Quality Assurance Toolkit for Open and Distance Non-Formal Education
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Quality Assurance Toolkit for Open and Distance Non-formal Education A Quality Assurance Toolkit for Open and Distance Non-formal Education Colin Latchem The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. Commonwealth of Learning, 2012 CC BY-SA © 2012 by the Commonwealth of Learning. Quality Assurance Toolkit for Open and Distance Non- formal Education is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Licence (international): http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-sa/3.0 For the avoidance of doubt, by applying this licence the Commonwealth of Learning does not waive any privileges or immunities from claims that it may be entitled to assert, nor does the Commonwealth of Learning submit itself to the jurisdiction, courts, legal processes or laws of any jurisdiction. With the exception of some photos not credited to the Commonwealth of Learning, all of this document may be reproduced without permission but with attribution to the Commonwealth of Learning and the author. Quality Assurance Toolkit for Open and Distance Non-formal Education ISBN: 978-1-894975-50-6 Colin Latchem Commissioning Editor: Professor Asha Kanwar, Vice President, Commonwealth of Learning The author and publisher wish to thank the following institutions, organisations and photographers by whose kind permission the photographs are reproduced: Africa Educational Trust; Alan A. Reiter, Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing; Alison Mead Richardson, Commonwealth of Learning; David Leeming, The Isabel Learning Network; eTUKTUK (Flickr); Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Corporate Document Repository; Ian Pringle, Commonwealth of Learning; IICD (Flickr); Inkyhack (Flickr); Intersat Africa, Ltd. and Voices of Africa; Izzy Pitman; Mark Knobil, InformAfrica; The Citizens Foundation; Jenny C. Aker, Tufts University; Oliver Zielke, www.yodigo.tv; Rural Women Development and Environmental Organization (RUWDEO); Tostan; UNESCO; UNICEF; USAID/ Philippines; Voices of Africa for Sustainable Development; and Women and Development Unit of the University of the West Indies School of Continuing Studies. Published by: Commonwealth of Learning 1055 West Hastings, Suite 1200 Vancouver, British Columbia Canada V6E 2E9 Telephone: +1 604 775 8200 Fax: +1 604 775 8210 Web: www.col.org E-mail: [email protected] Contents Foreword .....................................................................................................................vii Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................ix Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 Part One ........................................................................................................................ 2 The importance of non-formal education ................................................................. 2 Defining terms .......................................................................................................... 3 The learning continuum ..................................................................................... 3 Informal learning ............................................................................................... 5 Self-directed learning ......................................................................................... 5 Non-formal education ........................................................................................ 5 Formal education ............................................................................................... 7 Adult education ................................................................................................. 9 Basic education .................................................................................................. 9 Highly contextualised and less highly contextualised NFE programmes .............. 9 Community learning, community development and social capital development ............................................................................................. 10 Distance education .......................................................................................... 12 eLearning ......................................................................................................... 12 mLearning ........................................................................................................ 12 Blended learning .............................................................................................. 13 Flexible learning ............................................................................................... 13 Learner-centredness ......................................................................................... 13 Open educational resources ............................................................................. 14 Monitoring ....................................................................................................... 14 Evaluation ........................................................................................................ 14 Quality assurance ............................................................................................. 15 Outcomes- or results-based quality assurance .................................................. 15 Part Two ...................................................................................................................... 16 Non-formal education — opportunities and challenges .......................................... 16 Part Three .................................................................................................................. 20 Case studies of distance education-based NFE ........................................................ 20 Basic education and literacy programmes ............................................................... 20 Post-literacy programmes ....................................................................................... 22 English language programmes ............................................................................... 25 iii Gender-responsive and transformative programmes ............................................... 27 Vocational education, skills development and unemployed youth programmes ..... 33 Programmes for the disabled .................................................................................. 35 Agricultural development programmes .................................................................. 38 Healthcare, childcare and welfare programmes ....................................................... 43 Civic education, human rights, citizens’ rights and responsibilities, and democracy activism programmes ............................................................................................. 49 Emergency, conflict zone and displacement education programmes ...................... 52 Peace education programmes ................................................................................. 55 Micro and small-to-medium enterprise development .............................................. 58 Information kiosks and community-based telecentres ............................................. 61 Part Four ..................................................................................................................... 66 Quality assurance in open and distance education-based non-formal education .... 66 Implementing a QA system in open and distance education-based NFE .................. 69 Needs analysis .................................................................................................. 70 Vision and/or mission statement ...................................................................... 71 Goals/objectives ............................................................................................... 72 Values, philosophy or premises ........................................................................ 72 Strategies ......................................................................................................... 72 Stakeholders and partners ................................................................................ 73 Outcomes ........................................................................................................ 74 Inputs .............................................................................................................. 76 Gathering the data ........................................................................................... 77 Analysing and reporting on the data ................................................................ 79 Part Five ...................................................................................................................... 81 A QA framework for assessing and assuring outputs, outcomes and impacts .......... 81 Assessing inputs ...................................................................................................... 84 Part Six ........................................................................................................................ 87 Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 87 References .................................................................................................................