Evaluation perspectives : interrogating open and distance education provision at an Australian regional university

Central Queensland University (CQU) encapsulates many of the recent changes to Australian universities. These changes include the imperative to diversify funding sources, the expansion of international education, the blurring of modes of study and the proliferation of online and other technologically based teaching and learning. This paper canvasses several of the issues framing current and potential strategies for evaluating the effectiveness of Central Queensland University’s open and distance education provision. These issues include the institution’s ongoing search for its identity; historically grounded practices and assumptions around open and distance education; changing demographics; expectations of contemporary university students and teachers; and evident tensions around the commercialization of some elements of the University’s operations. The associated strategies are designed to respond to these issues at the same time as promoting diversity, equity and sustainability in the institution’s open and distance education offerings. In combination, these issues and strategies derive from implicit – and too often unexamined – assumptions about which kinds of evaluation are viewed as ‘legitimate’ and about who gets to make those judgments. The paper concludes by considering some of the key implications of current evaluation practices and the onceptual framework for understanding what is seen as ‘legitimate’ evaluation (and by whom) in contemporary Australian universities’ open and distance education offerings, and the potential role of evidence-based practice in reinvigorating that debate.