TheQualityDilemmainOnlineEducation.pdfVIP

CHAPTER 16 THE QUALITY DILEMMA IN ONLINE EDUCATION Nancy K. Parker Athabasca University Introduction With the proliferation of online learning providers and the chal- lenges presented by the distance education sector to state regulators and accrediting bodies, it is not surprising that “buyer beware” is the watchword for students, institutions, and public agencies alike. In the current environment, it is incumbent on organizations to demonstrate the quality of their services in ways that are intelligible to potential students and their employers, faculty and staff, regulators, and government agencies. The admirable attempts to define quality standards and best practices for online education have done little to assuage the skepticism of representatives in the academy, who are more accustomed to face-to-face delivery directed to bounded communities. Fully addressing the roots of such skepticism is beyond the scope of this paper; however, its presence informs much of the technical discussion around quality assurance frameworks in higher education in general, and in online delivery in particular. Purveyors of online learning programs maybe inclined to attribute a lack of broad acceptance among their colleagues to the paradigm shift that higher education has been undergoing in the past 15 years. In many cases, however, it must be admitted that potential of electronic delivery modes has not been fully realized in the execution of online courses. Some have suggested that these shortcomings are the result of trying to replicate the classroom environment, instead of maximizing the new configurations of knowing and community formation possible in an interactive online environment (Schank, cited by Caudron, 2001). Moreover, finding appropriate comparators for the efficacy of any particular mode of delivery is difficult when the broader questions of quality