do
you believe this has on your purchase and use of technology in your daily life?
Experiences with technology and services at WGU.
• Do you use Information or Instructional technologies (IT) at your academic
institution, such as computers, classroom technology, wireless internet or anything
along those lines?
• Do you use IT support services, like the university Help Desk, at your institution?
• If so, how often do you use the technology?
• If you use support services, how often to you use those services?
• When seeking services from IT, which form of communication do you use: In-person,
over the phone, online (including email and instant messaging), or any combination
of these options? Please list:
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• Which do you prefer and why?
• Did you know that some of the IT support services and technologies at your academic
institution are not provided by the institution directly, meaning they are outsourced?
• Do you know which services are provided internally and which are provided
externally?
• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you believe your interactions with IT personnel and services affect you
performance as a staff member?
Individual Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you use the LMS-1 learning management system at WGU in your work, say in
support of faculty?
• Do you use LMS-1’s support services, like telephone or email support?
• If so, how often do you use the LMS-1?
• If you use support services, how often to you use those services?
• When seeking services from LMS-1, which form of communication do you use: In-
person, over the phone, online (including email and instant messaging), or any
combination of these options? Please list:
• Which do you prefer and why?
• Did you know that some of the LMS-1 support services at WGU are not provided by
the WGU directly, meaning they are outsourced to LMS-1 themselves?
• Do you know which services are provided internally and which are provided
externally?
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• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you feel about LMS-1?
• What do you find valuable about the LMS-1 learning management system in the
course of your studies at WGU?
• What drawbacks do you find in using LMS-1 in your studies at WGU?
• If you use support services for LMS-1, how has your reaction been to those services?
• Do you find those services useful?
• Which parts of the LMS-1 learning management system do you find the most useful
and which do you find the least useful?
• Have you used another learning management system before, say at WGU or another
institution? If so, how does LMS-1 compare?
• If you have used a different learning management system, have you sought support
for that system? If so, how do the support services compare?
• What recommendations can you provide to improve your experience with LMS-1 or
LMS-1 support at WGU?
• How do you feel LMS-1 affects your performance as a staff member at WGU?
• Do you wish to share anything else?
Understanding of Faculty Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with faculty?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
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• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Student Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with students?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of values and perceptions involved in pursuing a new LMS and
associated services.
• If you were given the opportunity to acquire a new LMS service, what would you do?
• What would you find valuable in your decision making process?
• What would be the factors that you weigh as most important in deciding?
• What would you weigh as least important in deciding?
Additional demographic questions (Optional).
• What is the current academic program you work for?
• What is the main degree level of students you work with (bachelors, masters or
doctorate)?
• How many years have you been employed at WGU?
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• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
• What is your national origin?
• Have you previously worked at another college at another institution?
Contact Information for follow up (Optional).
• May we have your contact information for follow up survey and/or interview
information?
• If so, please provide your name, title, phone number and/or email address?
Closing.
Thank you very much for participating in this study. The feedback you provided will be
invaluable into looking into this area of research which has been tersely studies thus far. If you
would like to be kept informed of the results of this study, please let me know, and you will be
emailed a link to the finalized version of this dissertation study with all the data analysis,
findings and recommendations when the study is uploaded to ProQuest.com. Again, thank you
very much.
Interviewed by:
Date:
Location:

