Towards a Culture of Quality

Abstract

The title Towards a Culture of Quality indicates that this third publication on the theme of quality in the COL Perspectives on Distance Education series widens the discussion beyond external quality assurance processes to a more generic focus on a "culture of quality." It is a logical extension of the earlier two publications, which came out in 1994 and 1997 and drew our attention to quality assurance concerns, clarifying the basic concepts and documenting the various quality assurance practices as well as the diverse challenges they pose in different contexts. Quality assurance in distance education today is entrenched widely in national and institutional policies and practices. The jargon of QA has entered the lexicon of the common practitioner of open and distance learning (ODL ), and even resource-poor institutions have set up some mechanisms of assuring quality, however rudimentary. // Series formerly called "Perspectives on Teacher Education." Renamed to "Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning."