COL Quality Assurance Workshop Report

Abstract

This document is a report of the Commonwealth of Learning workshop that was run by the South African Institute for Distance Education ((SAIDE) for Open Schools within Commonwealth countries. The workshop took place at Kopanong Hotel in East Rand, Johannesburg from 8 ‐ 12th September 2008 and it focused on quality assurance in open schools. The rationale of the week‐long workshop was two‐fold: (i) to promote understanding of the salient quality assurance issues and concepts amongst the workshop participants and (ii) to provide delegates an opportunity to participate in the initial stages of the development of a quality assurance toolkit that is relevant and adaptable to open schools in different contexts within Commonwealth countries. Such a participatory approach was deemed to be important as it would not only enrich the toolkit through sharing of ideas on open schooling and quality assurance, it would also enhance ownership of the end product by the participants who are the end users of the toolkit.