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Appendix E: Interview Guide
LMS Vendor Contract or Sales Representative
Introduction.
Hello, my name is Michael Thomas, and I am a doctoral candidate pursuing a doctorate
of Education (Ed.D.) degree from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of
Education. I am currently working on my dissertation and conducting a study of the
implementation of technology services at Western Global University (WGU). The purpose of my
study is to analyze how WGU has implemented the learning management system at the
institution, and associated services, and how this implementation has affected your role at the
school. Moreover, I am interested in determining what factors are being weighed to continue the
relationship with LMS-1 or to pursue a new vendor of a learning management system. If you do
not mind, would you please consider participating in my study? Involvement would include
participation in interviews with possible follow up questions for further clarification if you are
willing. The total time needed for the initial interview/survey would be roughly 1 hour of you
time. Please be assured that your personal information (PI) will not be used, and information will
only be used in aggregate to determine and support findings for this study. Further, this study his
study has been approved by the USC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which ensures that this
study will be sensitive to your privacy and safety. Should you require further information, please
contact the Rossier School of Education at USC or my chair Dr. Guilbert Hentschke, who is
advising me on this study. He can be reached at ghentsch@usc.edu or by phone at 213-740-3491.
Thank you.
Questions.
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158

The below questions are meant to be used to better inform this study as to the perceptions
and interactions of students with Information and Instructional technology and support services
at your academic institution. All of these questions are open for you to respond to as detailed as
possible, so please do, so we can better inform this study. Thank you.
Decision considerations into implementing to a new learning management system.
• Why was your company or LMS originally approached?
• Were other service and system providers approached as well?
• How was the decision to evaluate your company or LMS at WGU originally reached?
• Were you the original decision maker who determined to work with WGU?
• If not, then who?
• How was the performance of your company or LMS services, namely the learning
management system, judged?
• How was the possible contract with WGU judged?
• What factors were weighed at contract renewal to renew the contract?
• Why did you decide to expand services with WGU?
• How will those services be judged?
• What do you find most valuable about your relationship with WGU? Why?
• What do you find least valuable? WGU?
Understanding of Faculty Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with faculty?
• If so, do they use your company or LMS?
• Do you know how they feel about using your company or LMS?
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• Were they consulted about evaluation your company or LMS learning management
system?
• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using your company or LMS?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using your company or LMS?
• What are their most common complaints about using your company or LMS or
support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using your company or LMS or support
services?
Understanding of Staff Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you work with or support staff?
• If so, do they use your company or LMS?
• Do you know how they feel about using your company or LMS?
• Were they consulted about evaluating your company or LMS learning management
system?
• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using your company or LMS?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using your company or LMS?
• What are their most common complaints about using your company or LMS or
support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using your company or LMS or support
services?
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Understanding of Student Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with students?
• If so, do they use your company or LMS?
• Do you know how they feel about using your company or LMS?
• Were they consulted about evaluating your company or LMS learning management
system?
• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using your company or LMS?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using your company or LMS?
• What are their most common complaints about using your company or LMS or
support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using your company or LMS or support
services?
Additional demographic questions (Optional).
• How many years have you been employed at your company or LMS?
• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
• What is your national origin?
• Have you previously worked at a college or other institution?
• Have you previously worked for another service provider?
• Have you always been a contract administrator or have you been support services
member as well?
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Contact Information for follow up (Optional).
• May we have your contact information for follow up survey and/or interview
information?
• If so, please provide your name, title, phone number and/or email address?
Closing.
Thank you very much for participating in this study. The feedback you provided will be
invaluable into looking into this area of research which has been tersely studies thus far. If you
would like to be kept informed of the results of this study, please let me know, and you will be
emailed a link to the finalized version of this dissertation study with all the data analysis,
findings and recommendations when the study is uploaded to ProQuest.com. Again, thank you
very much.
Interviewed by:
Date:
Location:

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Appendix F: Interview Guide
LMS-1 Contract or Sales Representative
Introduction.
Hello, my name is Michael Thomas, and I am a doctoral candidate pursuing a doctorate
of Education (Ed.D.) degree from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of
Education. I am currently working on my dissertation and conducting a study of the
implementation of technology services at Western Global University (WGU). The purpose of my
study is to analyze how WGU has implemented the learning management system at the
institution, and associated services, and how this implementation has affected your role at the
school. Moreover, I am interested in determining what factors are being weighed to continue the
relationship with LMS-1 or to pursue a new vendor of a learning management system. If you do
not mind, would you please consider participating in my study? Involvement would include
participation in interviews with possible follow up questions for further clarification if you are
willing. The total time needed for the initial interview/survey would be roughly 1 hour of you
time. Please be assured that your personal information (PI) will not be used, and information will
only be used in aggregate to determine and support findings for this study. Further, this study his
study has been approved by the USC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which ensures that this
study will be sensitive to your privacy and safety. Should you require further information, please
contact the Rossier School of Education at USC or my chair Dr. Guilbert Hentschke, who is
advising me on this study. He can be reached at ghentsch@usc.edu or by phone at 213-740-3491.
Thank you.
Questions.
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163

