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)
^[1]

Reflection / Learning activity 6: Identifying quality

You will need 15 minutes to complete this activity

1. What standards does your school (or any school you know of in your context) set itself to achieve, which could be considered to be an important aspect of quality?
2. Share your views in the discussion forum and respond to other students’ posts.

Our reflection and feedback on Understanding of policy

Here are few examples of targets schools can set themselves to achieve:

1. Learners who qualify to enter tertiary institutions
2. Trophies they win in a year in sport competitions
3. Annual expenditure that is within budget
4. Unqualified financial reports
5. Appropriate learner:textbook ratios
6. Official facilitator:student ratios
7. Timely feedback on student assignments
8. Fulltime:part-time staff ratios.

Quality assurance refers to structures, mechanisms and systems that are put in place to ensure that goals (standards) that are set will be achieved. It is a process that involves a collection of policies, procedures, and practices that are both internal and external to an institution, which are designed to achieve, maintain and enhance quality on an ongoing basis. Unlike quality control which comes at the end of a process to establish the fitness of purpose of an end product, quality assurance takes place right from the beginning and is meant to ensure that no defects are produced in the system. It is a proactive rather than a reactive process, which assures both internal and external stakeholders of an institution that desired goals/aims (which are explicitly stated) will be met.

To understand the difference between quality assurance and quality control, watch the video Quality Assurance Versus Quality Control.

Stop and think

In your view, what are the advantages of a strong quality assurance system for students?
Write down your answer and share with a colleague.

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.

Stop and Think

Take a pause and think of the quality assurance approach used in your school.

1. What structures are in place?
2. What tools are used?
3. How effective do you think the approach is?

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.

Learning activity 7: Quality assurance system used

You will need 15 minutes to complete this exercise.

1. Write half a page to show whether your quality assurance system is mainly external or internal.
2. Share your answer in the discussion forum.

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.

Learning activity 8: Quality assurance tools used

You will need 30 minutes to complete this activity.

1. What quality assurance tools do you use in your context?
2. Also, what challenges are faced in using quality criteria in enhancing quality of provision?
3. Post your response in the discussion forum.

OR

1. Choose any one of the toolkits given above and list the strengths and weaknesses you identified in that toolkit.
2. Post your answer in the discussion forum.

Accreditation

One of the most important quality assurance aspects in education is accreditation of programmes of study. Bates, (2015) ^[2] 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.

Learning activity 9: Common or different curricula

You need 30 minutes to complete this activity.

Do you think open schools should offer different programmes of study from conventional face-to-face schools?

Give reasons for your answer.

You can post your answer in the discussion forum. Do you agree or disagree with other students’ ideas? Comment on at least one other post.

Our reflection and feedback on Common or different curriculum

Often, by virtue of its self-accreditation status bestowed on it by the mother Ministry, an open school develops vocational and professional courses which are offered in addition to the secondary school curriculum. The relevant Ministry also exercises oversight of the quality of such training through ODFL. In some open schools, professional bodies play a very important role in providing support in terms of benchmarking performance in the vocational and professional courses that are offered.

Professional and vocational courses are usually offered at various levels within an open school, thereby providing smooth progression pathways for students. Within the same school, a student can study for a certificate qualification in a particular field, after when they proceed to a diploma and eventually to a degree qualification. Thus, the design of programmes and courses should be done carefully enough to allows for such progression. To further enhance such progression pathways, open schools align their vocational and professional courses with curricular offered in related institutions in the country. This allows movement of students to other institutions for higher qualifications in their preferred fields of study. Thus, curriculum alignment at national level promotes recognition of qualifications wherever students go.

Learning activity 10: Programmes offered in different countries

You need 30 -40 minutes to complete this exercise
Study the following table, which shows qualification programmes that are offered by one open school in Southern Africa.

1. Which of the programmes in the table are offered in open schools in your context and which ones are not?
2. Give reasons why open schools in your context do not offer some of the qualifications in the table.
3. In the discussion forum, talk about some of the challenges learners who go through open schooling face when they want to enrol in tertiary institutions in your country?

Notes

1. ↑ Harvey, L. (2006) Understanding Quality. In Purser, L. (Ed.) Introducing Bologna objectives and tools. EUA Bologna Handbook: Making Bologna work, Brussels European University Association and Berlin, Raabe.
2. ↑ Bates, T. (2015) What do we mean by quality when teaching in a digital age: https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/11-1-what-do-we-mean-by-quality-when-teaching-in-a-digital-age/