Keywords: mechanism of collecting, feedback follow-up, survey of graduates and their employers, quality of distance education
Introduction
With the increasing emphasis on the establishment of a quality assurance system in distance education, practitioners and administrators of those institutions have been making great efforts to establish one suitable for their own circumstances. For example, in Britain, a set of standards for quality assurance in distance education were prescribed in terms of curriculum design, teaching and evaluation, learning process, learner support, learning resources, quality assurance and enhancement (Gosling & D' Andrea, 2001). India proposed standards covering the following seven aspects: course development, administrative support, teaching and learning, course structure, student support, institutional support, assessment and evaluation (Pillar 2003). Meanwhile China Central Radio & TV University (CCRTVU) also established a comprehensive quality control system in accordance with ISO 9000, which covers teaching resources, teaching process, learner support, teaching management and network building (Yang, 2006). In establishing such systems, many distance education institutions include, as an important element, collecting feedback from graduates (sometimes also from their employers) in order to improve the quality of distance education. It is therefore essential to establish a highly reliable and accurate mechanism for collecting feedback from graduates.
This paper aims to present how CCRTVU has established a mechanism for collecting feedback on the quality of distance education through a follow-up survey of its graduates and their employers. It is composed of six major parts: Part One is a brief review of literature related to follow-up surveys and their use in higher education, especially distance education; Part Two is background information for the study including a brief introduction to the Radio and TV University (RTVU) network (the conductor of the follow-up survey) and its graduates and their employers (the two major groups of subjects for the follow-up survey); Part Three is the research content and methodology including a description of the survey mechanism and the purpose of establishing such a mechanism; Part Four is the description of the implementation of the survey; Part Five is the discussion of the problems found during the operation; Part Six contains recommendations on establishing such a mechanism.
Literature Review
What is a follow-up survey?
Follow-up surveys in education discussed here are those conducted after students leave school by administering questionnaires to the graduates and/or their employers through post, telephone or other means. Their main purpose is to collect information on how graduates feel about the education they have received, how the education has affected their careers or their personal life and how their employers appraise them. This information in turn helps the education provider learn about the needs of society and thus feed into the improvement of its teaching. It should be noted that the follow-up survey in this study includes two subject groups: first, RTVU graduates, to collect feedback on their view of the quality of RTVU distance education programmes; second, the graduates' employers, to find out their view of the quality of the RTVU graduates.
Current practice worldwide
Follow-up surveys are one of the most important components of higher education evaluation. Many countries regard the results of follow-up surveys as one of the major means of evaluating higher education, especially distance education. As noted by Lawless & Richardson (2004), the social credibility of distance education can be enhanced through eliciting comments from the graduates by conducting follow-up surveys and then making comparisons between distance education and campus-based education. In addition, they also recommend the administration of questionnaires to graduates of both distance education and campus-based education so that the information of campus-based students and graduates can be monitored and traced.
As a result, many such surveys are conducted, some initiated by the university leadership, some by the research centre of the university. The most common practice is to conduct follow-up surveys to five years after graduation to obtain information on the graduates' careers and personal development, which in turn reflects the quality of higher education and the social demand for higher education, and above all helps set the quality standard for higher education (See Brennan and Williams, 2003).
In practice, follow-up surveys are widely used both by campus-based education and distance education institutions for different purposes. For example, GHRC Service Ltd in Canada did a series of Post-Secondary Graduate Follow-up Surveys commissioned by Saskatchewan Learning (2004), 18 of which are presented as case studies of follow-up surveys in the Summary Descriptions of Selected Surveys. In the spring of 1995, William Rainey Harper College in Illinois, USA, surveyed graduates from 1994 to collect information on the English courses it had offered (Lucas, et al, 1995). Another college in the USA called Piedmont Virginia Community College has conducted annual surveys of its graduates since 1974 to improve its academic programs and college services (Fitzgerald, 2000).
Meanwhile, distance education institutions have also conducted different kinds of follow-up surveys of their graduates (sometimes also of their employers). For instance, the British Open University conducts regular follow-up surveys of its graduates to gain feedback on many aspects of the students' learning experience (See http://www.open.ac.uk/research.). In the USA, the Distance Education and Training Council conducted the first follow-up survey of graduates in 1983, and in 1994 a follow-up survey of all American distance education graduates and their employers was conducted. The purpose of these surveys was to obtain information on how DETC degree graduates felt about their distance study experience, how the degree had affected their careers or personal life, and how employers felt about individuals who had earned a degree through distance study (1994).
Current practice at CCRTVU
CCRTVU has conducted four large-scale follow-up surveys since its establishment in 1979. The first one was conducted between 1985 and 1987 with a random sample of 12,000 graduates, whose purpose was to measure the outcome of the loan project funded by the World Bank (See the Report on the First Follow-up Survey of RTVU Graduate, 1990). The second one was initiated in 1989 by Ding Xinfu, a distance education researcher from CCRTVU. Its main purpose was to evaluate the quality of the distance education programmes provided by RTVUs and to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the investment. The project was based on a follow-up survey of graduates from six provinces, such as Hubei and Hunan etc., and covered many aspects of the graduates' learning experience at RTVUs and the effects of it on their work (See Ding Xingfu, 1992). The third was initiated by the Ministry of Education and carried out between 2002 and 2003 as part of the evaluation of CCRTVU open learning pilot programmes. It aimed to find out how the graduates felt about the learning process and the effectiveness of the teaching of the open learning programmes (See the Report on the Mid-term Evaluation of the Open Education Pilot Programmes, 2003).
All three follow-up surveys mentioned above were of the graduates only—the direct recipient. However, to get a complete picture of the quality of distance education programmes, we also need to look at the views of their employers—the indirect recipient. This was why CCRTVU initiated the fourth national follow-up survey. Its goal was to obtain feedback on how the graduates viewed the education they had received and how their employers viewed the graduates who had received the education, and to establish a mechanism for collecting feedback from both RTVU graduates and their employers.