Education Balanced Scorecard for Online Courses: Australia and U.S. Best-Practices

Introduction

“Are there management tools that professionals use in business that academics have used successfully in higher education? The answer to that question is yes, and the balanced scorecard (BSC) is one such tool” (Beard, 2009, p. 275). Beard refers to applying BSC in U.S. universities (and her review is insightful for practitioners). To that end, this case study similarly discusses a balanced scorecard applied to measure the effectiveness of an accredited online business course at an Australian public university (Strang, 2010).

Although the original experiment by Strang developed a BSC for university program accreditation maintenance in Australia, while comparing two identical business courses (online versus classroom-based), the focus of this study is to discuss Strang’s application of a balanced scored while, contrasting this to the U.S. approach (where applicable). A key distinction of Strang’s (2010) model is the course level-of-analysis and the integration of Australian national accreditation criteria, as compared to the 6-factor structure employed within the U.S. Baldrige National Quality Award Program (Beard, 2009; Karathanos & Karathanos, 2005). Strang (2010) integrated concepts from Kaplan and Norton’s (2001) 4-factor BSC strategy as well as the stakeholder principles in the Intangible Assets Monitor (Sveiby, 2000).