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Introductory comments by Dr. David Woodhouse for the third "Virtual conference":
Accreditation/Quality Assurance/Credit Banking:    (11 - 29 January 1999)

11 January 1999

1. Personal Comment:

As I currently work in New Zealand, I shall use the Maori custom of beginning by sketching a little of my own background. I was born in the UK and have qualifications in mathematics, computer science and education from universities in Australia, Tanzania and the UK. I have worked as an academic in universities in several countries, and in the area of external quality assurance in Hong Kong and New Zealand. I am currently Director of the New Zealand Universities Academic Audit Unit and President of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education.

2. The Virtual Conference (VC):

Four virtual conferences are being run in conjunction with a Forum in Brunei in March. The Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) specification says that they are "to provide means of participation for those who may not be able to attend [the Forum] in person", and "to help participants and conference planners to prepare for the Forum". Therefore, firstly and most importantly, the VC is intended to be interesting and useful to us all as we participate in it. Secondly, I have been asked to provide a summary of our discussions for transmission to the Forum: by this means (and of course through any of you who are also attending the Forum), our ideas will contribute to the Forum itself, and be able to be further developed.

3. Disclaimer:

It is not my task to control or direct this discussion. There were over 40 subscribers to this list over three weeks ago (I haven’t re-checked recently), and I assume that many of you have subscribed because you have burning questions to raise, comments to make or ideas to share. So, although I’m providing below a few thoughts that I think are relevant, you should not feel constrained to follow these leads, but be free to raise quite different issues or come at the topics from entirely different directions. I think I do have the responsibility of saying if I think something is off our topic, and discouraging further debate along that line.

4. Structure:

With three weeks and three subtopics, I considered suggesting one topic per week, but decided that that might be unhelpful in terms of your own personal schedules. What we can try is to post separate messages on the separate topics. (I’ll cheat with this first one, and put mine all together!) Even that may not work, as the topics clearly interleave. At least once per week (more often if I have the time and it seems that our discussion warrants it), I’ll try to summarise the main threads of our discussion thus far, and signal tracks that are emerging for further exploration.

5. Conclusion:

This VC ends on 29 January. That evening (NZ time) I shall be going to a conference in San Diego on - ‘Quality indicators and distance learning’!  Therefore, I’ll provide a wrap-up message to the VC on my return the following week - and I might be able to slip in a few final thoughts from the conference.

ACCREDITATION

What are we accrediting? institutions? providers more generally? programmes? modules? qualifications?

Why are we accrediting? Why is it needed? How is it used?

The classic accreditation model is built around the self-review, the external review team, the site visit, the report, the decision. Does this work in open, distance, international learning? What is ‘the site visit’?

What data do we need, what are the right questions to ask, whom do we need to interview, in accrediting distance and open learning? Do we want different data, questions, interviewees, compared to when we accredit ‘traditional and/or campus-based and/or single country education? Should we be trying to set up different systems, different questions, etc. to apply to different sorts of institutions; or should we make our accrediting processes more generic so they can deal with all types?

Do accreditors put higher hurdles before distance and open learning institutions that before ‘traditional’ ones?

Do distance and open learning institutions find they constantly have to explain themselves to accreditors who were not educated through this mode themselves?

Accrediting agencies are typically national (or even sub-national). This means that the education that crosses national boundaries can fall between the cracks. In 1996, the Global Alliance for Transnational Education (GATE) was set up to address this issue. In addition to having set down Principles of good practice, it offers a service to institutions to certify them against these Principles. Is this a feasible model, or should all accrediting agencies have the authority of either a government or a sector of institutions? and should they accredit the whole sweep of an institution’s activities?

Distance learning has moved from correspondence courses, through multi-media to the Internet. Assuming we do know how to accredit in distance education, what difference does the medium make?

QUALITY ASSURANCE

What is quality? We should not spend too long on this, but remember that different people assume different definitions, and some people are happy to use several definitions simultaneously. My definition is ‘fitness for purpose’. Some people see that as too restrictive, but I see it as all-embracing, because the word ‘purpose’ includes all goals, objectives, aims, etc. regardless of who set them or how they were set.

What is Quality Assurance (QA)? I have a broad interpretation of this, including quality control, quality management, quality improvement, etc. We can see accreditation as an external quality mechanism and QA as the internal mechanism, or we can allow QA to include the activities of external quality agents as well.

Even if you do not adhere to the ‘fitness for purpose’ definition of quality, you can’t talk about quality in education without asking what that education is for. So, our discussion of QA must include the role of open and distance learning, and set this within the role of HE more generally. Many countries are struggling with the best ways to identify and provide the different types of HE: does distance and open learning cut across all types, or does it fit within some types?

Student numbers: campus-based institutions are facing the challenge of ‘massification’, but the ‘mega-universities’ are distance and open institutions. Is this one categorisation between these institutions and the more ‘traditional’ ones?

Distance learning has moved from correspondence courses, through multi-media to the Internet. Assuming we do know how to achieve quality in distance education, what difference does the medium make?

What is the right balance in quality control: in the mainly paper-based model of distance education, the course package could not be changed to rapidly as a lecturer or tutor could change their notes - but the Internet form can be changed MORE rapidly.

Where do standards relate to quality?

CREDIT BANKING

It was observed to me that, in the UK’s system of CAT (Credit Accumulation and Transfer), there is much A but little T. Institutions can always find more reasons for not accepting incoming credit than for accepting it. Can we set up rewards and motivations to encourage it?

How is equivalence determined? How should it be determined? How can we quantify learning? (Seat time was only ever a cruse proxy, but we let ‘traditional’ institutions get away with it.)

There are increasing numbers of recognition agencies (NARICs, ENICs) etc. How do we plug into these to avoid having parallel systems? Do they only work at the level of whole qualifications? Does it matter if we have parallel systems, so long as we know what the conversion factor is?

Europe is working hard on mutual recognition of qualifications so as to enhance mobility across the continent. The Commonwealth of Learning is a different geographical grouping. Do groupings make sense in this matter? If so, do we look at contiguous geographical regions, economic blocs, or groups of countries with compatible QA systems in HE?

Dr David Woodhouse
President, International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE)
Director, New Zealand Universities Academic Audit Unit (AAU)
Te Wahanga Tatari Kaute Tohungatanga o nga Whare Wananga o Aotearoa

tel: 64-4-801-7924; fax: 64-4-801-7926
email: director@aau.ac.nz
snailmail: AAU, POBox 9747, Wellington, NZ
location: 7/F West Block, Education House,
178 Willis Street, Wellington, NZ

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