A Case Study on Digital Marketing of Level 9 Online and Blended Courses

A Case Study on Digital Marketing of Level 9 Online and Blended Courses

The purpose of the study is to critically asses and investigate digital marketing activities of Cork Institute of Technology’s online courses. In 2011, CIT introduced its first thought online courses and presently offers a blended learning and fully online courses. This year in 2017 CIT offers 13 online programmes. For this case study, qualitative methods were used to gather research data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten master students who have e-learning experience to understand their experience in relation to CIT’s online courses and marketing of e-learning courses in general. A systematic analysis method is conducted to CIT’s digital marketing activities to gather data from 8 past social media advertisement of 3 online programs. This research finds that students value flexibility, convenience and price advantage of CIT’s online courses while having concerns in relation to the self-motivation. Findings of this research highlighted issues such as face to face interaction for students and teachers and the difficulties they experience in communicating with each other. The answers from students in relation to issues around lack of face to face interaction showed that majority of the students feel more comfortable with taking fully online programs for technical subjects and they think a blended learning program would be more suitable for social science subjects instead of fully online programs.

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