While students enrolling in traditional on-site programs are routinely presented with a wealth of information about their choice, those enrolling in distance education programs often must ferret out such information for themselves. In addition they must learn about and consider options unique to the distance method. For instance, what technology (or, more likely, technologies) will be used in a program? The Internet, computer and fiber-optic connections, e-mail, video, and (for language courses) voice mail are some common possibilities. Some distance education programs are synchronous, given live at a particular time and with students at a particular place; others are asynchronous, to be taken at the student's convenience within certain time constraints. Some "distance education" programs require students to spend a certain amount of instructional time at a specific location at the beginning, at the end, or several times during the course of study. Prior to enrolling in a distance education program, a student should know which of these situations exists.

This article focuses on basic quality questions about which distance education students and their sponsors should satisfy themselves. Areas that they should investigate include—

• The reliability and stability of the offering entity (here referred to as an institution for the sake of convenience, but which may comprise academic institutions, consortia, nonprofit or for-profit corporations, and other structures);
  
  
• The nature of the program and its comparability to others offered in a more traditional manner;
  
  
• The roles, responsibilities, and credentials of the faculty designing and offering the program;
  
  
• The accessibility and currency of information resources and laboratory experiences (if any) relevant to the program;
  
  
• Admission and matriculation requirements, complaint policies, and the availability of such student services as technology assistance and placement or counseling; and
  
  
• The honesty and completeness of the program's policies, advertising, or other publicity.

An excellent overview of many of the issues specific to distance education that need to be considered before enrolling in a distance education program is published as "Distance Learning at a Glance" by the University of Idaho and can be accessed at http://www.uidaho.edu/eo/distglan.

Reliability and Stability of the Provider

More than 3,600 mainstream institutions of higher education in the United States are accredited through one of six regional accrediting associations. Some U.S. institutions are accredited through other associations also recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and/or the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA); still others, either by an association not so recognized or by no accrediting association at all.

Degrees granted by an institution accredited by any body recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or CHEA are generally recognized by U.S. and state governmental authorities, potential employers, and the like. Some U.S. universities, however, will only consider toward further education those degrees and credits that are awarded by recognized regionally accredited institutions. Such policies are based on the fact that accrediting organizations other than the six regional bodies tend to have a membership of specialized (and often vocationally rather than academically oriented) institutions. (Decisions on transfer of credit from one institution to another are always made by the individual admissions office and will vary from university to university and case to case.)

A stronger distinction is drawn between institutions accredited by recognized organizations and those that are unaccredited or accredited by an unrecognized agency. In general, students with degrees from institutions not accredited by an recognized association that has met U.S. Department of Education or CHEA standards will find it difficult, if not impossible, to have their degrees recognized by any municipal, state, or federal agency, any foreign government, or the majority of private employers.

All U.S. regional accrediting agencies have agreed upon and adopted extensions of their standards that enable them to include within their membership institutions offering distance education as either a major or minor part of their mission. The existence of these common standards provides quality assurance for students, wherever they may be located, taking courses from regionally accredited institutions in any region of the United States. Considering that all regional agencies extend membership to qualified institutions providing distance education, students should beware of any institution that claims to be ineligible for regional accreditation because it is for-profit or has no traditional campus, library, or full-time faculty.

Insisting upon the accreditation of an institution protects against entities offering such obviously inappropriate "degree-granting" practices as sending B.A.s, M.A.s, or even Ph.D.s by return mail upon payment of a set fee. It also prevents students from being drawn in by other offerings that may seem legitimate at first but do not result in the desired outcome, such as the institution that loaded up assignments so heavily in the first several classes that students could not keep up. By the third week all had dropped out, leaving the institution to pocket their tuition without doing any further work.

Since U.S. accreditation is a membership activity, the standards adopted by any association must be approved by its membership; therefore, they can be no lower than is acceptable to the most selective members. Neither are they constructed to bar less selective members that offer programs appropriate to the standards recognized by the association. Accreditation standards provide a floor beneath which members of an organization may not fall but offer no ceiling above which they may not rise.

In determining whether to enroll in a program offered by an accredited entity, a student may reasonably ask to see a membership list of the institution's accrediting association, often to be found on the association's Web page (see, for example, the Web page of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges at http://www.neasc.org/cihe/cihe.htm). The applicant can then determine whether the association seems reliable as a judge of higher education quality.

In addition to being assured that the institution is currently meeting its mission, students enrolling in comparatively new or unknown entities also will wish to be assured that the institution will be there to validate their learning for the foreseeable future, a requirement for regional accreditation. Each of these associations has rules designed to minimize inconvenience and harm to students in the case of the termination of a program by facilitating the transfer of credits and ensuring the security and accessibility of records in the case of an institution's closure, voluntary or otherwise.

In short, students considering enrolling in the distance education program offered by any entity should ask the following general questions:

• By whom is this institution accredited?
  
