Distributed Education in the 21st Century: Implications for Quality Assurance

Traditional methods of Western education, the "transmission model," have their roots in the monastic schools of the 7th and 8th century A.D. and subsequently the early European universities of the 13th and 14th centuries (Knowles, 1980). Similarly, notions of "quality" education are also centuries, even millennia, old. It is important to note that the context for determining quality has historically been limited by the purpose of education and the population for whom formal education was provided. The early monastic schools were established to promulgate religious doctrine and the early European universities to promulgate religious doctrine and to institutionalize the educated status of the noble class. Formal education, therefore, was an extremely exclusive activity, reserved for a very small and elite portion of the population. Moreover, early academic education was devoted almost exclusively to transmitting content or "knowledge." The curriculum was finite and was expected to serve the learner for life. Therefore, the criteria for "quality" were quite limited and could be assessed with two basic questions: