Faculty Support, Assessment and Evaluation, and the Course Development themes were the third most cited in the analyzed frameworks, with these being identified by ten of those examined. For success in teaching online, faculty require strong and ongoing support, training, motivation, compensation, and policy development. Institutional support should also be available for online course development and for keeping materials updated and current with instructional design support being provided. In addition, almost all of the reviewed frameworks recommend, that assessment and evaluation strategies continuously examine learning outcomes, student retention, and satisfaction.
Student Support was found in 9 of the 13 frameworks. This is an important area to evaluate, as online students require the same support services as traditional students; however, it is often more challenging to find ways to deliver those services and support in an online environment.
Technology Support was identified in only 5 of the 13 frameworks reviewed. This is interesting to note since technology is foundational to the infrastructure of online education and should be considered a critical component to quality and success. Financial considerations were only identified four times in the frameworks. Various indicators, such as advising, government and regulatory guidelines, and user friendliness, were suggested once each. The Quality Scorecard appears to have captured all of the previously recommended frameworks, in one form or another except for a specific reference to cost analysis.
Conclusions and recommendations
This review of the existing frameworks identifies many common elements cited as important elements for identifying the quality of online education programs. Of course, specific indicators may vary from institution to institution; however, this review found the most common themes and domains identified today by program administrators that will assist them with evaluating and improving the overall quality of their programs. While some of the themes were strongly considered to be significant quality indicators such as institutional support and commitment, others, such as financial considerations, were not.
Quality is a perception that varies within industries, including that of higher education whose traditional indicators for quality are changing. In fact, Pond (2002) observed,
"It is quite clear that education in the 21st century presents challenges to quality assurance that were unimaginable just a quarter century ago. E-learning in particular, with its ability to render time and place irrelevant, requires that we abandon traditional indicators of “quality” such as “contact hours,” “library holdings,” and “physical attendance” among others in favor of more meaningful measures." (para. 11)
Higher education needs to agree upon a method for identifying and assessing quality within online education programs that could provide a way to benchmark and offer a path to improvement. The assessment of quality online education has never been more important as fierce competition from for-profit programs as well as many non-profits programs continues to increase and students all over the world are clicking to find a respectable degree program. Quality in education really does matter as the ultimate impact is the need for our students to be prepared for a world that is technologically more advanced than the world that we currently live within.
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