Access and Equity in Distance Education: Research and Development and Quality Concerns

The essence of distance education, and also of open education, is to provide opportunities for learning to everyone who lacks educational possibilities or credentials, without regarding the absence of previous education, social or economic status, or the location of residence. One of the challenges...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Cookson, Peter S.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:México
Institución:UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE BAJA CALIFORNIA
Repositorio:Revista Electrónica de Investigacion Educativa
Idioma:español
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.redie.uabc.mx:article/66
Acceso en línea:https://redie.uabc.mx/redie/article/view/66
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Open and distance education
quality
access
equity.
Educación a distancia y abierta
calidad
acceso
equidad.
Descripción
Sumario:The essence of distance education, and also of open education, is to provide opportunities for learning to everyone who lacks educational possibilities or credentials, without regarding the absence of previous education, social or economic status, or the location of residence. One of the challenges of this type of education has been to convince the other societal institutions that its quality is equivalent to the education imparted by traditional institutions that provide education in face-to-face settings. The assumption of this article is that to reach the social goals of equity and access, open and distance education must be of high quality. This article presents four criteria of quality that may be applied to open and distance education to measure and demonstrate excellence: effort, performance, adequacy, efficiency and process. For each criterion there is a series of questions that an institution can ask to evaluate its degree of quality. The contribution to quality of two types of research, institutional research and mission-critical research, is also described in terms of the experience of a Canadian open university.