QA4ODFL1/Policy/Quality assurance

One of the main challenges faced in rolling out distance education is that the public has a negative attitude towards that form of provision. Especially where this mode of provision is newly introduced, some people think the quality of learning is inferior to traditional face-to-face learning. The onus lies with providers to demonstrate that distance education systems are credible and achieve parity with face-to-face forms of provision. The best way to gain such public confidence is to implement robust quality assurance processes and produce high quality learning outcomes. Quality assurance should be integrated in every facet of ODFL provisioning – the design of the courses of study, quality of staff used, teaching and learning resources, learner support mechanisms, governance and management, assessment processes, and graduation and certification processes. Often, these are the areas which pose quality challenges in ODFL. But what is quality and how can it be enhanced in ODFL?

Quality and quality assurance concepts
Quality in Education is something that is perceived differently by different people. As a parent, you probably consider certain factors when you choose which school or college to send your child to. Institutions consider quality to be standards that are set to be achieved within defined timeframes. Such standards could be examination pass rates, number of learners enrolled in the school, rankings at provincial or even national level. For example, at the beginning of an academic year, an institution may set certain goals to achieve in terms of number of students who pass public examinations at the end of the year, or first class passes it will record from its examination class. All other factors held constant, this becomes an important quality goal to work towards throughout the course of the year. The target to be achieved is the institution’s perception of quality in terms of student success. After examinations are written and results are out, the institution evaluates the extent to which it achieved its set goal. Thus, quality simply refers to standards of performance that an institution sets itself to achieve within a specified period of time. For more elaborate explanations on the concept of quality, read Harvey, (2006)

Approaches to quality assuring ODFL
There are various approaches and tools that are used to quality assure educational processes. However, some approaches to QA work better than others, and sometimes what works well in one context does not work so well in another. Examples of different types of approaches to QA are bureaucratic rather than collegial approaches, or outward-looking (external) rather than inward-looking (internal) approaches. Often, the approach used in quality assurance shows people’s understanding of what quality education is and therefore where emphasis is placed in the QA system. In this chapter, we understand a QA approach to be a system of quality enhancement that consists of structures, tools and processes. Structures are QA bureaus or units that are put in place and are supported by the necessary resources to enable them to coordinate, support and drive the QA agenda of an institution. Tools are instruments such as quality criteria, review and reporting templates, and surveys for data collection — used in the institution to achieve some type of uniformity in implementing quality assurance. These tools also help make the quality assurance system of an institution more explicit and transparent.

Internationally, there are two dominant approaches to quality assurance, external and internal quality assurance. External quality assurance involves input from external stakeholders like the Ministry of Education at the schooling level and the national quality assurance agency in higher education. In this approach, quality assurance is mainly driven by a stakeholder external to the institution, hence the term external quality assurance – it is more outward than inward looking. Internal quality assurance is an approach where institutions use their own structures, systems and staff to quality assure their processes. Obviously, this is done in line with expectations of relevant external stakeholders like Ministry of Education or national quality agency as laid down in national guidelines. Good institutions strive to go well beyond the minimum expectations of such external stakeholders so as to achieve excellence. This approach where quality assurance is internally driven is a more inward than outward looking approach. There is self-motivation for the providing institution to drive its quality assurance process without any need for policing from an external agency. It is a more preferred approach because it gives the internal stakeholders in an educational intuition ownership of the quality assurance system. In this course, we encourage you to prioritise the latter approach, which is premised on the understanding that the responsibility for quality assurance lies with the provider. It also has greater potential for continuous quality improvement.

Quality assurance tools
There are various tools that can be used to measure quality in an institution. They help an institution to be systematic in its quality enhancement processes. Over years, COL has developed many quality assurance rubrics for use in ODFL, both at the schooling as well as at the higher education level. Below are examples of such toolkits that you are encouraged to familiarise yourselves with and use as they are or customise to suit your own context:

All the quality assurance toolkits highlighted in this unit are open education resources (OER). This gives you the wealth of resources that exists, which you can draw upon to enhance the quality of your ODFL. You don’t have to start from scratch and you don’t have to spend years figuring out how to quality assure your ODFL processes.

Accreditation
One of the most important quality assurance aspects in education is accreditation of programmes of study. Bates, (2015) acknowledges the role of accreditation processes as a key aspect of quality enhancement in institutions. This is particularly common in higher education where there is no standardised curriculum at national level. Each institution develops its own curriculum and rolls it out to students. In such instances, it is important to ensure that courses that are developed by an institution and arrangements put in place for their rolling out will be credible enough to benefit students. In many open schools, the curriculum offered is the same as the general curriculum that is offered in traditional schools. Learners also sit for similar end of cycle examinations set for traditional schools at national level. What varies is the teaching and learning mode, which gives open school learners the flexibility to study remotely, during their own times and at their ow individual pace. However, the open schooling provider is accredited by the relevant Ministry of Education to offer such educational services. The Ministry has overall oversight of the quality of provision to ensure parity between open schooling and traditional classroom-based schooling. Common certificates are issued to learners of both systems and there is no discrimination when it comes to progression to higher levels of education between learners from open schools and those from traditional face-to-face schools.