International Online Education
Posted on January 7, 2010 by Li Feng
A recent web news story in Inside Higher Ed reports the current status of U21 Global, a project to build strong online education by Universitas 21, an international consortium of highly reputable universities in the world. According to the story, U21 Global failed to achieve its ambitious goals to be highly profitable and to enroll hundreds of thousands of students from all over the world. Now it is “reassessing its educational goals.”
Among the many possible reasons that U21 Global did not turn out to be a successful international online education model, two that are captured by the news story stand out as being directly related to the quality of instruction and curricula. One is the lack of faculty and collegial involvement in quality control of course materials. According to the article, quality assurance is done by a quasi-independent entity outside of the affiliated academic institutions. In one of the comments on this news article, someone contends that quality assurance actually “lay in the hands of senior faculty of universities who were part of U21 Global.” Which claim is closer to the truth needs some investigation, but both sides seem to agree upon the principle of putting the responsibility of developing course materials and quality assurance on faculty who will be teaching the courses and their affiliated academic institutions. This is exactly the approach adopted by UMassOnline. UMassOnline takes pride in the quality of all online courses which are developed and taught by faculty of the five UMass campuses. Quality control resides in the hands of the faculty and their academic departments with the same rigorous standards that are used to assure quality of their on campus courses.
Another difficulty, according to the news story, in setting up an international online education program is related to the localization of the program for local students. Education is by nature a cultural practice. Different countries have different educational systems, standards, and conventions. To make sure that the curricula are appropriate for students in different countries is a challenging undertaking. One size by no means fits all. In the process of developing international programs, UMassOnline works closely with all UMass campuses to make sure that the curricula, mode of delivery, instructional design, etc. are appropriate for the target audiences.
If you are interested in reading the original news story, here is the link. If you have any thoughts or comments on how to ensure quality of online education and how to meet the needs of students when developing online programs for international audiences, please feel free to share with us!
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