Developing an Accreditation System for On-line Teaching Processes

In order to improve on-line education, the Chinese government launched a state level project “Developing an Accreditation System for On-line Education” in 2002. The system for accrediting quality of on-line education includes three components: an accreditation system for on-line education institute, an accreditation system for college major, and an accreditation system for on-line course. Because the quality of an on-line course depends on both the courseware and the on-line teaching process, the assessment scheme of these two aspects would be developed individually. This paper is a research report examining the methodology, the process and the result on developing an accreditation system for on-line teaching process. The research experienced four stages, including literature reviews, accreditation system development, case studies, and final revision. The research adopted the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) which is an effective method used to develop all kinds of quality assurance system in ISO 9000 standards. After final revision, a new accreditation system for on-line teaching process is comprised of 19 items from 4 dimensions: course preparation, learning management, learning support and learning evaluation. The accreditation system had been employed as guideline for developing on-line teaching process of a graduate course “Collaborative Learning” and an undergraduate course “Multimedia Technology”. The higher student satisfaction degree and student exam scores proved that this system is effective in improving quality for on-line course and teaching. While provides a guideline for improving web-based teaching, the research result can be one of the important parts of the accreditation system for online education. 1. Accreditation for On-line Education Quality Aiming to improve on-line education by more normative management and evaluation, the Chinese government launched a state level project “Developing an Accreditation System for On-line Education” in 2002. The system for accrediting quality of on-line education includes three components: an accreditation system for on-line education institute, an accreditation system for college major, and an accreditation system for on-line course. Accreditation system for on-line education institute includes certification for on-line education pilot institutes and learning centers. The former mainly refers to recruitment, teacher, institute organization, major, curriculum, hardware, learning center management, service promise, and so on, while the later mainly includes basic condition of learning center, tutorship, instruction arrangement, auxiliary instruction information, library materials, etc, aiming to standardize on-line education institute and improve on-line education quality. The accreditation system for college major focuses on whether on-line education institute possesses the condition to open a major to ensure the instruction quality. The accreditation system for on-line course focuses on the quality of on-line courseware and