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Balancing Stakeholders’ Perspectives of Quality In Overall Quality Assurance System
Session: Parallel Session 2
Location: Frangipani
Date: 2011-10-03 03:30 PM – 05:15 PM
Last modified: 2011-09-18
Abstract
While quality measures have gained significant attention over the past 40 years in higher education, questions remain about quality in open and distance learning (ODL). The concept of quality in ODL universities is challenging, in part because quality in distance higher education is difficult to define and standardized practices remain elusive. This is particularly the case because ODL is a complex process with multiple stakeholders. Understanding and implementing quality programming is now becoming a strategic imperative for institutional agendas, specifically as they seek to improve learning and organizational competitiveness in the global marketplace. As ODL plays a significant and central role in the development of education for some nations and these institutions face the emerging challenges of an educationally competitive environment, it is crucial for ODL providers to be involved in the current competitive paradigm that has been popularly referred to as quality assurance (QA). In this paper, we argue that it is important to consider stakeholders’ perspectives when developing a QA system for distance higher education in order to reach a consensus of the meaning of educational quality.
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