What are the issues in institutional evaluation and quality assurance?

Institutional evaluation and quality assurance focus on determining to what extent program goals have been met and on improving both processes and outcomes.

Programs should be regularly assessed for access, quality, learner outcomes, effectiveness, efficiency, and relevance to needs and expectations. But decisions need to be made on how frequent such evaluations should be and on the standards used. For example, should a distance program be compared with traditional programs?

The PERC strategy used at the Empire State College asks what it describes as "the basic evaluation question": "What kinds of students working with what kinds of faculty in what kinds of learning programs change in what ways at what costs?" This approach uses a wide variety of outcome measures to assess learner goals and the cost-effectiveness of the program.

Those participating in program evaluations might include faculty, administrators, students, and support service staff. The Hong Kong Open University, in its quality assessment, uses advisory peer groups, external assessors, external examiners, and an internal program review and validation committee.

More on quality assurance

Allan Woodley and Adrian Kirkwood, Evaluation in Distance Education: System Evaluation

Timothy Lehmann and Daniel Granger, Assessment of Empire State College

Greville Rumble, Evaluating the Output