Virtual University Disruptive Innovation Assessment

We are in a modern society of global competition,where the flood of information and changing technologies require learners to master how to retrieve,judge and share information,how to extract knowledge and how to develop teamwork skills.In recent years,the quality of online delivery platforms has improved thanks to the rapid development of information and communication technologies.Virtual universities,an extension of existing online delivery models,are making course learning content available online to anyone who wants to learn.Along with the development of virtual universities,the question of whether virtual universities have the potential to disrupt innovation has gradually led to academic discussions and controversies.Although there are different views in the academic community,the research methods adopted are relatively consistent,i.e.,they are all theoretical and discursive,with little quantitative assessment of typical cases.In order to fill this gap,this study attempts to design an evaluation method that can be used to assess disruptive innovation in virtual universities,which has not yet been developed.The study first constructs an evaluation framework based on rooted analysis and coding with NVivo software,which includes six dimensions: teaching services,relative cost of use,openness,organizational independence,university market operation mechanism,and quality.Secondly,a hierarchical analysis method and a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method were used to quantify and assign weights to each characteristic indicator of the framework;finally,ten representative virtual universities were selected from around the world to try to apply this method initially.The evaluation results of the disruptive innovations of the ten virtual universities show that the evaluation method developed in this study can reflect the realistic development of the case universities in a more objective way and is applicable and scalable.At the same time,the main recommendations for virtual universities that aim to compete for the market share of traditional universities or traditional universities that are determined to maintain and enhance their competitiveness include maintaining organizational independence,strengthening technological support,and establishing a foothold in the non-mainstream education market.