Quality assurance in online education: The Universitas 21 Global approach

Despite the proliferation of online education, concerns remain about the quality of online programmes. Quality assurance (QA) has become a prominent issue, not only for educational institutions and accreditors, but also for students and employers alike. This paper describes some of the rather unique QA processes used at Universitas 21 Global (U21G), one of the new breed of online academic institutions, and its relation to U21pedagogica, the independent agency that approves U21G's programmes. These distinctive QA processes relate to five main areas, namely, content authoring, courseware development, adjunct faculty recruitment, pedagogy and delivery. The authors believe that these QA processes have contributed significantly to student satisfaction and student retention at U21G. Furthermore, these QA processes can also be adapted to suit more traditional 'brick-and-mortar' universities offering online programmes.