What policies help in managing institutional change?

Distance education institutions face rapid and constant change in:

• The methods of delivering education and training
• The groups to which education and training must be delivered
• The use of education technologies.

Distance educators are no less prone than more conventional practitioners to the syndrome of "we don't do it like that here," so the effective management of change becomes imperative as new tools and new challenges emerge with great—perhaps alarming—frequency.

One way of ensuring effective change management is by developing quality assurance policies and practices that permeate the institution or program. A continuous cycle of quality review helps ensure that all parts of an institution and all the people in it remain aware of the need to evaluate and improve what they do.

Some have argued that distance teaching institutions have been in the vanguard of developing such quality control systems.