The importance of quality assurance in an online learning course

Quality assurance is becoming more and more important in education. The rising cost of education is increasing the demand for results. Quality assurance seems to be one of the best ways to guarantee these results. Quality assurance checks are important in all courses but they are critical in an online course. According the Creighton University office of online learning, quality assurance in Creighton's distance learning program is a "multi-faceted process involving faculty, staff, students, administrators, and external stakeholders." Creighton's quality assurance is cyclical meaning it is ongoing, it begins with the data gathering process, then the data is analyzed, findings are reported to stakeholders and a data driven action plan is created and implemented and the process of data gathering begins again. This annual process allows for regular quality assurance checks and guarantees that Creighton's distance learning program is always improving. It seems most quality assurance programs share the same basic skeleton they always begin by gathering the data, the analysis process can differ but it always seems to result in some sort of action, the process is then repeated to evaluate the impact of the action plan. A quality assurance process like Creighton's allows a distance learning program to prove it is effective and thus worth the investment.