Quality Assurance and Online Higher Education

Abstract

For higher education, the assurance of quality to others in what it does is a deeply held value. Yet, marks surrounding quality are not easily identified, clearly understood, or universally accepted. The consumer movement, among other societal factors in recent years, has nudged and in some instances pushed institutions of higher learning toward the specification of meaningful assessment measures and the subsequent reporting out to concerned parties indications of quality relative to institutional infrastructure and resources, institutional processes, and readily understood outcomes measures (Baker, 2002, p. 3).