Graduate Management Education (GME) News Digest - Making Graduate Program Management Simpler - From Lead Collection to Fan Creation - Guiding Learners Through Your Graduate Programs Learner Journey The Program Management View

From Lead Collection to Fan Creation - Guiding Learners Through Your Graduate Programs Learner Journey The Program Management View

07/27/24 • 4 min

Graduate Management Education (GME) News Digest - Making Graduate Program Management Simpler

Once learners realize a learning need, they usually start a journey to address it. Many times, the journey starts out as self-directed and, at some point, it transitions to a guided journey. When a graduate degree program is involved, much of the self-directed journey planning starts with a web browser and an internet search. And during any stage of their search, learners may evaluate multiple journeys, all created by competing graduate programs.

The journey the learner ultimately selects is likely the one with the best guidance throughout each leg of the journey they are exploring. From a graduate program management view, the best guidance is likely provided by a journey organized around three systems:

Lead Collection,
Learner Conversion, and
Fan Creation.

Designing and managing the journey with a systems approach facilitates the coordination of the program’s moving parts and components, which helps ensure learners receive the guidance they seek at each phase of any journey they are exploring. Let me give you an overview of each system and show you how they all connect.

Lead Collection,
Learner Conversion, and
Fan Creation.

Previous Episode

From First Encounters to Lifelong Advocacy: Navigating the Learner’s Journey in a Graduate Program–The Learner View

Have you ever thought about the path learners navigate when they go from realizing their need to learn to be a loyal program supporter? When both learners and program leaders really understand the path learners follow, it’s like having a roadmap to success for both. A roadmap with interesting goals like identifying knowledge gaps, choosing a program, enrolling, and becoming a committed supporter. In the following episode, I describe six stages that most learners follow on their journey. Improving program effectiveness and reputation comes from understanding the learner journey and these stages. This episode is based on a blog article I wrote titled, From First Encounters to Lifelong Advocacy: Navigating the Learner’s Journey in a Graduate Program – The Learner View.

Next Episode

Looking at How Learners & Program Management See the Learner Journey

The effectiveness of a graduate program depends on the understanding of individual learner journeys by program leaders and faculty, as well as the understanding of the program’s learner journey by individual learners. I explored these understandings from two distinct perspectives of the learner journey in my two previous episodes. One perspective was that of the learner, and the other was that of the program’s management. This episode's purpose is to show how aligning the two perspectives develops a framework for effectively managing graduate programs to the benefit of a diverse set of stakeholders, such as individual learners, faculty members, employers, and the community.

Click here to complete this 9 question assessment to see what your program's learner journey is telling you.