PROMOTING A CULTURE OF QUALITY IN ODL

"The hard fact is that many Commonwealth countries cannot afford either the financial or time demands of developed-world quality assurance systems. For countries that are fighting centuries of educational deprivation, the diversion of funds for accreditation systems involving internal and external assessment is neither a priority nor a possibility at present." - COL President Sir John Daniel

 

The rapid expansion of open and distance learning (ODL) globally brings with it many accompanying challenges. One of the primary challenges is promoting a culture of quality within ODL. 

Quality can be defined as "fitness for purpose at minimum cost to society". As applied to education, it means whether education systems are providing the education and training that students and society need. In developing countries where resources are scarce, it is particularly critical that these resources are directed towards institutions that are fulfilling important purposes.

 

Why Quality?

There are several compelling reasons to pay attention to quality in ODL including:

• Competition: In order to survive in an increasingly global and competitive marketplace, educational institutions must deliver quality education.
• Learning effectiveness: The quality of education provided has an enormous impact on learning, enrolment retention, graduation rates, employability and ability of learners to earn a livelihood.
• Customer satisfaction: Students demand value for the time and money they spend on education. In addition to providing quality teaching, educational institutions must consider the need to provide employable skill sets.
• Accountability: Quality is a monitoring mechanism that holds institutions accountable to its stakeholders.
• Status: A focus on quality will enhance the credibility, prestige and reputation of an institution.
  

The responsibility for quality lies with everyone in an educational institution. Assuring quality should be a continuous and ongoing process, and not a one-time activity carried out for accreditation alone.

The process for assessing quality includes:

• Self evaluation,
• Peer review by a panel of experts, usually including at least some external panel members and one or more site visits,
• Analysis of statistical information and/or use of performance indicators or the best practices benchmarking,
• Surveys of students, graduates, employers, professional bodies, and
• Testing the knowledge, skills and competencies of students.
  Source: "Quality Assurance in Higher Education: An Introduction", National Assessment and Accreditation Council, India and COL, 2006

 

Quality Indicators for ODL

In ODL, good learning materials are considered a benchmark for quality education. But a learning experience involves more than just learning material. And the availability of information on the Internet cannot replace quality learning. The Institute of Higher Education has defined other quality indicators for ODL:

• Institutional support
• Course development
• Teaching and learning
• Course structure
• Student support
• Faculty support
• Evaluation and assessment 
   

While business and industry focus on management of quality, educational institutions must focus on management for quality.

Quality teacher education is a pressing concern because of the impact on the quality of basic education provided to children. The calibre of teachers can serve as an indicator of development and progress for a country. The present standards for teacher education programmes in most Asian and African countries rest with government agencies that lack understanding of the profession. Their focus is on responding to the growing teacher shortage.

In fact, it's not just the teacher shortage but the quality of teachers that is primarily responsible for quality in the school system. There is a need to address the core of the problem: the type of teacher preparation and training being provided.

 

Building Capacity in Quality Assurance

While many ODL institutions have implemented quality assurance measures, there is still a pressing need for capacity building in quality assurance. COL is contributing to this in several ways: 

• Educating educators and policymakers: COL regularly hosts training workshops in developing countries, helping to build awareness and knowledge of quality assurance indicators, best practices and international standards. COL also worked with the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) in India to develop a course on Quality Assurance in Higher Education, aimed at raising quality literacy among university and college teachers. This course is being adapted and adopted by Nigeria and Sri Lanka.
• Online resources: COL recently added a new Quality Assurance Micro-site to its website. This provides a single, convenient access point to existing resources in quality assurance in ODL. It is designed for institutions, researchers and governments seeking to establish benchmarks for quality provision and to all those who are interested in devising effective systems for the review and evaluation of ODL programmes.
  www.col.org/quality 
• Quality Assurance Tool Kit: A Quality Assurance in Teacher Education and Development "toolkit" being developed by COL that will be made available to Ministries of Education and teacher education institutions in the Commonwealth later this year. The toolkit will include:
  • Quality assurance in higher education,
  • Quality assurance in teacher education and development,
  • Quality indicators for teacher education, and
  • Best practices case studies.
    

