Virtual Classroom Software –Resolving the dilemma using MCDA

It was almost midnight as Ramanujan went over the requirements for the virtual classroom
software license that needed to be purchased for the upcoming session. The college had
decided to hold online classes for all the students under various management programs in
the wake of the pandemic. He needed to do research on multiple vendor options based on
different stakeholders’ requirements, perform analysis, and present his recommendations
to the Dean-Academics, IT and Finance department for approval in 2 Weeks’s time.
Ramanujan was working as the Senior IT-Analyst Operations at Durdin School of
Management (DSM) for the past 10 years. He considered the current project of deciding on
the virtual classroom software as one of the most challenging in his professional career
given the complexity, varied criteria’s and several constraints associated in terms of time
(Classes were scheduled to begin in 3 weeks), cost and abundance of alternatives differing in
their offerings.
Ramanujan had decided to use the multiple tools and techniques under MCDA to arrive at a
preliminary ranking of alternatives and verify the consistency of results so as to arrive at his
final recommendation.
Although the college had a basic infrastructure for Online classes for its Executive training
program but this was the first time that the Institute had to conduct virtual classes for its
flagship 2 year MBA program having more than 1100 students enrolled. There were multiple
other courses as well which needed similar facilities.
As Ramanujan locked his room and began to head home, several thoughts cross his mind.
How to decide on the number of criteria’s and assign weightages representing all
stakeholder’s relative importance keeping budget in mind? Which methods to use under the
MCDA analysis to perform a holistic analysis and check for consistency? Which alternatives
would suit the unique demands of all students living in all parts of the country?

About B school
Durdin School of Management was established in 1995 as a private institute in Hyderabad.
The school provided various management programs with its flagship program being the 2-
year MBA program for which it conducted its own exam DET every year. The program was
amongst the top 20 MBA programs consistently and other programs like IPM, PGPX, PGPSX
were also popular residential programs amongst the populace. The short-term program (4-6
months) for managers were given through online mode with strength of the batch being 45-
70 students. The school was popular amongst students for its ROI after passing out since the
fees was much lower than other colleges of same repute. However, this also meant that it
had limited capital to invest in major overhaul of existing facilities.
COVID-19 Pandemic – The Aftermath
On 24 March 2020, the ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21 days, limiting movement as a
preventive measure against the pandemic which was gathering unprecedented pace. The
unprecedented nature of the Covid-19 pandemic and its widespread impact has significantly
altered and influenced economic and social systems across the word.
All educational institutions had been closed since the country went into a 21-day lockdown
from March 25 due to the COVID-19 outbreak. In order to confront the challenges posed by
Covid-19, educational institutions are leveraging technology to deliver educational programs
online. Although some schools took the lead in deciding rather promptly that they must
operate online, Most B schools adopted a wait and watch strategy since the term was
scheduled begin in about a month. After a lot of internal discussion and debates, The
director of DSM gave the go ahead for having the next term as online for all programs
except PhD as a precautionary measure. It presented a significant challenge for the IT
department as it had to decide on the optimum software, acquire licenses of requisite
technology to provide education directly to students’ desktops.

Adopting the MCDA approach

Ramanujan had a computer science background and did his MBA in 2007 with IT
specialization. During his initial research, he recalled the various methodologies under the
MCDA approach which he had used during his internship days to decide upon project
selection for a consultancy firm.
A Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA, or Multi-criteria analysis (MCA), is a decision-
making analysis that evaluates multiple (conflicting) criteria as part of the decision-making
process.

MCDA problems are comprised of five components:

1. Goal
2. Decision maker or group of decision makers with opinions (preferences)
3. Decision alternatives
4. Evaluation criteria (interests)
5. Outcomes or consequences associated with alternative/interest combination

Ramanujan formed an internal team of 5 assistants for this program to undertake primary
and secondary research to generate options and collect data to gauge stakeholder
expectations and match the offering of requisite solution vendors
Collecting Data & Methodology
The team began by searching for vendors/providers of the Virtual Classroom Software and
asked for quote on the price and other functionalities provide for educational institutions.
After extensive research, The most popular and reliable options were Zoom, Webex, Go to
meeting, Microsoft teams and adobe.
After a lot of dwelling, the team decided on the following criteria to assess the various
alternatives i.e. UI Experience, Bandwidth usage, Breakout Rooms, Security, Participant
Visibility, Recording Feature, Sharing Capability (Refer Exhibit 1 for more details on the
criteria).
Once the criteria’s and alternatives were identified, the team decided to carry out FGD’s,
One-on-One Interviews, filling out google form with key stakeholders i.e. Faculty members,
Students, IT Experts. They cleaned the data for abnormalities and started the analysis.
To come up with the relevant rankings of alternatives, the team decided to use multiple
methods under MCDA i.e. AHP, Fuzzy AHP, Topsis, Best and Worst Method. The aim was to
establish consistency in at-least the top 3 ranks from the results of each method.
Ramanujan was confident that using the different approaches under the MCDA approach
allows insight into different judgements of value and is best suited for problem originates
from the presence of more than one criterion. 
However, Ramanujan knew that the entire process requires diligent and meticulous
preparation as collection of incorrect data, wrong weightage assignments can drastically
alter the final recommendation. The final rankings alone were not sufficient, but he needed
to showcase symmetry and coherence across different methods to back his final
assessment.
Exhibit No.1 Criteria’s used under MCDA approach

S.no Criteria's Brief Description

1 UI Experience User experience (UX) is the interaction and experience
students have with a company's products and services.
2 Bandwidth usage Bandwidth describes network throughput; it refers to how
much digital information we can send or receive across a
connection in a certain amount of time
3 Breakout Rooms Breakout rooms allow you to split your meeting in up to n
number of separate sessions.
4 Security Remote teaching involves several critical aspects that can be
detrimental to the entire school community. For instance,
malware and phishing can slip past weak web protection
framework, granting cyber criminals access to the entire
school network.
5 Participant View the meeting participants. If you're the host, you will be
Visibility able to see controls to manage participants.Faculty can tap
the participant's name for these options:
Start or stop their video, Pin or spotlight their video,Make
them host or co-host, Put them on hold and Remove them
from the meeting.
6 Recording Faculty can Start recording to the cloud so as students who
Feature miss due to internet issues can view the class later.
7 Sharing Capability It allows the faculty to share slides,pdf's and videos during
classes and for students to present their projects in the class
for evaluation.