I look at myself next to all of you

by Florence Kizza

Executive Briefing

August 2006

Two years ago the participants at a meeting in Maine of the National University Telecommunications Network discussed the idea of measuring the quality of distance education.

NUTN was established in 1982, and it presently involves 60 higher education institutions that have telecommunications networks and an interest in videoconferencing and distance learning.

"Benchmarking and assessment are hot topics," says Janis Hall, former chair of NUTN and the current director of the Washington Higher Education Telecommunications System. "Dick Hezel sits on our board, and he's been quite helpful."

Hezel is the founder of Hezel Associates, and he has studied education quality and availability issues for nineteen years. "NUTN asked me to begin research on quality and benchmarking," Hezel recalls. Benchmarking is the practice of measuring something against its peers using specified standards. "We realized it was important to begin gathering data from colleges and universities to track data," he adds.

And so IQAT was born. Interactive Quality Assessment Tool is a database of information reported by participating schools. With access to it, one school can track its own data over time and compare itself to others. Some of the categories being quantified and tracked within IQAT are enrollment, revenue generation, profitability, faculty development and online student services.

Once a member school is surveyed, its staff can view charts, graphs and tables of their submission. Also viewable is the anonymous data for all other members of their benchmark group.

"We've built benchmark groups with common characteristics into IQAT," explains Josh Mitchell, manager of special projects at Hezel. "Some examples are all the institutions in Minnesota, all the 4-year institutions in Minnesota or all the public 2-year institutions in New York." Hezel adds. "Comparison is vital. And it shows trends."

"There's a laundry list of issues like retention that are not presently surveyed, but will be," says Mitchell. "We expect to add additional variables every two months. It's a continually evolving process."

A one-year subscription to IQAT.org costs $500. For more information, visit www.iqat.org.