COL will introduce this toolkit through regional institutes for policy makers and administrators in educational institutions, starting in South Asia (Bangalore, India) and the Caribbean (Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago). It will also be featured at the Second Distance Education and Teacher Training for Africa (DETA) conference in Kampala, Uganda in August 2007.

• Developing guidelines: COL has worked in partnership with educational institutions to develop quality assurance guidelines that are being shared among countries.
• Defining quality indicators: COL partnered with NAAC in India to define elements of quality in teacher education and co-publish Quality Indicators in Teacher Education (QUITE). This handbook is designed for use by both teacher educators and teacher education institutions (self-assessment) and external assessors and accrediting agencies. Over 300 teacher educators from 12 countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have already been provided an orientation in using QUITE.

  "The  Widening access to quality higher education is a route to sustainable development.

• Defining quality issues for higher education: In 2006, COL co-published Quality Assurance in Higher Education: An Introduction with NAAC. This book introduces policymakers and practitioners to quality issues, models and best practices.
• Partnerships: In addition to ongoing collaboration with NAAC in India and other organisations in the Commonwealth, COL recently reached agreements to work with two UNESCO agencies in the area of quality assurance for teacher development: the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) and the Teacher Training in sub-Saharan Africa (TTISSA) initiative.
  

The developing world needs appropriate quality assurance mechanisms to protect both systems and students. With the growth of cross-border education and eLearning, it is more important than ever to develop appropriate standards that will ensure that education being provided is quality education.
www.col.org/quality  

 

Safeguarding Quality in ODL By Badri N. Koul   Until recently, the prevailing view was that quality assurance concerns in open and distance learning (ODL) were best appreciated within a local context. The phenomenal growth of information and communications technologies (ICTs), their diverse and promising applications in education/training and the falling costs of the related equipment and services, however, are promising the reach of ODL operations to places and in ways hitherto unknown. Cross-border didactic engagements, trans-modal transactions and new learners including digital natives add new challenges to yesterday's quality concerns globally. The signal of the present decade is that only quality dispensation can ensure institutional survival.   It is for these significant reasons that countries and institutions have moved to embrace a dual process of quality assurance - internal and external assessment. Internal assessment ensures horizontal and vertical collegial participation in the process of quality assurance, and also builds the institutional ownership of the outcomes. External assessment serves a broader purpose in the present market-driven economies and the context of mobile workforce. It is rated highly, for it appeals to employers, taxpayers and other stakeholders alike, as it is seen as objective, unbiased and therefore, dependable. Overall, the practice of integrating internal self-assessment with external evaluation is emerging as a major mechanism for assuring quality in education and training the world over. The visibility, acceptability and the soundness of this mechanism notwithstanding, this combination of internal and external assessment has yet to be adopted universally. Its high costs and the immense and tiring paperwork that it entails mitigate against it in many developing countries, which are bogged down by educational deprivation and resource starvation.   Both internal and external assessment will serve the purpose of ODL as a system if they remain focused on the essentials of ODL: the core, systemic and resource dimensions. The core dimension pertains to those factors that constitute the foundation of quality assurance in ODL. These are course materials and instructional design, teaching-learning transactions (including learner evaluation practices), learner support services and systemic research. The systemic dimension pertains to those factors that constitute the system of ODL at the institutional as well as the national level: Policy makers must introduce, promote and sustain quality assurance regimes in ODL. Institutional leadership should motivate and foster an institutional commitment to quality. Management should be innovative (and innovation friendly), flexible, pragmatic and democratic, but strict on failing components. Long- as well as short-term planning and the execution of plans should be meticulous. Quality assurance mechanisms (in the form of quality assurance units) should be proactively involved in institutional affairs.   The resource dimension refers to factors such as technology, technical and academic expertise (including staff development activities), learning resources, physical infrastructure including ICT applications and cross-institutional collaboration.   Safeguarding quality along these three dimensions is the crux of quality assurance in ODL; do it the way you can!   Professor Badri N. Koul is a consultant and author based in India. He has pioneered many developments in distance education in former roles with the University of the West Indies, the Tertiary Education Commission of Mauritius and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). An Honorary Fellow of COL, Professor Koul (with Professor Greville Rumble) is currently conducting a COL study on open schooling.