Standards in Online Higher Education

Standards in Online Higher Education

A review of the research revealed a number of relevant findings. The University of London became the world’s first higher education institution to offer a distance learning program. In 1858, the University of London External System established the provision of higher education and degrees to students of any race, religion, gender, or location (University of London External System, 2008). The efforts laid the foundations for an approach to learning that would become a major source of higher education worldwide. It paved the way for correspondence study, extension divisions, and distance education programs in universities and colleges around the globe, including online distance education.

The University of London External System set up quality standards from its inception and these same standards continue to this day. Distance education standards required distance learning students to do exactly the same work at the same level of achievement as traditional campus-based students. Students, parents, employers, and other higher education stakeholders had confidence in the education and qualifications of distance learners knowing they had done exactly the same work as campus-based students. The equivalency standard saw adoption by default wherever distance education programs arose over the next 30 years.

A thorough review of the literature revealed that the development of quality standards for U.S. higher education distance learning, including online distance education, falls into three main phases: Early Phase, Middle Phase, and Current Phase. The Early Phase encompassed the time from the introduction of distance learning in the U.S. in the early years of the 1950s to the appearance of online distance education in the early 1990s. During this period, no specific standards for distance learning programs existed. The Middle Phase started in the first years of the 1990s and continued into the early 2000s. The phase included a proliferation of differing standards across many higher education interests. The Current Phase, from the early 2000s and continuing to the present, has seen accountability reforms, quality assurance changes, and the first U.S. higher education accrediting institution standards for quality in online distance education.

The Early Phase of Standards Development

The Early Phase in the U.S. begins with the pioneering work of the late Charles A. Wedemeyer, former Director of the Correspondence Study Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Wedemeyer originated a number of foundational ideas in both open and distance education. His grants from both the Carnegie and Ford Foundations in the 1950s and 1960s enabled his exploration of the integration of multimedia with print to enhance student learning outcomes. Wedemeyer’s Articulated Instructional Media Project has been viewed as foundational to U.S. online higher education. The project also influenced the rise of one of today’s institutional leaders in online distance education, Britain’s Open University in Milton Keynes, England (Wedemeyer, 2008). Wedemeyer formulated and enacted a new field of education – non-traditional learning. “This new discipline integrated adult, distance, open and independent learning with instructional systems design, applications of instructional technology, organizational development and evaluation” (Wedemeyer, 2008b, p.1). The development of correspondence courses combined with the availability of further education to veterans through the GI Bill after World War II to help shape the nature and popularity of U.S. distance education.

Questions related to quality standards for distance education in U.S. colleges and universities would not be answered for decades. Research during the Early Phase had yet to establish critical differences between the two learning environments in terms of pedagogical models, instructional strategies, and skill sets needed by teachers for effective teaching. Research had also not studied what students needed for successful learning in distance settings. Differences in both teacher-student and student-to-student interaction also remained unclear. With technologically mediated distance education, the differences would later become even more distinct. The equivalency standard remained in place and specific quality standards for distance education were not yet an issue in higher education research or policy, either in the U.S. or elsewhere.

There remained a lack of national standards for either accreditation or quality for online institutions during the Early Phase. The situation created numerous opportunities in the Middle Phase for diploma mills where degrees were being sold to whoever had the money to buy one. When Jones International University entered the ranks of U.S. higher education institutions as a fully online university during this phase, a debate arose in academia over standards of accreditation for online institutions. The controversy centered on whether online universities and colleges should be accredited in the same way as traditional, campus-based institutions. The question of quality standards for online distance education had yet to be raised in the research community.

The Middle Phase of Standards Development

The lack of national institutional standards of quality during the Early Phase left higher education institutions and programs on their own regarding standards. Most colleges and universities continued working under the default equivalency standards established 150 years earlier by the University of London. The Middle Phase, from the first years of the 1990s to the early 2000s, marked a widespread increase in the number of distance education programs in U.S. higher education. The data showed that the number of course offerings, enrollments, and both degree and certificate programs offered in distance education between 1994-1995 and 1997-1998 approximately doubled in U.S. higher education institutions (Distance Education at Postsecondary Education Institutions: 1997-1998, 1999). The report also concluded that while distance education had become commonplace in U.S. postsecondary education institutions, a number of unanswered issues remained. These included the accreditation and assurance of quality in distance education programs (Distance Education at Postsecondary Education Institutions: 1997-1998, 1999b). Quality took a back seat to technology from the start and accrediting agencies were slow to address the issue of quality assurance for online programs in higher education. Relative research, although accumulating, had not become compelling.

The American Federation of Teachers called on colleges and universities to adopt standards that would ensure quality in distance education programs. As one of the nation’s largest organizations of its kind, the federation recognized the need for standards and acknowledged that the majority of higher education institutions did not meet the standards the federation had proposed. The Federation’s standards addressed content, technical support for faculty and students, training educators to teach online courses effectively, and teacher interaction with students (Carnevale, 2001). Without national quality standards, institutions and their participating faculty members remained on their own to establish quality standards. In the process, various elements of distance education content, support, training, and interaction suffered, as the American Federation of Teachers’ research had demonstrated.

A number of institutions and organizations began addressing unresolved issues by establishing benchmarks of quality for online distance learning in 2002. Among these were the American Council on Education, the Higher Education Program and Policy Council of the American Federation of Teachers, and the Institute for Higher Education Policy. The question of accreditation standards for online education had still not been addressed nationally. During the Middle Phase, individual institutions, disciplines, and programs remained on their own to establish and implement standards, should they decide to do so.

The Current Phase of Standards Development

The Sloan Consortium’s report, Sizing the Opportunity: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2002 and 2003 (2003), reported a nearly 20% increase in the growth of U.S. online higher education students from 2002 to 2003. Standards of quality in online programs across higher educational institutions nation-wide were yet to be developed in the U.S. The Current Phase has, however, seen a number of accountability reforms and quality assurance changes both in the U.S. and abroad. The Current Phase has also witnessed the first application of accrediting agency standards for quality to U.S. online higher education in 2007. The development of the new national standards had been largely driven by the continuing growth in online enrollments and offerings. Online student enrollments had continued to grow at rates far exceeding campus-based enrollments.

The Sloan Consortium reported that nearly 3.2 million students took online courses in the fall of 2005 (Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006, 2006). Two years later, in 2007, national standards for quality in U.S. online higher education would finally be established. The eight regional accrediting agencies for higher education recognized by the U.S. Department of Education developed the new standards. It comprehensively addressed both online accreditation and quality standards in five key areas of institutional activity – institutional context and commitment, curriculum and instruction, faculty support, student support, and evaluation and assessment (Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, 2007). The question of institutional awareness and alignment with the new online standards for quality in online higher education remains unresolved.

Excerpt from: Bruce, P. A. & Zheng, R. Z. (2010). An inquiry into the online policies and practices of U.S. doctoral/research-extensive universities: A case study. Chapter in Huffman, S., Albritton, S., Rickman, W., and Wilmes, B. (Eds.). Cases on Building Quality Distance Delivery Programs: Strategies and Experiences. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.