Review No. 6

Another article I found that I had stuffed into Ref Works is this one by Kidney et al:

Like many researchers in teaching and learning, these authors find the concept of quality to be “elusive” (2007, p. 17) and perceptual. Kidney, Cummings and Boehm even go so far as to quote Bannan-Ritland, Harvey, and Milheim (1998) who stipulated that, in education “’there is obviously no widely accepted measure of quality’” (Kidney, et al, 2007, p. 17). This only serves to support and underscore the measure of uncertainty current among instructional designers who are being told quality is in the process, not the product. Still, this is the focus of this article, an approach to quality assurance through the course production process.

Any instructional designer of merit will quickly affirm that a haphazard approach to the instructional design process will necessarily produce haphazard results. Still, the question remains, does a quality approach to the process necessarily assure that the product will reflect these measures? The authors of this article seem to think so.

Kidney et al point to the positive reputation at the University of Houston – Clear Lake (UHCL), their base of operations, with regard to e-learning courses. They see this as a measure of proof that using quality assurance produces quality courseware. They found that 43.6% of students at UHCL were enrolled in one or more online or web-assisted courses for the 2005 Spring semester. They reported mean scores for eight satisfaction categories ranging from 3.92 to 4.29 on a 5-point Likert scale with 5 representing “extremely satisfied” (2007, p. 28).

However, this and some accolades UHCL has received for their courses are the only statistical data that is offered. The rest of the article outlines the eight quality assurance strategies in three general categories, presented in Figure 1 and taken from the article (2007, p.19).

Figure 1.
Grouped Quality Assurance Strategies

Again, exploration into the impact of quality assurance/management techniques on instructional design efforts has validated once more the efficiency of said methods but added nothing to the measure of effectiveness.

References:

Bannan-Ritland, B., Harvey, D. M., & Milheim, W. D. (1998, June). A general framework for the development of web-based instruction. Educational Media International, 35(2), 77-80.

Kidney, G., Cummings, L., & Boehm, A. (2007). Toward a quality assurance approach to e-learning courses. International Journal on E-Learning, 6(1), 17-30. ISSN/ISBN: 15372456.