Faculty and administrators' assessments of quality benchmarks for online education in British Columbia universities

The purpose of the quantitative, descriptive, correlational study was as follows: (a) to examine the group differences in the current level of institutional implementation of the 24 designated Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) best practice measures among online faculty and online administrators; (b) to examine the groups differences in the level of satisfaction with the institutional implementation of the 24 designated IHEP best practice measures among online faculty and online administrators; (c) to examine the strength of the relationships between level of satisfaction (independent variable) among online faculty and current level of implementation (dependent variable) of the 24 best practice measures; (d) to examine the strength of the relationships between level of satisfaction (independent variable) among online administrators and current level of implementation (dependent variable) of the 24 the best practice measures among online administrators; and (e) when categorizing the 24 best practice measures into seven broader types of categories, to examine the differences in the degree of adoption and the seven distinct categories of strategies among each of the three selected British Columbia universities. The results of this study have demonstrated differences among the three universities and among faculty and administrators regarding course development benchmarks. The differences provide a rationale for further studies that investigate why these differences exist and why a discussion on these differences in perspectives might need to occur. Differences identified among the British Columbia universities in the adoption of institutional strategies raise concerns about online education quality processes in the provincial higher education system.