Quality Indicators of Online Programs

The continued growth of online programs in higher education has resulted in concerns about how institutions monitor the quality of their online programs. These concerns indicate a need for a process by which online programs may be evaluated and compared. They provided the impetus for this study, the goals of which were to identify quality indicators specific to community college online programs and to determine stakeholders' perceived importance of those indicators.

Categories of indicators were identified through a literature review, and these items were used to guide the development of a Delphi study to identify potential indicators. The results of the Delphi study were then used to create a three-part Stakeholder Survey designed to collect input on perceived levels of importance for each potential indicator using the magnitude estimation technique. The Stakeholder Survey was also used to validate the results of the Delphi. To refine the results of the Delphi study and Stakeholder Survey, a final survey was distributed to a group of distance learning experts, identified through their scholarly research and professional activity. The participants were asked to review the earlier results and classify each item as a factor, indicator, or other according to definitions provided.

The three research stages produced a set of potential data sources that a community college may want to pursue when assessing the effectiveness of its online programs and services. Each of the potential sources of data will be reviewed with a goal towards identifying specific indicators that may be used in developing future instruments.