As a Dartmouth College low-residency degree program matures, workforce resilience and diversity emerge as mission-critical to sustained operational quality and innovation. This leads to a shift towards a “generalist” support model emphasizing cross training in essential skills in the three key domains of delivery technology, learning design, and content knowledge.
The Master of Health Care Delivery Science (MHCDS) program at Dartmouth College is an executive online degree program that delivers “concierge,” relationship-based, experiential learning for leaders in health care. Launched in 2011, the program provides its own support to faculty and students in the development and delivery of courses. This support was originally oriented towards siloed “specialists” focused on one of three domains: Delivery technology, learning design, and content knowledge. As the program has matured, the goals of sustaining a resilient and diverse workforce have emerged as mission-critical to sustain operational quality, customer service standards, and innovation. This has led to a shift towards a “generalist” support model emphasizing cross training in essential skills in the three key domains of delivery technology, learning design, and content knowledge. Further, the key areas of expertise that are emphasized have shift from content knowledge to technology and learning design. This reflects the maturing of the program and the discipline: Faculty are content experts, and with guidance from a very active curriculum committee, are the principle drivers of content development. The earlier need for support staff to have deep content knowledge to help define the parameters of the discipline has begun to wane. Key opportunities for support staff to further the program’s mission are in the areas of technology and learning design. This interactive discussion will explore different models of program support, and both the business case and strategic case for resilience and diversity in administrative support teams.