Accreditation and Quality Assurance of Distance Learning: A review on Patterns and Processes

Nowadays, development, improvement and quality assurance are requirements of academic systems in the world. Application of evaluation to know the present status and recognizing the requirements and challenges of higher education systems as well as surveying the purposes fulfillment could be sufficient action to improve the quality of higher education systems. Obviously, the poor quality of higher education will have an unfavorable effect on the scientific and technical future of the country. Hence, increasing the number and variety of universities and institutions for distance learning in a few decades leads to focus on their quality more than past. ¬As a result, this paper is aimed at studying the framework of accreditation and quality assurance of distance learning in some countries through documentary study and comparative analysis. It proposed recommendations in areas of evaluation and quality assurance of distance learning in higher education using mentioned results.