Today, while governments mostly focus on indicators such as productivity, cost effectiveness, social satisfaction, and accountability as quality indicators, higher education institutions take into account fundamental indicators such as...
moreToday, while governments mostly focus on indicators such as productivity, cost effectiveness, social satisfaction, and accountability as quality indicators, higher education institutions take into account fundamental indicators such as student output, learning and teaching processes, student and staff support, assessment, evaluation, and resources. These fundamental indicators can be varied institutional-based, program-based or course-based. In the context of higher education, quality assurance of distance education actually requires different quality indicators and different regulations from traditional higher education. On the other hand, quality assurance in distance education is more debated than traditional education. Currently, people do not trust the quality of distance education. Therefore, initiatives to increase the quality of distance education may be increased the assurance in distance education. The aim of this study is to examine the studies which provide criteria to evaluate online courses for creating or improving quality standards in online environments in the context of higher education and also to make a descriptive analysis by presenting differences and similarities between the course quality measures of these studies. This study is expected to guide the online course developers, faculty, and administration of higher education institutions to improve or to redefine the quality of their proposed online courses. INTRODUCTION Quality assurance is designed to improve and prove the quality of methods, educational products and outputs in an organization. A quality assurance system includes standards to be awarded and documented procedures for all defined processes, as well as defined ways to respond to a number of problems, and significant accountability for outputs (Kirkpatrick, 2005). Quality assurance in online distance learning requires different quality indicators from traditional education, as well as evaluations in different settings, and also readiness for e-learning (Stella, Gnanam, 2004; Latchem, 2014). Different views on quality assurance in open and distance learning are pioneers to the development of pedagogical paradigms in open and distance learning. These different views are summarized as follows (Latchem and Jung, 2012: 13-14): (1) distance education and face-to-face education should be assessed with the same criteria and methods, (2) the quality assurance criteria and mechanisms used in traditional education cannot be applied to open and distance learning, since aims, institutional structure, registration, procedures are different, (3) certain guidelines and standards are required for e-learning, (4) the basic principles of learning and teaching do not change at open and distance learning apart from technology, (5) quality assurance in open and distance learning must be compulsory, accountable and managed externally, (6) quality assurance in open and distance learning must be optional, runs internally and should be developed a culture of institutional quality, (7) it is the duty of the providers of open and distance learning to prove that the processes and outputs of open and distance learning are at least as good as traditional institutions, (8) traditional learning and teaching methods are old fashioned, more learning-centered, so structural and connectivist methods should be applied and then the most appropriate one must be selected from practical, face-to-face or technologically enhanced learning methods. In the light of these discussions, we can say that there is a consensus on the idea that " online courses require additional attention to detail " .
