远程高等教育质量保证：反思与评论

Quality Assurance in Distance Higher Education

本文主要针对开放远程教育质量保证的理论与实践进行了思考,着重分析了开放远程教育质量保证实践的现状、存在的不足、今后发展的策略等。

It is argued in this paper that no impressive achievement has been made in assuring quality in China's distance education (DE), a fact which deserves reflection from distance education institutions and practitioners. The authors attempt to identify the starting point for DE quality assurance, pointing out that DE institutions do not have clear understanding of the starting point as well as the intended learning outcomes. They argue that DE institutions should conduct fieldwork research to specify intended learning outcomes and design curriculum, syllabus and course content accordingly. The current situation for quality assurance is not promising. Firstly, the existing quality assurance system fails to ensure that the DE learning outcomes match employers' expectations. Secondly, DE institutions lack feasible scientific methods of understanding these expectations. Thirdly, more emphasis is placed on improving the teaching environment than on facilitating learning, resulting in lack of concern for the dynamic learning process. Finally, there is no action scheme to ensure enhancement of teaching quality and achievement of desired learning outcomes. Therefore, the authors put forward six measures to deal with these issues:conducting an in-depth survey on desired learning outcomes in DE, highlighting pragmatic course content, facilitating learning to ensure learning outcomes, establishing third-party evaluation mechanism, accelerating DE development through reform and innovation, and implementing an information feedback system.