DISTANCE EDUCATION ACCREDITATION

Distance Education Accreditation

Distance Education has traditionally been looked down upon by the traditional education establishment and therefore has not been recognized by the major accrediting agencies. International Educational Accreditation Authority (IEAA) realizes that there is a definite need for Cyber and Distance Learning and therefore supports its need for accreditation.

Some comments on Distance Learning:

Accrediting bodies draft distance education guidelines

With help from the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, the eight regional commissions responsible for accrediting U.S. colleges and universities have drafted a set of guidelines for accrediting degree programs offered electronically. The guidelines assert that the programs should be integrated with an institution’s other offerings, similarly staffed and reviewed, and of equivalent quality.

Traditionally, the accreditation of degree-granting institutions in the United States has been performed by commissions in each of six geographic regions (there are eight accrediting commissions because two regions have more than one). The standards each commission applies when accrediting traditional institutions are similar, though not identical. The recent boom in online distance education programs has led to questions about the appropriateness of the regional model and about the applicability of the commissions’ standards, which assume the existence of a significant academic infrastructure in one of the six regions and an on-campus student body. Unlike traditional college programs, those taught electronically can transcend geographic boundaries and do not necessarily need a campus base.

Yet the commissions’ draft concludes that the regional model of accreditation remains appropriate, because most collegiate education occurs in traditional, rather than online, settings and most online programs leading to degrees are offered by traditional institutions. In addition, the commissioners say that programs taught electronically can be assessed by the underlying mission-based standards used by the commissions, which hold that accredited colleges and universities should have purposes appropriate to higher education and the resources necessary to achieve them. The institutions must also be able to show that they are achieving their stated purposes and can continue to do so.

The draft’s emphasis on integrating distance education and traditional courses is a good one, according to Ruth Flower, the AAUP’s director of government relations and staff to the Association’s Committee on Accrediting of Colleges and Universities. Too often, she says, online courses sidestep normal departmental oversight. But the draft stipulates that programs transmitted electronically should 11 maintain appropriate academic oversight” and meet institution-wide standards, both to ensure consistent quality and to provide coherence for students who enroll in a mix of online and traditional courses.

Flower also commends the draft’s attention to the quality of course design and instruction. Although the draft allows the “unbundling” of faculty roles by saying, for example, that the same person might not be responsible for course development and instruction, it also states that “academically qualified persons” should fully participate in curricular decisions and be responsible for the “substance of the program”.

On the downside, says Flower, the guidelines aren’t specific enough on some points. For example, they state that elements of a distance education program can be contracted out to unaccredited entities, but they don’t specify limits for outsourcing. Could a university contract out the entire first year writing program to a for-profit tutoring company? The guidelines state that “the importance of appropriate interaction” between instructor and students should be reflected in the design of online courses, but don’t state outright that there must be a live teacher for each course.

“The essence of college education is asking questions,” Flower says. “Some currently available courses are completely canned. The creators of these courses try to deal with student questions by having a pre-made list of answers to frequently asked questions, but this presupposes what students will ask and limits opportunities for faculty members and students to diverge from a planned curriculum to explore new territory. It’s bad for faculty, and it’s bad for students. Online programming or videos can be wonderful tools for teaching, but they can’t replace real teachers and courses.”

Accrediting Bodies Consider New Standards for Distance-Education Programs by Dan Carnevale

The six bodies that grant accreditation to colleges and universities in the United States are near agreement on guidelines for evaluating distances education that differs from traditional accrediting standards by focusing on how much students learn.

If enacted, the regional accrediting agencies would use the guidelines to set standards for granting accreditation to distance-education programs and institutions.

Under the guidelines, the regional bodies would not accredit a distance-education program unless faculty members controlled the creation of the content, the institution provided technical and program support for both faculty members and students, and the program had evaluation and assessment methods for measuring student learning.

The Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions, the group made up of all the regional associations, hired the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications to create the draft guidelines and work with the commission throughout the summer as the guidelines become final.

The regional accrediting agencies are creating the guidelines because distance-education programs reach students across regional borders, and the agencies wanted to make sure similar standards were adopted throughout the country, says Sally Johnstone, director of the Western cooperative.

Institutions should use the technologies that are developed for distance education to better understand students’ strengths and weaknesses so colleges can personalize curricula to students’ needs, she says.

“It really focuses on student learning instead of institutional preferences,” Ms. Johnstone says of a draft of the guidelines. “We view technology as a tool that can really enable people to learn in their own way.”

Charles M. Cook, director of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges’ Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, says distance education can provide a more active learning environment for students than traditional education by engaging the student with interactive technology, instead of relying on a professor’s lecture.

“The focus of attention, I think, has changed,” he says. “It’s focused on the learner.”

Rick Skinner, president of the University System of Georgia’s distance-learning program, says that focusing on the learner is the correct way to assess quality in an education program. “I think what you learn is more important than how you learn,” he says.

However, he says that the accreditors’ focus on interactivity and support services sets standards for distance education at a higher level than those for traditional education. “Regional accrediting bodies are bringing to bear some unusual scrutiny,” he says.

A course in which a student listened passively to a professor’s lecture would have to be changed substantially — by making it more interactive — before accreditors would approve its being in a distance-education program, he says.

The plan is to finish the guidelines in September, says David B. Wolf, chairperson of the Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions. Afterward, each regional accrediting agency will have to decide whether to accept the guidelines and how to apply them to their own standards, he says. Universities can also use the guidelines to help make sure high quality is maintained in their own distance-education programs, he says.

Accrediting agencies are finding themselves having to review new institutions that have no campuses but instead rely on online education to teach students. And traditional universities are creating distance-learning programs that accreditors have to review when the universities’ regular accreditation comes up for renewal.

A previous set of distance-education guidelines, created in 1996, focused mostly on televised courses. Regional accreditors decided to update it this year because of the growth of online education. “We’ve got e-stuff now, and back then we didn’t have e-anything,” Mr. Wolf says. “You’ve just got to update the lingo.”

More institutions are entering into partnerships with companies and other institutions to share technology and courses, which can make it difficult to apply traditional accreditation standards, he adds.

The guidelines are almost complete, and most of the themes have already been accepted by the accrediting agencies. “They’ve all sort of agreed to it, more or less,” Ms. Johnstone says. “There may be some tweaking in it.”

Mr. Wolf, who is also executive director of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges at the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, says the guidelines are meant to be broad so they can maintain quality without putting a stranglehold on institutional creativity. Because online education is new and institutions are still experimenting, the guidelines are being written in a way to keep individuality in the programs.

“The regional accrediting community in no way wants to inhibit the experimentation of institutions,” he says.

At the same time, the accreditors want to make sure that experimentation doesn’t lead to lousy content, Mr. Wolf says. “Some of those experiments aren’t going to last very long,” he says.

Accreditation agencies will continue to try to keep up with the constant growth and change of distance education, he says. Standards will be updated as the accreditors and institutions determine what works and what doesn’t. “We’ve got to try to stay with the wave,” he says.