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Quality assurance initiatives and practicalities in virtual education
Quality assurance initiatives
Across the world, national quality agencies, institutions and governments are
seeking to address the quality assurance challenges posed by virtual educa-
tion, particularly as it crosses traditional boundaries. A number of initiatives
are evident. In the US, the National Education Association in collaboration
with Blackboard Inc. has recently produced a set of benchmarks for internet-
based distance education prepared for them by the Institute for Higher Edu-
cation Policy
8
. Still more recently, eight regional accrediting commissions in
the US collaborated to produce a set of guidelines for electronically offered
degree and certificate programmes
9
. Neither of these have the force of law,
but they do provide useful guidance.
Other countries are also offering guidance. In the UK, the Quality Assurance
Agency has issued guidelines and in New Zealand, the Academic Audit Unit
has produced a QA document that is part-way between an accreditation
manual and a guide for external reviewers of virtual education.
10
There have
been other initiatives in Europe. For example, the European National Quality
Agencies (ENQA) recently commissioned a project to develop a typology of
new providers and provision highlighting the quality assurance implications
associated with them (to be published in 2001); and EuroPace funded a pro-
ject under the European Community’s Socrates programme (1999) to devel-
op a web-based course on “Quality Assurance in Open and Distance Learn-
ing”
11
.
The various QA guidance documents concentrate on a number of common
aspects. First, the regulatory context for design and delivery of programmes
must be addressed, with attention to security, privacy and ethics. The institu-
tional context is usually the second area of attention, in terms of mission,
goals and infrastructure. Course structure, development and content are of
central importance, along with student information, counselling and support.
Support for faculty is also a key element. Assessment and learning out-
comes feature in all documents, particularly in terms of security and educa-
tional effectiveness. Finally, monitoring and review systems are required.
While all these aspects of provision and focus for quality assurance are also
relevant in face-to-face delivery, the elements of guidance under each topic
107
8
National Education Association (2000) ‘Quality on the Line: Benchmarks for Success in Internet-Based
Distance education’, Washington DC, National Education Association and Blackboard Inc.
(www.ichep.com/PR17.html)
9
Regional Accrediting Commissions (2001) ‘Best Practices for Electronically Offered Degree and Certifi-
cate Programs’. (www.wiche.edu/telecom/)
10 QAA (1999) ‘Guidelines on the Quality assurance of Distance Learning’, Gloucester, QAA and NZAAU
(1999) ‘External Quality Assurance for the Virtual Institution’, AAU Series on Quality: Number 4, Welling-
ton, New Zealand Academic Audit Unit
11 EuroPace (1999) ‘Quality Assurance in Open and Distance Learning: Web-based Pilot Course’, http://pro-
jects.europace.be/quality/
are specific to virtual education. However, the form of virtual education that is
not addressed in these documents (apart from the ENQA typology) is the
issue of multiple agencies sharing educational functions across a consor-
tium. The “kite-marking” approach described above would seem to be the
most appropriate form of quality assurance for multi-agent educational
operations.
Lessons from practice
The previous section highlighted a number of formal quality assurance initia-
tives. At this relatively early stage in the development and use of virtual edu-
cation, it is also valuable to turn to the experience of practitioners. The
distance education universities have particularly useful experience to share
and the UK’s Open University is a leader in the field. Drawing on experience
from several programmes, Professor Laurillard offers some practical guid-
ance
12
. She draws attention to students’ academic needs and argues that
there should be a balance between online and offline learning. This balance
needs to be struck in several areas. First, the author highlights collaborative
learning as an area requiring careful structure. Designing small group work is
useful at the beginning of a course, but needs to be reduced towards the
end, as students become more independent. Second, she notes that even
when students enjoy working online, they still print a large proportion of the
online material. This suggests that balance is also needed in relation to the
form of learning resources. Third, Laurillard draws attention to the time that
students spend on ICT materials, noting from evaluation studies that this
may be up to 40% more than the allotted time. The lesson is to avoid the
temptation of giving students too much material.
From the evaluation studies undertaken by the Open University, Laurillard
concludes with a number of key messages for those who are developing
institutional strategies for virtual education. These messages help to ground
the formal QA guidance described earlier:
l
Choose appropriate media and offer balance in their use;
l
Carefully time the provision of guidance to students, the level of skills
development and amount and positioning of interactivity in a course;
l
Manage the quality of interactive learning;
l
Plan student and staff work-loads carefully;
l
Provide a high level of support;
l
Allocate more time for research and development and for innovation in
teaching because of the complexity and expense of virtual education;
l
Develop effective quality assurance mechanisms that will regularly pro-
vide feedback, and take action on the results of evaluation studies.
108
12 Laurillard, D (2000) ‘The E-University: What have we learned?’ in
The International Journal of Manage-
ment Education, 3-7
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