Improving distance education through programme quality assurance

This paper describes the experiences of a major Australian university in the implementation of a system of Programme Quality Assurance (PQA), to shed light on improving the quality of global distance education programs. The system described makes use of quality cycles to enhance the quality of all university programmes. The study, which involved a series of interviews with several of the stakeholders in this system, found that some mistakes had been made in initial systems implementation that resulted in a number of academic staff distrusting the system. It illustrated, however, that use of this system was acknowledged by most stakeholders as an important contributor to improving quality in distance education, rather than just measuring it.