An examination is an important component of any institution that educates people. It is a form of assessment used to measure the students' understanding of the concepts and principles they would have learnt. Zimbabwe Open University, an Open and Distance Learning institution has been setting its own examinations for the academic programmes…

In the present day in national and international perspectives, quality is the top of most agendas. Quality of education has significant impact and invaluable contribution to the area of development. Recently, the SSC & HSC program of BOU [Open School of Bangladesh Open University] have earned recognition of equivalency with the formal…

The author recently served on a five-member international review panel for Saudi Arabia's National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment. The panel's mission was to evaluate the Arab Open University against the commission's accreditation criteria to determine if the university should be eligible for King Abdullah's national…

Open and distance learning (ODL) is enjoying phenomenal growth in Asian higher education, new forms of provision are being developed, new institutions are being established and there is a surge in online export and import. However, there is still need to ensure that increasing access does not result in lowering standards and to prove that ODL is…

Quality assurance for distance higher education is one of the main concerns among institutions and stakeholders today. This paper examines the experiences of Universitas Terbuka (UT), which has initiated and implemented an innovative strategy of quality assurance (QA) for continuous improvement. The credo of the UT quality assurance system is…

This publication is one of a series designed as a companion to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE)'s fact book, "Policy Indicators for Higher Education: WICHE States." The title article maintains that the growth of distance learning programs has heightened existing concerns about their quality. Institutions can…

This third publication on the theme of quality in the Commonwealth of Learning Perspectives on Distance Education series widens the discussion beyond external quality assurance processes to a more generic focus on a "culture of quality." It is an extension of the earlier two publications, which came out in 1994 and 1997 and drew…

Assuring the quality of education provision is a fundamental aspect of gaining and maintaining credibility for programmes, institutions and national systems of higher education worldwide. Despite a long and generally successful track record, open and distance learning (ODL) is still required to prove that the quality of student learning is at…

An administrator of the United Kingdom's Open University and two cofounders of Western Governors University participate in a panel discussion of higher education in a global marketplace, the potential for new networked delivery strategies, the future of selective, conventional institutions and the traditional student experience, the influence of…

This collection of essays from the 1999 Annual Accreditation and Quality Assurance Conference includes: "Wanted: President for the New Millennium" (Stephen Joel Trachtenberg); "Medium and Message: Passion, Values, and Quality in the New Academy" (John Daniel); "The 100th Anniversary of the College Board" (Nicholas…