Article 5: Britto, M., Ford,
C., Wise, J. Three institutions, three approaches, one goal: Addressing quality
assurance in online learning. Journal of
Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 17 (Issue 4)
In this article, Britto,
Ford and Wise look at three different institutions to determine the approaches
each institution takes towards addressing quality assurance in their online
programs. The first institution they
look at is Lone Star College (LSC) system in Texas. LSC have implemented a Quality by Design
(QbD) model based on Sloan’s five pillars of quality in online education. They also have faculty who teach online
classes go through a self paced Online Teaching Certification to prepare
instructors to teach online. While they
have had some early successes they have realized that getting instructor buy in
is crucial to the success of online programs.
The second institution
investigated was the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). UDC administers their online courses via
Blackboard and over the years has made advanced training available to
faculty. They also set up the Research
Academy for Integrated Learning (RAIL) that is tasked with oversight and
guidance of online education. Achieving
cost effective measures has prompted UDC to increase their online offerings and
as such they have moved to using the Quality Matters (QM) rubric to measure and
guide the quality of their online courses.
UDC later formed the Committee for Online Learning (C4OL) who develop
guidelines, policies and procedures for online teaching and courses. As with LSC, UDC has realized that the key
to successful online courses is reliant of faculty buy in.
The third institution was
Florida State University (FSU). While
the academic departments handle the quality assurance at FSU, the Office of
Distance Learning (ODL) ensures the quality of online programs for FSU. ODL uses different methods and instruments to
manage the development, delivery implementation, support and evaluation of all
online programs at FSU. However, their involvement is voluntary.
In all three institutions,
the faculty plays a key part in the assurance of quality of online
programs. Each institution has formed
various committees to focus on the quality of online programs and to provide
consistency in the institution. Defining
the quality and having a governing body oversee the quality of programs is
something that could easily be applied to a corporate environment. Currently we have an Excellence committee
who looks at client work to ensure quality standards are met, so implementing a
similar committee for online programs would be beneficial to the online program
success.
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