Quality Assurance and Standards Open and Distance Education: The Current Experience of the Open University, United Kingdom

Abstract

PCF1 // Over the last 6 years or so there have been two main aspects of quality assurance of teaching and learning in the UK, general Institutional Quality Assurance Audit and Teaching Quality Assessment. This paper describes the experience of the Open University, United Kingdom (OU UK) which has been involved in two institutional quality assurance audits and over 10 teaching quality assessments over this period. It also reports briefly on some of the developing ideas for the further refinement of the audit process in the UK including the new draft guidelines for Distance Education. The paper forms the background to a presentation to be given at the 10th Anniversary Conference of the Commonwealth of Learning in Brunei in March 1999 and will be up-dated at that time. The presentation and the paper aim to provide an insight into the processes of external quality assurance audits as they have been conducted in the OU UK. //