The below questions are meant to be used to better inform this study as to the perceptions
and interactions of students with Information and Instructional technology and support services
at your academic institution. All of these questions are open for you to respond to as detailed as
possible, so please do, so we can better inform this study. Thank you.
Decision considerations into implementing and continuing to use LMS-1.
• Why was LMS-1 originally approached?
• Were other service and system providers approached as well?
• How was the decision to adopt LMS-1 at WGU originally reached?
• Were you the original decision maker who determined to contract with WGU?
• If not, then who?
• How was the performance of LMS-1’s originally services, namely the learning
management system, judged?
• How was the contract with WGU judged?
• What factors were weighed at contract renewal to renew the contract?
• Why did you decide to expand services with WGU?
• How will those services be judged?
• What do you find most valuable about your relationship with WGU? Why?
• What do you find least valuable? WGU?
Understanding of Faculty Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with faculty?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
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• Were they consulted about renewing the LMS-1 learning management system?
• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Staff Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you work with or support WGU staff?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• Were they consulted about renewing the LMS-1 learning management system?
• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Student Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with students?
• If so, do they use LMS-1?
• Do you know how they feel about using LMS-1?
• Were they consulted about renewing the LMS-1 learning management system?
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• Were they consulted about expanding services to include support services?
• What are some of their impressions of using LMS-1?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using LMS-1?
• What are their most common complaints about using LMS-1 or support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Additional demographic questions (Optional).
• How many years have you been employed at LMS-1?
• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
• What is your national origin?
• Have you previously worked at a college or other institution?
• Have you previously worked for another service provider?
• Have you always been a contract administrator or have you been support services
member as well?
Contact Information for follow up (Optional).
• May we have your contact information for follow up survey and/or interview
information?
• If so, please provide your name, title, phone number and/or email address?
Closing.
Thank you very much for participating in this study. The feedback you provided will be
invaluable into looking into this area of research which has been tersely studies thus far. If you
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166

would like to be kept informed of the results of this study, please let me know, and you will be
emailed a link to the finalized version of this dissertation study with all the data analysis,
findings and recommendations when the study is uploaded to ProQuest.com. Again, thank you
very much.
Interviewed by:
Date:
Location:

