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Executive Summary

1 Introduction

2 Context

3 Methodology

4 - 9 Findings, Analysis and Discussion

10 Summary of Findings

11 Discussion of Findings

12 References

13 Case Studies

Acknowledgments & Partners

Case Study Map 

Institution H5

9 Impact of networked learning on quality assurance, monitoring and evaluation

Quality assurance issues were not raised to any extent in the interviews; however, the questionnaire data suggested that networked learning had not had a major impact. The comments of one respondent supported this view, but also pointed to the issue of plagiarism as a focus of change in practice:

… there is an issue to do with plagiarism which has been faced by most institutions who are finding that the instances of plagiarism are increasing and the technology has actually made that easier. We had a major working party that looked at that, so there are various IT tools you can use to detect it…

… [networked learning has not changed our quality procedures] so far because once again the quality procedures are kind of framed to cover the whole range of activities so there is nothing specific that I could point to, to say this is the result of e learning. I mean not so much the quality procedures, it has changed the whole issue about what we usually call malpractice, what I was saying about the plagiarism. But in terms of actually quality assurance procedures, I don’t think how they would be changed actually… (H5I1/6)

The remaining interview responses concerned with quality assurance were limited to some passing comments by three respondents about evaluation of student experiences and the monitoring of pilot projects on assessment.

… we have a whole series of experiments running on online assessment and that is a pedagogical change for some departments that have previously been rather hostile to the idea of testing of that kind, they call it testing of that kind. But the number of departments getting interested in it enough to run experiments so there are, there’s going to be an evaluation of them later, again it’s a [institutional] partial model. (H5I4)

You would hope that for example, that departments, as a matter of course would get feedback from students and they tend to do it at the course module level. … But then we have a periodic review process where there’s a team of people from other departments in the university, every six years they go and look at that. (H5I1/6)

Summary

Networked learning does not appear to have had a major impact on quality assurance issues, although a good deal of evaluation and monitoring was ongoing.