A Study On The Internal Quality Assurance System Of Modern Distance Schooling Education

With the rapid development of modern distance education in China, building a national quality assurance system of modern distance education becomes more and more important.Considering that distance education has an irreplaceable function of broadening educational access during the process of popularization of higher education, the Chinese government advocates to establish modern distance education colleges in some top universities. Meanwhile many overseas universities have also been setting up their own virtual colleges in China one after another as the result of education internationalization.Hence distance education colleges are confronted with so many challenges from home and abroad that only by providing service with high quality can they get success.The theme of this thesis has been selected under the background that pilot modern distance education colleges in national universities have been developed rapidly sincel999.68 pilot modern distance education colleges have been built up and the enrolment of learners has reached 2 million which is unimaginable for conventional education. Whereas these pilot colleges have increased the enrolment scale and afforded more educational opportunities,the problem of quality assurance has consequently been listed in the agenda for immediate solutions. Since there're no research fruits available and quality assurance systems,we should make in-depth studies in the course of practice and construct the quality assurance system for modern distance education colleges.To solve these problems, this study is guided by both modern distance education and management theory, follows such steps: first conducts investigation and research in practice,and then constructs theoretical framework,and attempts to set up a better quality assurance system for modern distance education on the basis of thorough research. On the whole,the author explores the quality assurance system from internal quality assurance system.. Applying evaluation theory, the thesis introduces firstly the background of the theme selection, research plan, content, several basic technical terms, and the history, development and quality assurance status of home and abroad modern distance education, and then studies the quality of distance education and its important influencing factors, problems and countermeasure existing in the quality assurance, the characters of quality assurance system aboard, and the principles for designing a quality assurance system for modern distance education.On the basis of above studies, the author analyzes the four major systematic elements related to quality of distance education, which are distance education teachers, course materials, students and educational evaluation,have been dealt with to improve the present quality situation of domestic modern distance education colleges.Finally, the thesis proposes a primary quality assurance system for domestic modern distance education. The system results from the analysis of the present characters of modern distance education in China, expert opinions, statistic analysis of questionnaire, and the principles of system design. Some suggestions about how to control the influencing factors and improve quality of domestic modern are also proposed.