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Appendix G: Interview Guide
LMS Vendor Support Staff
Introduction.
Hello, my name is Michael Thomas, and I am a doctoral candidate pursuing a doctorate
of Education (Ed.D.) degree from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of
Education. I am currently working on my dissertation and conducting a study of the
implementation of technology services at Western Global University (WGU). The purpose of my
study is to analyze how WGU has implemented the learning management system at the
institution, and associated services, and how this implementation has affected your role at the
school. Moreover, I am interested in determining what factors are being weighed to continue the
relationship with LMS-1 or to pursue a new vendor of a learning management system. If you do
not mind, would you please consider participating in my study? Involvement would include
participation in interviews with possible follow up questions for further clarification if you are
willing. The total time needed for the initial interview/survey would be roughly 1 hour of you
time. Please be assured that your personal information (PI) will not be used, and information will
only be used in aggregate to determine and support findings for this study. Further, this study his
study has been approved by the USC’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which ensures that this
study will be sensitive to your privacy and safety. Should you require further information, please
contact the Rossier School of Education at USC or my chair Dr. Guilbert Hentschke, who is
advising me on this study. He can be reached at ghentsch@usc.edu or by phone at 213-740-3491.
Thank you.
Questions.
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The below questions are meant to be used to better inform this study as to the perceptions
and interactions of students with Information and Instructional technology and support services
at your academic institution. All of these questions are open for you to respond to as detailed as
possible, so please do, so we can better inform this study. Thank you.
Experiences as a technology support provider.
• What services do you provide and how often do you provide those services to a)
faculty, b) staff, and c) students?
• When providing support services for your company or LMS, which form of
communication do you use: In-person, over the phone, online (including email and
instant messaging), or any combination of these options? Please list:
• Which do you prefer and why?
• Do you think that members of WGU’s community know that some of the IT support
services and technologies at WGU are not provided by the institution directly,
meaning they are outsourced?
• Do you believe they know which services are provided internally and which are
provided externally?
• Do you feel that the provider of the services makes a difference?
• How do you believe your interactions with the members of the WGU community
affects or will affect your performance as your company or LMS support staff
member?
Individual Experience with WGU members.
• Which your company or LMS support services do you provide?
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• How do you provide those services?
• Do you feel that being an outsourced provide of the support services makes a
difference to WGU customers?
• Does it make a difference to you?
• How do you feel about your company or LMS?
• What do you believe is most valuable about the your company or LMS learning
management system for the clients at WGU?
• What drawbacks, if any, do you find in your company or LMS for the users at WGU?
• Do you think that users find your services useful?
• Which parts of the your company or LMS learning management system do you find
the most useful and which do you find the least useful?
• Have you worked with another learning management system before, say at WGU or
another institution? If so, how does your company or LMS compare?
• Do you provide your company or LMS services to other institutions? If so, how does
WGU compare?
• Is the culture different? If so, how?
• Do you wish to share anything else?
Understanding of Faculty Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with faculty?
• If so, do they use your company or LMS?
• Do you know how they feel about using your company or LMS?
• What are some of their impressions of using your company or LMS?
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• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using your company or LMS?
• What are their most common complaints about using your company or LMS or
support services?
• What recommendations do they make about using your company or LMS or support
services?
Understanding of Staff Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you work with or support staff?
• If so, do they use your company or LMS?
• Do you know how they feel about using your company or LMS?
• What are some of their impressions of using your company or LMS?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using your company or LMS?
• What are their most common complaints about using your company or LMS or
support services?
What recommendations do they make about using LMS-1 or support services?
Understanding of Student Experience with LMS-1 and associated services.
• Do you support or work with students?
• If so, do they use your company or LMS?
• Do you know how they feel about using your company or LMS?
• What are some of their impressions of using your company or LMS?
• What are some of their impressions of seeking help for using your company or LMS?
• What are their most common complaints about using your company or LMS or
support services?
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• What recommendations do they make about using your company or LMS or support
services?
Additional demographic questions (Optional).
• Are you a member of WGU’s main ITS or of one of the academic IT departments,
and if the latter, what is the current academic program you work for?
• What is the main degree level of students you work with (bachelors, masters or
doctorate)?
• How many years have you been employed at your company or LMS?
• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
• What is your national origin?
• Have you previously worked at another college at another institution?
Contact Information for follow up (Optional).
• May we have your contact information for follow up survey and/or interview
information?
• If so, please provide your name, title, phone number and/or email address?
Closing.
Thank you very much for participating in this study. The feedback you provided will be
invaluable into looking into this area of research which has been tersely studies thus far. If you
would like to be kept informed of the results of this study, please let me know, and you will be
emailed a link to the finalized version of this dissertation study with all the data analysis,
OUTSOURCING TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

172

findings and recommendations when the study is uploaded to ProQuest.com. Again, thank you
very much.
Interviewed by:
Date:
Location:

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173

Appendix H: Observation Protocol
Date:
Time start:
Time end:
Location:
Event Name (if Applicable):
Observed by:
Summary of What is Being Observed:

Description of Physical features of space:

People Observed -
Number of people at start: Faculty: Staff: Students:
Number of people at the end: Faculty: Staff: Students:
Total number of people: Faculty: Staff: Students:

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Begin Field Notes:

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Observer Reflection:
What are vendor’s behaviors?

