Review by: Brahm, Taiga (2008-01-05)

Quality is an old and nevertheless current subject in the field of education. The article "Quality Assurance – Best Practices for Assessing Online Programs" by Qi Wang deals with the questions how to measure and continuously improve quality of online programs (for instance in distance education). Based on the so-called five pillars of quality which were published in by the Sloan Consortium in their report "Elements of Quality: The Sloan-C Framework", the author takes a closer look at the current movement towards quality assurance for online programs, reviews benchmarks recommended by accreditation agencies and provides an overview on current best practices for quality assurance. Quality assurance is not only demanded by the state and national accreditation agencies, but also by students, their parents or employers. This movement towards the need for more information may be partly due to the recognition of the knowledge worker by the economy and society, but also due to the fact that we have moved towards an information society where knowledge and information, also about educational programs, is "the key competitive advantage" (p 266). Wang also bases his reasoning for the growing need for quality assurance on the notion of lifelong learning and sees an immense market connected with lifelong learning. This market can be served by educational institutions, however, there is also a need for appropriate quality standards. Quality assurance can provide a means for educational institutions to stand out from the growing crowd of competing providers of online programs. In the meantime, a number of guidelines, principles, and benchmarks were developed by accreditation agencies and other institutions. One of the guidelines is the Sloan-C Quality Framework defining the following five elements:

• Learning effectiveness: refers to the objective that online education should be at least equivalent to other delivery modes such as face-to-face learning.
• Access: includes the possibility "for all qualified and motivated students to complete courses, degrees or prorams in their disciplines of choice" (p 267). This includes three kinds of support: academic, administrative, and technical.
• Student satisfaction: comprises the student satisfaction after completion of a course with teaching staff, peer interaction, course rigor and fairness, as well as with support services.
• Faculty satisfaction: reflects the faculty's view on online teaching and states that faculty should also find "the online teaching experience personally rewarding and professionally beneficial" (p 268). This could be supported by the possibility to conduct and publish research related to online courses.
• Cost effectiveness: tuition for online courses should be affordable, however, also sufficient to provide high quality education.

With regard to the institution providing online learning, five best practices were developed by C-RAC (2000):

• institutional context and commitment: allignment of the online programs with the institution's mission
• curriculum and instruction: including highly qualified teaching staff, appropriate learning outcomes at the respective program levels. interaction between teachers and students
• faculty support: reflecting faculty workload, evaluation, intellectual property, support for course design and management
• student support: administrative, technical and financial support, adequate communication with students, appropriate policies with regard to cost, payment, refunding; good services provided by supporting institutions, e. g. library, adademic advising, technical support.
• evaluation and assessment: personal data protection, documentation of student assessements and evaluation of student retention, self-evaluations of the program, the technology, use of resources, etc.

The article lists a number of other guidelines, however, does not comment on their usefulness. Along the guidelines provided by C-RAC, the author then describes exemplary quality assurance procedures in practice: At the University of Florida / US, a centralised approach with a technical infrastructure is used which can provide administrative leadership, supports faculty development, and evaluates course delivery. This infrastructure is initiated by the Office of Academic Affairs and the university funds the technical infrastruture, faculty development, learner support, research and development, as well as evaluation. With regard to faculty support, the University of Wolongong / Australia provides, through the Centre for Educational Development and Interactive Resources, academic staff development, educational design support, and production support. It is remarkable that all teaching staff take a facutly development course and receive release time and extra pay for course development, as well as assistance by so-called Tech Rangers.In terms of assessment, formative assessment is advocated, for instance team collaboration fo ra common product, peer review and self-review, debate, and group support for individual product (based on research by O'Reilly (2000)).

Overall, the article provides a good overview on the current guidelines regarding quality in online education which could be useful for administrators and educators. However, the article would have benefitted from a critical reflection of these standards and from a consolidation of the different guidelines and benchmarks. Although the examples of quality assurance are biased by the University of Florida, they provide a good insight into current practices of quality in online education.