Quality Assurance in dedicated ODL Institutions
In 2009 COL produced in partnership with the Sri Lankan Distance Education Modernization Project and UNESCO the “Quality assurance toolkit for distance higher education institutions and programmes”.
Mega Universities
Mega-universities are institutions that have more than 100,000 students world-wide:
The UNESCO site also hosts Insung Jung's Quality Assurance Survey of Mega-universities , published as Chapter 7 of McIntosh, C. and Voroglu, Z. (eds) Lifelong Learning and Distance Higher Education, COL Perspectives on Distance Education Series (2005).
Individual University Web-sites
Generally, the Quality Assurance procedures of individual universities are not available for public access. Excellent material is however available in the form of eight Fact Sheets on Quality and Standards in the Open University of the UK. The Fact Sheets also contain links to other relevant QA sites. Some of the internal links are only available to registered users of the UKOU intranet. The
fact sheets cover the following topics:
-
Fact Sheet 1. Institutional management of quality and standards
-
Fact Sheet 2. Framework for academic quality and standards
-
Fact Sheet 3. Internal Review
-
Fact Sheet 4. Assessment and Awards
-
Fact Sheet 5. Collaborative Awards
-
Fact Sheet 6. Student Support and Guidance
-
Fact Sheet 7. Staff
-
Fact Sheet 8. Accountability to Stakeholders
Up-to-date information about the development of quality assurance mechanisms at individual institutions and further useful links can be obtained from the twelve case studies contained in Badri N. Kohl and Asha Kanwar (eds)
Towards a Culture of Quality, COL Perspectives Series (2006).