  
• Is that accrediting association recognized by the U.S. Department of Education or the Council on Higher Education Accreditation?
  
  
• Who are some of the members of that association and where can I find them listed?
  
  
• (If the institution is not regionally accredited) Can you indicate some universities or other institutions that accept credits from your institution? Verify any information given.
  
  
• (If the institution is not regionally accredited) What provisions have you made in the event that the program should be discontinued?

Choosing a Particular Program

Many institutions, including the most reputable, trumpet the uniqueness of their program. If an entity has been offering the program in question for some time, a prospective student can reasonably ask to be put in touch with some of those who have matriculated in the program as well as with their employers or the registrars of transfer or higher-level institutions who have had experience with matriculants. Any reputable institution will supply names to be checked by an applicant, though of course the institution will try to ensure that the names so offered represent those who have been most satisfied with their product.

Distance education programs, like traditional programs, are expected to demonstrate consistency through their goals, structure, and content and to delineate the nature, quality, and extent of student learning and achievement. Furthermore, all programs should have a coherent design and be characterized by breadth, depth, continuity, sequential progression, and synthesis of learning. Institutions are responsible for ensuring the currency of the material, programs, and courses offered. For example, they cannot purchase a course or program from a vendor without arranging for its update. In addition, they ought to provide for timely and appropriate interaction not only between students and faculty but also among students.

The institution should provide for assessment and documentation of student achievement and satisfaction (which are not always the same) in each course and should make the results available for inspection. Further, at program completion, the institution is responsible for documenting the integrity of individual student work and the credibility of degrees, certificates, and credits awarded as well as for evaluating the program's educational effectiveness. The institution is expected not only to ensure that its program of study has resulted in learning outcomes appropriate to the degree or certificate awarded but also that the pace, methodology, and content have been appropriate to the topic and that prospective students have access to that information. Students enrolling in distance education programs should seek information regarding retention rate and its comparability to campus-based programs.

Because all programs differ somewhat from one another, the prospective student should probe a bit into the nature of the offering. Are there more or fewer requirements than at other places? Are there different prerequisites from other similar programs? If so, how does this program compensate—through courses? Self-study modules? Portfolios? Can the institution demonstrate that upper division courses are more demanding than entry-level courses and provide a coherent and appropriate sequence of courses, or does it appear that a specified number of unrelated credits make up a degree? Again, if the institution is regionally accredited, these questions may already have been answered in a satisfactory manner and that answer verified by a team of evaluators.

Here is a list of questions specific to a program:

• How long have you been enrolling students in this program?
  
  
• What other institutions offer similar programs? Is the same credential offered upon the program's completion?
  
  
• How often and through what mechanism is the program reviewed for currency?
  
  
• How does your program differ from those offered on-site at your institution (check such aspects as time to completion, admission requirements, information resources) and why?
  
  
• How does the variety of courses offered by this program compare with that offered at other institutions?
  
  
• Does the institution require attendance at any specific location and for how long?
  
  
• How does the institution compensate for the lack of face-to-face interaction that enriches classes on a campus?
  
  
• Where have graduates of this program gone and what have they done in terms of transfer or employment?
  
  
• Did any previous students have the same goals as I do? (And what, specifically, were they?)
  
  
• How can I contact some of these graduates and their employers to talk about their learning experience and knowledge?
  
  
• What provision is made for the assessment and documentation of the accomplishments of students in this program?
  
  
• How are course materials made available to students?
  
  
• Where can I find evaluations of this program?

Program Faculty

Despite the many new organizations offering distance education, not all of them academic institutions, it is still true that the design and delivery of distance education programs must be, as with all academic programs, the responsibility of qualified educators. Even institutions employing predominantly part-time faculty are responsible for ensuring that the qualifications, numbers, and performance of the faculty allow them to effectively carry out such responsibilities as the appropriate oversight of the electronically offered program. Because different pedagogic skills are required in electronic as opposed to classroom teaching, the institution is responsible for ensuring that faculty who teach in distance education programs have received training appropriate to their assignments.

Communication processes with faculty as well as with other students are also important to examine. During the term when a course or program is being offered, some distance education faculty establish time lines (occasionally as short as twenty-four hours) for their responses to student comments or papers; student conversations with one another in chat rooms are often retained and may be responded to until course end. (Students, noting in the sixth week their level of knowledge—or lack of it—displayed in a comment entered in the first week of the course, may occasionally be embarrassed by their earlier ignorance. Should that happen, the student now has the opportunity to post a self-correcting note.)

Here are some questions relating to faculty that may be asked—

• Who delivers and designs the program?
  
  
• What are the qualifications and current activities of the faculty (and where can such information be found in writing)?
  
  
• What are the arrangements for interaction between students and faculty, including the timely resolution of questions related to specific class topics and feedback on examinations?
  
  
• Are any arrangements made for students to interact with one another and, if so, what are they?

