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Inter-American Development Bank funds Penn State partnership to assess quality of international online education By Celena E. Kusch
	Online education allows students to break the boundaries of classroom walls, time zones, work schedules, even international borders. Although growing numbers of online learning providers are looking to international markets in developing countries, not all of their online courses are created equal. Currently, international groups in the Americas are pressing for regular standards in online education.   “The Latin American market is being bombarded by Web-based programs mostly from Europe and the United States,” said Dr. Armando Villarroel, executive director of the Inter-American Distance Education Consortium (CREAD), hosted by Penn State.   “There is a proliferation of Web-based distance education of varying quality being disseminated internationally. In Latin American governments and institutions, there is a growing concern to have a mechanism to ascertain quality of programs, both to compare online with face-to-face education and to find which programs are worth taking.”   In a region that could either benefit tremendously from high-quality programs or fall prey to low-quality ventures, a new international partnership funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) plans to establish a Virtual Center for the Development of Quality Standards for Higher Distance Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.   The IADB, a development institution established to accelerate economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean, has awarded a 12-month, $200,000 grant to create the center. The project will be administered by the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja in Loja, Ecuador, in partnership with the Ibero-American Association for Higher Distance Education (an organization of universities in Spain, Portugal and Latin America) and CREAD (an organization of universities and other institutions in the United States, Canada and Latin America). Preliminary standards and an online instrument for evaluating programs will be developed by this partnership in collaboration with Penn State’s College of Education.   According to Villarroel, there is a tremendous need for higher education in developing countries.   “By helping to ensure quality online education through this program, Penn State is fulfilling its responsibility to the larger community, which increasingly includes the global community,” he said.   In developing the proposal for the center, CREAD worked closely with Dr. Patricia Nelson, associate dean of outreach, cooperative extension, technology and international programs in the College of Education.   “This is a strong example of the potential for global outreach to shape the agenda for distance education technology standards internationally,” Nelson said. “The College of Education at Penn State is in a unique position to contribute to this project, given the reputation and expertise of our faculty in instructional systems. The college is home to a number of faculty whose core research is in instructional systems and the study of international educational trends.”   Among the Penn State faculty involved, Dr. Kyle L. Peck, professor and head of the Department of Adult Education, Instructional Systems and Workforce Education and Development, is taking a leadership role. An expert on quality assessment, Peck will work with Penn State colleagues to contribute their knowledge of quality standards and to develop an online, multilingual database for collection of data. Under current plans, the Inter-American Development Bank program will fund a Penn State graduate student to support the research.   The project will proceed in several phases, including: gathering international quality standards experts and establishing the initial standards for quality of content, feedback, instruction and support hosting a multilingual conference of education ministers, educators and members of accrediting agencies to discuss needs and capabilities setting up standards that can be universally applicable throughout Latin America designing the online standards measurement tool with the input of students, faculty and other experts throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, especially those located in rural and remote areas best served by online education delivery   “The goal is to make standards specifically tailored to the Latin American community,” Villarroel explained.   The standards survey will be conducted in the four languages of CREAD (English, French, Portuguese and Spanish), and results will be open to the public and available online. The ultimate outcome of the one-year project will be the creation of an international Virtual Center for the Development of Quality Standards for Higher Distance Education that will permanently house and maintain an evaluation system that can assist in accrediting online programs throughout the region.   The project Steering Committee includes Luis Miguel Romero, president of the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja; Juan Manuel Moreno, vice president of international programs for the Open University of Spain; and Armando Villarroel, executive director of CREAD. An outreach program of CREAD (The Inter-American Distance Education Consortium), College of Education and Penn State Continuing Education
© 2002 Outreach Communications,   Outreach & Cooperative Extension,   The Pennsylvania State University phone: (814) 865-8108,   fax: (814) 863-2765,   e-mail: outreachnews@outreach.psu.edu