Quality assurance and quality development: What will make a difference?

Abstract

Quality assurance, using a continuous quality improvement cycle of monitoring performance against goals and working for improvement, is essential to quality education at a distance. Guidelines and benchmarks are available to assist universities to identify areas of activity that should be monitored and to define quality practice. In a dual mode institution with on-and off-campus students in the same courses, it is important to ensure that attention is paid to distance education outcomes among other competing priorities. Such quality assurance processes, however, may not adequately foster the knowledge building we desperately need to develop and extend good practice in online and distance education. Quality development, through such means as encouraging innovation and in-depth critical analysis of areas of strategic interest and concern, can be seen as a complementary process equally important to quality education at a distance. © 2003 by International Federation for Information Processing. © 2003 by International Federation for Information Processing.