EXISTING CRITERIA DETERMINING COURSE QUALITY IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

Today, while governments mostly focus on indicators such as productivity, cost-effectiveness, social satisfaction, and accountability as quality indicators, higher education institutions take into account fundamental indicators such as student output, learning, and teaching processes, student and staff support, assessment, evaluation, and resources. These fundamental indicators can be varied institutional-based, program-based or course-based. In the context of higher education, quality assurance of distance education actually requires different quality indicators and different regulations from traditional higher education. On the other hand, quality assurance in distance education is more debated than traditional education. Currently, people do not trust the quality of distance education. Therefore, initiatives to increase the quality of distance education may be increased assurance in distance education. The aim of this study is to examine the studies which provide criteria to evaluate online courses for creating or improving quality standards in online environments in the context of higher education and also to make a descriptive analysis by presenting differences and similarities between the course quality measures of these studies. This study is expected to guide the online course developers, faculty, and administration of higher education institutions to improve or to redefine the quality of their proposed online courses