What are the vendors voiced values and perceptions?

What are IT staff’s behaviors?

What are the IT staff’s voiced values and perceptions?

What are staff’s (non-IT) behaviors?

What are the staff’s (non-IT) voiced values and perceptions?

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What are the faculty behaviors?

What are the faculty voiced values and perceptions?

Follow up Questions:

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Appendix I: Document Analysis Protocol
Date:
Document Name:
Analyzed by:
Document Provided by:
Summary of document:

Description of document:

What are students’ perceptions?

What are IT staff perceptions?

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178

What are staff (non-IT) perceptions?

What are faculty perceptions?

What are vendor perceptions?

What values does the vendor express?

What institutional values are expressed?

Follow up Questions:

Reflection:

Abstract (if available)

Abstract In Education, where monetary gain is not the main motivation for conducting ‘business,’ large amounts of computing, Internet and other technologies and related services are being provided and used, but how decisions are made by administrators of institutions to acquire those products and services is in question. The risk of making the wrong decision can literally mean the cost of someone’s education. Administrators need more examples from within the niche of higher education to make these decisions. Williamson’s (1973) take on Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) provides a framework for these decisions. He argued that there were factors to consider, in addition to monetary, in making these types of outsourcing decisions and in forming relationships with other organizations like vendors. Ngwenyama and Bryson (1999) took the idea a step further by discussing why non‐profit organizations, like colleges, and information technology (IT) outsourcing are so rarely researched. They argued that non‐profits were not financially driven, hence their name, so there was no marker for their motivation or success in these decisions. Moreover, they claimed that IT was knowledge centric and niche specific, making the field difficult to assess by decision makers and researchers alike. ❧ This study used TCE as the lens to analyze the buy or make decision of an educational institution for a technology good/service. In particular, this study looked at the existing relationship between Western Global University (WGU) and the college’s learning management system (LMS) vendor, LMS-1. Moreover, the study followed along WGU’s evaluation process of LMS-1 and two other LMSs—LMS-2 and LMS-3. Through interviews, observations and document analysis, this study analyzed factors within this process via four guiding research questions. Themes were developed to address those questions providing more research for higher education institution administrators to make better informed LMS outsourcing decisions in the future. The literature suggests that while sourcing is occurring across education, strategic approaches to outsourcing are still infrequent. From triangulated qualitative data collection and analysis, in WGU’s case, deciding as a team, time, and both peer acceptance and product difference were assessed as contributors to final outsourcing decisions. Considerations such as functionality, organizational resources, support, product reliability, user experience, relationships and organizational mission were major factors being weighed by various institutional and vendor stakeholders. In the end, vendor and institutional values were revealed to be more similar than different, with the priority being on the experience of the faculty with the product and service. However, many questions remain due to the unique nature LMSs and Educational Technology play at institutions as opposed to other Information Technologies.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Thomas, Michael Allen (author)

Core Title Outsourcing technology and support in higher education

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education

Publication Date 06/30/2014

Defense Date 03/25/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Education,educational technology,higher education leadership,higher education management,information technology,institution,instructional technology,IT,learning management system,LMS,OAI-PMH Harvest,outsourcing,TCE,Transaction Cost Economics,vendor

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Hentschke, Guilbert C. (committee chair), Burch, Patricia E. (committee member), Crispen, Patrick (committee member), Strunk, Katharine O. (committee member)

Creator Email mthomas1@ucla.edu,thom230@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-427218

Unique identifier UC11286709

Identifier etd-ThomasMich-2591.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-427218 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-ThomasMich-2591.pdf

Dmrecord 427218

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Thomas, Michael Allen

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA