Quality Management Standards for Implementing and Developing Blended Learning in Romania: Case Study of the University of Oradea

摘要

There are several ways in which eLearning can be implemented in-higher education. Because the IT applications can be perceived as being complicated by the users, and because their use does not always match well with tradit ional ways of teaching and learning, mu ch care ne eds to be take n in the impl ementation a nd development of eLearning education systems. In this cont ext, the Un iversity of Oradea, through its D epartment for Distanc e L earning an d R educed F requency Education (DIDIF R)， h as dev eloped and enhanced a q uality assurance system that assists its management team to provide effective BL education, on the basis of the quality standards s ystem im posed by t he Romanian A gency for Quality Assur ance in H igher Educ ation (A RACIS). Based on a set of six quality assurance p rocedures t hat facilitate five distinct ap plications of eLearning, the system combines flexibility with an effective quality management structure and b enefits from its clear step-bystep proc esses and self-correction through pla nned pr oject reflectio n time. From these p erspectives， three knowledge domains provide the context for this paper: quality assurance, higher education and blended learning. Their intersection defines the research problem that was investigated - the quality assurance of blended learning in the Romanian higher education system - focusing on the model developed during the last couple of years at the University of Oradea, which was taken as a study case. The research design is an instrumental case study, focusing on quality stan dards as a supp ortive medi um, in a flexible, BL mode I at the Univ ersity of Oradea, Romania. T he research met hods i nclude t he liter ature survey, case'a nalysis m eetings on developing a nd implementing quality ma nagement sta ndards a nd st udents' surveys. T he va lue of th is stud y to the academic community relies in its findi ngs, which include a taxonomy of critical success factors for BL, the identification of factors which promote stud ent and lectur er's satisfaction/frustration with BL exper iences, and lesso ns learnt b y applying stand ard qu ality as surance t heory to the instru ctional desi gn proc ess, in the conte xt of the limi ts imposed at the Romanian education level.