Prof. Ashish Agarwal

Prof. N. Venkateshwarlu

Prof. NVS Raju

M. Pradeep Kumar

Abstract

The Education system is an important tool for enhancing knowledge and skills for understanding and better living style. The increasing demand for education as per New Education Policy 2020 invoked the working employees to continue their education. Due to the work and family constraints, they are not able to continue their studies by traditional mode of education. Open and Distance Learning (ODL) education system provides an opportunity for them to improve their knowledge and skills. Only getting education is not sufficient in today’s technological era. A need has been raised for developing, implementing and practicing quality standards in ODL education system. Moreover, assuring quality of ODL system through accreditation mechanism has became a recent phenomenon. This is due to the increasing demand for accountability and need to project that the quality of OLD programs, institutions is comparatively equal to traditional education. This paper aims to study the suitability of current accreditation bodies for ODL education system. Initially, the importance of quality and quality assurance in traditional as well as ODL system is discussed in this paper. Further, quality parameters for accreditation of ODL system is redesigned by considering inputs from the stakeholders.

Keywords- Quality Assurance, Open and Distance Learning (ODL), Accreditation, NAAC