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In their highly influential work, Emblems of Quality in Higher Education, J. Haworth and C. Conrad respond to conventional assessments of quality and argue for a learner-centered approach rather than one that focuses on resources and credentials of faculty. This article applies their findings to online education.

Proposition 1: The quality of an academic program can be assessed by the quality of the faculty providing the instruction. Traditionally, this means faculty who have the proper credentials and background to teach the subject matter, and who are publishing in their field. There is very little said about whether or not they have received any instruction in how to be effective in the classroom; in fact, it is assumed that their educational process included a kind of apprenticeship.

What does this mean in an online course? Faculty members are not automatically able to be effective online instructors just because they have published in prestigious journals and are respected in their fields. There must be effective training in how to communicate knowledge. Nevertheless, a fundamental issue remains the same. The faculty must be competent and qualified in the subject area.

Proposition 2: Students must possess certain agreed-upon minimum academic qualifications in order to be admitted to a program of higher education. They should be able to demonstrate mastery of their coursework, and then move forward in courses of gradually ascending depth, difficulty, and complexity.

In an ideal world, this would be a uniform process. However, in today’s competitive, student-centered world of client-centered universities, there is more emphasis on open access, remediation, and prior learning. Learners are likely to be at different levels of understanding of the subject matter although they are enrolled in the same class. Further, learners will probably employ different learning strategies in order to understand the material. In an online course, there must be sufficient flexibility to accommodate students’ diverse learning styles as well as a range of backgrounds, abilities, and talents. The online instructor must be adept at facilitating learning, given that there are so many variables. Further, the course design should be the result of evolutionary process of design and evaluation by collaborating teams of faculty, subject matter experts, instructional technologists, instructional designers, and courseware providers.

In this case, students are required to possess agreed-upon abilities with respect to computers, the internet, and learning.

Proposition 3: An institution must possess a critical mass of instructors, financial resources, library, and infrastructure in order to have a high-quality program.

In online education, the formation of partnerships, consortia, and shared-access databases obviates the need for one institution to own it all. While the sharing of resources does lead to increased efficiencies, more universal access, and (occasionally) lower cost, it does result in a negative “flattening out” of diversity. It makes it unlikely that students will have access to small, unique collections of library materials, and it makes non-digitized resources essentially invisible and untouchable. The lack of variety of intellectual materials results in a lack of diversity, which in turn limits the possibilities for the students.

Some of the issues that underlie this matter have to do with what has been referred to as a “canon controversy,” and the idea that students are encouraged to read (and therefore treat seriously) only those texts that have been deemed worthy of admittance to a certain “canon” or a list of “great books.” The assumptions that underlie the creation of any canon are automatically suspect, and yet to not allow students to have a notion of what is considered to be canonical is to permanently exclude them from the company of the cognoscenti.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that online libraries, pooled and shared resources, and joint degree programs between universities puts pressure on institutions to organize, rank, and create hierarchies, regardless of the ethical, philosophical, or ideological implications.

Proposition 4: Curriculum is designed so that courses ascend in difficulty of material covered, and that the skills and ideas built upon material covered at lower levels. In addition, the curriculum is designed in pyramid fashion, with a broad base of general education that tapers into increasingly specific and specialized knowledge. Therefore, curriculum should be managed, and courses reviewed so that they conform with the mission and vision of the institution, and help students achieve their goals.

Although this is an ideal structure for online curriculum, it is not as easy to enforce if there is not centralized oversight, both at department and college level. The underlying reasons rest in the fact even though it is possible to monitor the online course environment, there is less transparency about what goes on in the online learning environment and how learning takes place.

When faculty upload their courses onto a course management system without prior departmental review of course syllabi, course materials, assessments and learning activities, the result could be highly problematic. Not only is there likely to be inconsistency in terms of content and materials covered, it is also difficult to assess whether or not students are engaging in critical thinking, problem-solving, and higher-level analytical activities.

The learning that takes place via interactive classroom debates, idea exchange, and participation, is also possible in an online learning environment. It is doubly important to facilitate a real-world discussion and engagement with ideas, though. This can be done through proscribed activities such as field trips, research, interviews, and discussion groups. It can also be done by means of negotiated and mediated activities such as collaborative projects and exchanges of ideas.

Courses should focus on depth and breadth of knowledge. In addition to the ability to classify the knowledge and to organize the basic facts, figures, and authors in a given subject areas, students should be able to synthesize the knowledge, and provide analyses that bring together two or more of the subjects. Central to this task is a well-developed ability to successfully create arguments. Students must combine an ability to critically evaluate sources and conduct meaningful research on multiple topics. They must then be able to create lucid, compelling, and substantive expository writings. The rhetorical modes most frequently employed are the compare-contrast essay, the extended definition, the process essay, the cause-effect essay, and the research paper, which may be interdisciplinary or focused within a single discipline.

In online settings, writing is more critical than ever and yet the student runs the risk of writing in isolation. Because writing improvements occur by means of rewriting in response to feedback, innovative uses of interactivity should be employed. Guided discussion boards are sometimes effective. However, they are often not spontaneous, due to the fact that students have to respond to specific instructions and the threads become lengthy and hard to follow.

Web logs and other interactive, self-guided, cross-referencing ways of communicating are, at least in this point in time, useful tools because they often motivate learners because they generate enthusiasm, interest, affirmation, recognition and specific responses.

The propositions that Haworth and Conrad address are tantamount to the “eternal verities” of higher education. While they are useful guides to instruction, the way that online learning takes place and the resources required to bring about a high-quality educational experience are, in many cases, not at all the same as those required in a traditional “bricks and mortar” environment. Therefore, it is vital to maintain an ongoing examination and self-assessment to assure that learning goals are being met, regardless of delivery method or mode of instruction.

References:

Casement, W., 1996, The Great Canon Controversy: The Battle of the Books in Higher Education. (New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers).

Duke, C., 1992, The Learning University: Towards a New Paradigm? (Buckingham, Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press).

Gaff, J.G. & Ratcliff, J.L., 1997, Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum: A Comprehensive Guide to Purposes, Structures, Practices, and Change. (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass).

Harvey, L. & Knight, P.T., 1996, Transforming Higher Education (Buckingham, Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press).

Haworth, J.G. & Conrad, C.F., 1997, Emblems of Quality in Higher Education (London, Allyn and Bacon).

Lenning, O.T. & Ebbers, L.H., 1999, The Powerful Potential of Learning Communities: Improving Education for the Future (Washington, DC, ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education).

Lieberman, D. & Wehlburg, C. (Eds.), 2001, To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional, and Organizational Development, Vol 19 (Bolton, MA, Anker).

Smith, B. L. & McCann, J. (Eds.), 2001, Reinventing Ourselves: Interdisciplinary Education, Collaborative Learning, and Experimentation in Higher Education (Bolton, MA, Anker).

Tierney, B., 1998, Responsive University: Restructuring for High Performance (Baltimore and London, John Hopkins University Press).