Evaluation and the invisible student: theories, practice and problems in evaluating distance education provision
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880110381292 |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| Pages | 14-22 |
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Author | Peter Gilroy,Peter Long,Margaret Rangecroft,Tony Tricker |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Evaluation and the
invisible student:
theories, practice and
problems in evaluating
distance education
provision
Peter Gilroy
Peter Long
Margaret Rangecroft and
Tony Tricker
Introduction
There can be no denying that there has been
an ``exponential expansion of distance
education'' courses (Hawkridge, 1995, p. 3).
The advantages of such a form of course
provision are considerable: in particular it
allows students, especially mature students
who are likely to have considerable personal
and professional commitments, to study
without the personal and financial expense
involved in returning to university as a
``traditional'' student. In a very real sense it:
... represents opportunities for continuing
education that are, already, enabling notions of
lifelong learning to advance beyond rhetoric and
into reality (Hedge, 1996, p. 7).
Distance education also allows teachers in
particular, access to courses which might
otherwise be closed to them, especially in
England where the government's Teacher
Training Agency (TTA) has been given the
task of identifying and controlling what is to
count as appropriate (and therefore centrally
funded) in-service education for teachers
(INSET). This will inevitably rule out
affordable alternative conceptions of
professional development for teachers (see
Gilroy, 1999). Indeed, the UK Government
has recently produced a consultation paper
which proposes that all in-service training for
teachers, even those programmes not funded
by the TTA, will be inspected by the Office
for Standards in Education (OfSTED) using
the TTA's criteria for INSET (DfEE, 1998,
p. 49). Consequently even distance courses
financed by a mixture of student fees and
contributions from the English Higher
Education Funding Council (HEFCE) could
find themselves being judged against the
TTA's criteria for INSET. At the same time
the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) will be
auditing the subject Education in 2000/2001,
representing yet another approach to judging
continued professional development courses.
Indeed, in that academic year English
education departments will be faced with at
least four separate quality audits, as their
INSET courses will be audited by the QAA
and the TTA, their initial teacher education
courses by OfSTED and their research by
HEFCE's Research Assessment Exercise,
with their standard external examining
The authors
Peter Gilroy is a Research Professor at the Manchester
Metropolitan University Institute of Education,
Manchester, UK.
Peter Long is Principal Lecturer in the Sheffield Hallam
University's School of Business and Management,
Sheffield, UK.
Margaret Rangecroft is Senior Lecturer and
Tony Tricker is Principal Lecturer, both in the School of
Computing and Management Sciences and Director of the
Template Project at Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK.
Keywords
Teachers, Education, Distance learning,
Higher education, Quality evaluation, Students, Improvement
Abstract
Making sure that a higher education distance learning
course meetsstudent expectationsis critical to ensuringthe
quality of thestudent experience.Judging whether a course
delivers to its promise is a particular challenge when the
course is delivered by distance learning and there is no
regularface-to-facecontact with students,the more so when
courses are faced with alternative conceptions, and external
audits, of quality. The paper identifiesthe contested nature
of quality, examines models of evaluation, relates them to
existing forms of evaluation facing education courses, and
offers an alternative constructivist approach based on the
notion of a service template.
Electronic access
The research register for this journal is available at
http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
Our thanks to the anonymous referees whose
detailed suggestions were much appreciated by the
template team.
14
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 9 .Number 1 .2001 .pp. 14±22
#MCB University Press .ISSN 0968-4883
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