Quality Assurance Policy for Distance Education in Argentina

Abstract

This article examines the quality assurance (QA) policy for distance education in Argentine higher education, focusing on the emergence and institutionalization of the Institutional Distance Education Systems (SIED, by its Spanish acronym) in 2017 and their relationship with external evaluation mechanisms. Using a qualitative approach, it analyzes national regulations, official reports, university statistics, and specialized literature on evaluation and quality assurance. The findings show that the SIED shifted the object of regulation from individual programs to the institutional capacities, structures, and processes that sustain distance education, making it possible to recognize that quality depends on coordinated academic, organizational, and pedagogical decisions rather than isolated initiatives. The SIED also helped clarify responsibilities, formalize processes, link internal quality assurance with external evaluation, and legitimize the modality. However, a formalized and validated system does not by itself guarantee improved teaching or a transformation of academic culture. The article concludes that the main challenge is to move beyond a logic of documentary demonstration of compliance, so that the SIED become mechanisms capable of generating useful information, supporting teaching teams, addressing student trajectories, and guiding institutional decisions, with evaluation focused on both operating conditions and evidence of impact. In a context of blended modalities and reconfigured pedagogical mediations, QA must integrate the SIED into a broader institutional policy covering all technologically mediated or digital academic activity, not only distance programs.