News
April 7, 2016USA Funds Grant Backs Exploration of Quality Assurance for Alternative Education Providers
Excelsior College has secured a one-year, $150,000 USA Funds planning grant to explore the creation and viability of a quality assurance entity (QAE) for alternative education providers. The Presidents’ Forum and the Distance Education Accreditation Commission (DEAC) will lead the project, which will include a number of national higher education groups dedicated to online learning, assessment, accreditation, and quality assurance.
During the grant, the group will explore many of the issues related to assessing quality in the emergent sector of innovative providers. In exploring the feasibility and sustainability of an “umbrella” organization, the group will consider how such an organization might approach various aspects of quality assurance and work toward facilitating national recognition of innovative education providers.
Proposed activities may include:
- Sharing information about and supporting existing quality assessment
programs; cross walking current requirements and best practices - Furthering the discussion around the need for national standards by
which to gauge quality in non-institutional learning and in the
quality review process - Creating and maintaining a national registry of quality assurance
organizations and innovative providers
The group’s creation is, in some ways, a response to the changing economic landscape which has led the Obama Administration to make degree completion a national priority. The pursuit of in-demand skills has created ripe opportunity for providers of innovative, low-cost educational products and services to move into a market typically dominated by traditional institutions of higher education. While many institutions are recognizing these extra-institutional providers and, in some cases, granting academic credit for such nontraditional learning experiences, the lack of shared expectations for educational quality has caused issues for both institutions and accreditors and prevented Title IV access for students.
“The Presidents’ Forum is a collection of institutions that are adult serving and non-traditional,” said Ed Klonoski, president of Charter Oak State College and chair of the Presidents’ Forum. “We have been at the forefront of inventing lower cost approaches to achieving a quality higher education. We welcome the conversation about national standards for alternate providers of academic content and new sources of collegiate learning.”
“Evaluating non-traditional learning opportunities is a resource laden endeavor, and few institutions are equipped with the infrastructure and expertise to take on the challenge,” said Tina Goodyear, executive director of the Center for the Assessment of Post-Traditional Instruction, Training and Learning (CAPITAL) at Excelsior College and COO of the Presidents’
Forum. “National standards would facilitate the acceptance of evaluated alternative approaches to learning across institutions, decreasing costs and time to completion for students.”
The grant period will culminate in December 2016 with the publishing of a white paper, offering a model of an entity that will strengthen collaboration and advocacy in the recognition of alternative forms of earning credit and detailed next steps for implementation.
