Evaluating Distance Education Benchmarks at the US Army Command and General Staff College: A Case Study.

摘要

Military education programs have been threatened by constraints in the DoD's base budgets (Congressional Budget Office, 2013; Gropman, 2008). The United States Army Command and General Staff College (USACGSC) invested more time, personnel, and money into developing quality distance learning education programs for officer training (Department of the Army, 2011) and maintains a yearly enrollment of close to 5,000 students worldwide (Judy, 2012). The intent of the USACGSC is to provide non-resident students with an equivalent program of instruction to the resident program as the possible number of resident seats are limited (Sisemore, 2012).;The problem to be addressed in this study is that without the USACGSC distance education programs meeting research-based quality benchmarks, the US Army may not be providing the quality education on demand to officers and units deployed worldwide (Averbeck, 2011; Judy, 2012; Burns et al, 2013; Thomason, 2013). The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive case study is to document and describe how the Intermediate Level Education's (ILE) distance education component at the USACGSC meets research-based, established quality benchmarks for distance learning, and specifically IHEP's three quality indicators of Evaluation and Assessment.;To fulfill the purpose of the study, the research will utilize a single case study design to examine and analyze how the ILE's distance education component at the USACGSG meets the following three quality indicators in the IHEP's area of Evaluation and Assessment are: 1.the program's educational effectiveness and teaching/learning process which is assessed through an evaluation process that uses several methods applying specific standards; 2) data on enrollment, costs, and successful/innovative uses of technology which are used to evaluate the program effectiveness; 3) intended learning outcomes are reviewed regularly to ensure clarity, utility, and appropriateness. A descriptive qualitative research approach is an appropriate method for exploring the purpose of the study, because of the lack of research confirming well-established benchmarks set for the USACGSC's distance education program (Shank, 2006). The qualitative sampling methodology purposefully served as a key approach in the selection of information supporting the understanding of the central phenomenon of the study (Creswell et al, 2003). This was developed in the form of secondary data provided by the Department of Distance Education Command at the Command and General Staff College, The Quality Assurance Office at the USCGSG and an independent set of studies by the RAND Corporation (2013) designed to evaluate USACGSC's ILE Advanced Operations Course.