Academic Program Accreditation Approach to E-learning Benchmarking

Abstract

The long experience of academic program accreditation is utilized to create a similar quality assurance measures to the emerging E-Iearning paradigm. In this paper; we used Accreditation parameters (eleven parameters): 1. Mission and Objectives, 2. Governance and Administration, 3. Management of Quality Assurance and Improvement, 4. Learning and Teaching, 5. Student Administration and Support Services, 6. Learning Resources, 7. Facilities and Equipment, 8. Financial Planning and Management, 9. Faculty and Staff Employment Processes, 10. Research, 11. Institutional Relationships with the Community. We also used E-Iearning benchmarks ,such as; a- Institutional Support, bCourse Development, c-TeachinglLearning, d- Course Structure, e- Student Support, f- Faculty Support, and gEvaluation and Assessment are examined. We found that three Academic accreditation elements are not covered in the Elearning benchmarks; namely Mission and Objectives, Research, and Institutional Relationships with the Community. In this paper we established the missing elements in elearning benchmarks to satisfy academic accreditation, and we suggested some new benchmarks to remedy this issue. The outcome of this paper is a set of new added elements to some of the seven e-Iearning benchmarks. Those newly found elements will make the e-Iearning benchmarks in alignment with the academic accreditation elements.