Abstract
As quality assurance systems become embedded, competitive institutions are seeing their futures in quality enhancement, in a continued commitment to improvement. This paper discusses quality signals that may be used to enhance course quality in on-line distance education. Analysis proceeds under five headings: pedagogies; promoting complex achievements; changing concepts of quality; designs for re-use; and new partnerships. Recurrent themes are: A rich and differentiated view of learning leads to a rich and differentiated view of quality; Quality courses are associated with the quality of affordances for learning; Conceptions of quality have been changing; e-learning is creating new conceptions of quality; Quality in higher education practice in a decade’s time is likely to be different again. Universities that cling to established views will be at risk from their global commercial competitors.
Highlights
Recurrent themes are: A rich and differentiated view of learning leads to a rich and differentiated view of quality; Quality courses are associated with the quality of affordances for learning; Conceptions of quality have been changing; e-learning is creating new conceptions of quality; Quality in higher education practice in a decade’s time is likely to be different again
A third response recalls that, once upon a time, when school curricula were being reformed, Walker and Schaffarzick (1974) reviewed the literature to answer the question, ‘Are new curricula better than the old curricula?’ Their found that new curricula produce a better grasp of the things that new curricula emphasise and old curricula produce a better grasp of the things that old curricula emphasise
I want to insist that those notions of quality have not disappeared but I want to argue that new concepts quality are emerging and are embedded in good quality courses
Summary
Is on-line learning better than face-to-face? Following Russell (1999), we might expect the answer to be that there is no significant difference and there is some support for this in the literature. I argue that in this century it is necessary to have a view quality that helps students to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create using modern technologies and in collaboration with people at a distance, if only because this is the world of professional work to which many of our graduates aspire. Quality course design recognises this, cuts the clutter, helps students understand the structure of the subject matter (Bruner, 1966) and teaches them to take change of extending base understandings This creates space to foster cognitive processes that have often been marginalised -- apply, analyze, evaluate, create. I have complemented this with the claim that complex achievements have acquired higher priority, which means that quality courses, especially postgraduate professional courses, are replete with opportunities that are likely to evoke the rich blends of intended learning
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