Information Resources

One of the greatest areas of concern in on-line education, a concern shared by institutions, traditionalists, employers, and students, is that the student, geographically removed from the institution's library, have access not only to those materials distributed by the institution and instructor but also to other materials necessary for the fulfillment of the program's goals. Regionally accredited institutions require that their members both ensure guaranteed access to the same materials available at the on-site campus and also that instructors require students to use such materials in the pursuit of their degree.

Much material is, of course, available to the general public on-line; problems arise, however, when institutions depend solely on such resources. Because of copyright laws, much material on the Internet is not current; even more important, since the posting of materials on the Internet is essentially unregulated, students may not always be sure of the currency, expertise, and authority of materials found there. Some institutions, such as Champlain College in Burlington, VT, make their whole library available on-line to enrolled students; others, such as the National Institute for Quality Control in Falmouth, MA, fax or overnight mail requested articles and books to enrollees; still others, such as the Southern New England School of Law, MA, subscribe to such database services as LEXIS to ensure that their students have access to current journal articles. Wherever they enroll, all students will benefit from Walden University's excellent introduction to the bibliographic use and evaluation of Internet materials, available at http://www.lib.waldenu.edu/judge.html.

The following questions need to be answered regarding resource availability:

• What access will I have to current information resources and how will continuing currency be assured?
  
  
• What charges are involved in obtaining access to information resources?
  
  
• If laboratory experiences are required, what arrangements have been made by the institution to ensure that they can be accomplished (perhaps through virtual reality lab experiences), and how much will such experiences cost?
  
  
• How will the institution assist me in accessing desired information?

Admissions and Student Services

A pervasive myth about distance education is the belief that there are neither admission requirements nor other prerequisites for all on-line degrees. Although true in some instances (just as there are open admission on-site programs) many institutions are quite selective in enrolling students in their distance education programs. Some, such as Lesley College (http://www.lesley.edu) ask applicants to complete a questionnaire assessing their readiness for on-line education in terms of their skills and access to equipment. Others, such as New Hampshire College (http://www.dist-ed.nhc.edu), require enrolled students, prior to their first class, to complete an e-mail and Internet task as indicators of their ability to master the tools of distance education. Degree programs, in particular, generally will require minimum TOEFL and other standardized test scores, evaluation of previous academic transcripts, and other elements of the traditional admission process.

Once students have enrolled, regionally accredited institutions are required to provide appropriate services to their students and to make available a mechanism for such students to seek redress for any problems they might have with a program or instructor.

Students should be sure to inquire about the following:

• What academic, linguistic, equipment, and skills expectations does the institution have for students enrolling in this program?
  
  
• What are tuition costs, and what other expenses can I expect to incur? (Financial aid is rarely available even for U.S. citizens pursuing distance education but it can't hurt to ask about this remote possibility as well.)
  
  
• Does the institution plan to upgrade or change its hardware or software in the near future? If so, what arrangements will be made so that students will be able to complete their program using equipment that was adequate at matriculation but may not be with the new systems?
  
  
• Is there a student handbook that is applicable to distance education students?
  
  
• What counseling, career, financial aid, and other non-classroom services are available for students of the on-line program?
  
  
• What are the arrangements for the delivery of course materials?
  
  
• What is the process for filing complaints?
  
  
• What assistance (for instance, a "help" contact) is available for problems that might arise in accessing the program?

Program Integrity

For many potential employers of graduates of distance education programs, the security and integrity of the student's degree are of paramount concern. Institutions have devised various methods of ensuring that the recipient of credit is the same person who enrolled for instruction. A few of the methods employed to ensure that the person taking the exam is the one who took the course are timed downloads of exam questions, the use of live proctors approved by the institution and paid for by the student, and, on the horizon, the technological ability to identify students through their retinas (as we now do through fingerprints in other circumstances).

Equally important to the student is that the institution demonstrate a high degree of integrity in any pronouncements about itself as well as in its requirements, costs, and accomplishments. Regionally accredited institutions are not only committed to the inclusion of distance education considerations in their planning and budgeting procedures but also to providing students with clear and timely information about the preceding issues.

As a final check on the integrity of the institution, students should receive satisfactory answers to the following:

• What plans do you have for the continuation of this program and for other programs in the future?
  
  
• What are the institution's payment policies?
  
  
• If for some reason, I cannot complete the course, what is your refund policy?
  
  
• (If the answers to any of the questions in this article have been provided orally only) Where can I find this information in writing?

These questions address the types of issues that are considered and satisfactorily answered by institutions that have their distance education programs approved through their regional accrediting associations, but any institution should be able to respond to them. Only after receiving a satisfactory response to these questions can students be assured that the time, money, and effort that they are willing to invest in a distance education experience will result in their desired outcome. If such questions seem cumbersome, one need only consider the waste of time and money involved in enrolling in a program which does not provide that outcome.

This article was written by international accreditation consultant Amy Kirle Lezberg, formerly of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.