Quality assurance and accreditation of Online and Distance Higher Education by George Ubachs (EADTU)

1. “Quality assurance and accreditation
of Online and Distance Higher
Education”.
EADTU-EU Summit 2017
George Ubachs
EADTU

2. Survey-approach
• Survey on practices of quality assurance and accreditation in 15
countries supplementing the former CPL study.
• It deals with national frameworks and regulations, institutional
developments in universities, current practices of external quality
assurance for online and distance education, aspects of internal
quality assurance for blended, online and distance education, and
finally practices of accreditation of online and distance education.
• 18 universities responded from Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland,
France, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Israel,
Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom.
• We need in a next step responses/involvement from QA agencies
and Ministries.
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3. LEGAL AND REGULATORY
FRAMEWORKS
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5. Legal frameworks (CPL)
Legal frameworks are largely permissive of the introduction of
digital education in all the eight case study countries, and state
that different forms of education (traditional face-to-face,
blended and distance) are all valid.
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6. Accreditation (CPL)
The widespread use across Europe of substantial amounts of
technology in predominantly face-to-face university degree
education has suggested that recognition and accreditation of
such blended education has not posed a major barrier for
universities.
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7. European diploma supplement (CPL)
At European level, the European Diploma Supplement (EDS) has
a section (4.1) for teaching formats, including e-learning and
distance, so that it too can accommodate, and record, a variety
of modes of teaching and learning.
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8. No revisions of accreditation processes
There is very limited evidence that suggests there have been
substantial revisions to university accreditation processes.
It is likely that many universities had to think carefully about
how they ensured that the quality of their provision would
remain at a high level whilst introducing technology, and clearly
uncertainty about how to do this still exists for some, perhaps
to a degree, all (Ingolfsdottir, 2014; Mapstone et al, 2014).
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9. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL QUALITY
ASSURANCE
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12. Internal approval processes require internal
understanding of what quality means in new
forms of education, and external approval
processes require the same of external
reviewers.
Being able to assess what is to be assessed in
innovating education, you need to speak the
same language and work with the same criteria
and indicators.
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14. “Digital expert centres“ (CPL)
Many, if not most, universities in Europe have “digital
education expert centers” (their names vary greatly).
Seventeen of the 19 case study universities have them,
as did 75% of universities in the EUA survey (Gaebel,
2014).
The professional staff and academic staff in these
centers are usually very active in national and
international digital education communities and thus
can draw on and share experiences related to quality
issues.
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15. Virtual universities transferring expertise (CPL)
Similarly, where virtual universities have been
established (e.g. Bavaria and Ruhr VUs in Germany;
Finland, Lithuania, Norway) these have provided a
quality assured locus for teacher experience and
training.
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16. Quality assurance agencies
Quality assurance agencies, whose role is to assess
quality in the learning and teaching business also need
at least some of this expertise, which they might best
obtain by also having such staff in-house.
This was proposed by the Dutch QA agency, NVAO, at
the ENQA conference in Zagreb (Flierman, 2014)
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17. Quality assurance agencies (CPL)
The 2014 EUA study showed that only a quarter of QA
agencies gave special consideration to digital education
(Gaebel M, 2014). No clear metrics for evaluating
quality increases were offered to our case study
universities.
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18. Shift to institutional evaluations(CPL)
The quality assurance process is operated by the higher
education institutions themselves (internal quality
assurance) and is evaluated and recognised by the
quality assurance agencies (external quality assurance).
Increasingly, there is a shift in national quality
assurance systems of responsibilities from the
agencies towards the higher education institutions,
and from individual degrees to institutional
evaluations (“quality audit”).
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21. RECOMMENDATIONS
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22. Recommendations
At governmental level:
• National governments should review their legislative
and regulatory frameworks and practices for quality
assurance and accreditation in higher education
(including recognition of prior learning) to ensure that
they encourage, and do not impede, the provision of
more flexible educational formats, including degrees
and other ECTS-bearing courses that are fully online.
• Policies and processes should support and promote
innovation in pedagogies and greater use of
technology, and a vision for change should be expressed
through national strategies.
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23. Recommendations
At QA-agency level:
• National QA agencies can benefit from developing their own
in-house expertise and establish processes that are
sufficiently flexible to include recognising and supporting
new modes of teaching and learning. As such they can
evaluate institutions on their active support of innovation
and its impact on the quality of teaching and learning.
• ENQA and other relevant European networks are important
key players in this field and can support the sharing of good
practice by national QA agencies in the development of
criteria on the recognition of new modes of teaching and
learning.
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24. Recommendations
QA agencies and universities:
• Building on the strong existing base of digital
education, a European and national metrics should be
established to record the typologies and extent of
online, blended, and open education at institutional and
national levels. This would enable institutions to
compare themselves with others and to monitor their
own progress.
• Setting up a structure of dialogue between QA agencies,
Universities and governments. A Peer Learning Activity.
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27. Thank you!
George Ubachs
george.ubachs@eadtu.eu
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