OLDaily

A Neo-Institutionalist Approach to Understanding Drivers of Quality Assurance in ODL: The Case of the Open University of Mauritius
Asha Kanwar, Romeela Mohee, Alexis Carr, Kayla Ortlieb, Kaviraj Sukon, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2019/10/23

As the authors write, "OUs aim to break the 'iron triangle' of access, cost, and quality that constrains traditional universities... through the division of labour, specialization, and the economies of scale created by media and technology." But while access and cost are relatively easy to measure, quality is moire difficult. So this article focuses on various quality measures, and in particular, ISO9001, which while accepted at the Open University of Mauritius (OUM), remained with "no formal quality assurance framework in place." This article (20 page PDF) discusses the measures taken from an institutional perspective to redress that with an emphasis on the institutional drivers motivating a quality framework.

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Introducing Open Competency Models
Steven Forth, TeamFit, 2019/10/23

This is from a couple weeks ago, but it's a good concept and worth sharing. "Open Competency Models are a set of competency models being made available under a Creative Commons license. They are meant to change over time, while people engaged in the discipline add skills from their profiles that reflect their experience and while organizations continue to customize the models so as to capture their differentiated approach." According to Steven Forth, "Ibbaka-TeamFit will be contributing a series of Open Competency Models to its communities over the coming year." Which of course immediately makes me think of the need for an open competencies repository (or data store).

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