Abstract
As distance education has become popular with students, educational institutions have seen it as a chance to increase their quality/quantity trade-off. This gives rise to the potential for ‘digital diploma mills’. However, distance education students have the freedom to move and will if the quality, in their eyes, deteriorates. Potential students therefore need a reliable indicator of quality that enables them to navigate the huge number of distance education courses available.
This paper reviews how some distance education providers and accrediting bodies regard quality by looking at the guidelines that they have developed. It proposes the main components of guidelines that could be used to determine a quality distance education course from the viewpoint of the educational institution and the student.
The original version of this chapter was revised: The copyright line was incorrect. This has been corrected. The Erratum to this chapter is available at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35700-3_33
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© 2003 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
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Sinclair, R. (2003). Components of quality in distance education. In: Davies, G., Stacey, E. (eds) Quality Education @ a Distance. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 131. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35700-3_28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35700-3_28
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-1039-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-35700-3
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