Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Open and Distance Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to argue that all open and distance learning (ODL) institutions should carry out quality assurance and accreditation processes in order for students and funders to have confidence in them. It also explains in detail what quality assurance and accreditation entails in ODL. This chapter follows a qualitative approach in understanding quality assurance and accreditation in ODL. Data were collected via literature review. During recent decades, the discourse and practices of systematic quality assurance and quality control have spread around the world, resulting to a great extent in market-based models related to the ideology and policy of neo-liberalism and expressed in economic rationalities such as new public management, total quality management, public choice, and human capital. Quality assurance and accreditation in ODL aims to maintain and raise the quality of education and to guarantee the improvement of its standards.