Self-assessment of virtual university education programs

To improve the quality of virtual education programs, the people responsible for their execution need, in addition to the point of view offered by external evaluations carried out by external professionals or professionals outside the university, to have their own vision of the state of the program. program, its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. This approach makes possible self-assessment, which is the first step in the continuous improvement process. Carrying out the self-evaluation of a virtual university education program implies having a particular self-evaluation model that takes into account the peculiarities of these programs. The objective of this research is oriented to the design of an application model for the self-evaluation of said programs that integrates the evaluation of the quality of the virtual program itself and its continuous evaluation. In this way, it is expected that the model will become a useful tool to evaluate and improve all the elements that constitute a virtual program and each of the three phases that the program goes through during its existence; that is, the initial phase, the development phase and the final phase. The starting point of the design of the model was the bibliographic-documentary analysis on the elements of the university education program taught under the virtual modality and indications on its evaluation method, as well as the documentary study on the standards, models and tools developed. to evaluate the quality of virtual education that act as allies for the self-evaluation of the program mentioned above. Based on the results of said analysis, the Self-Evaluation Model of Virtual University Education Programs was built, composed of two variables, fourteen dimensions and one hundred and eleven indicators. To facilitate the application and specify the usefulness of the proposed indicators, a descriptive sheet was prepared for each of the indicators that contains elements indicated by the UNE 66175 standard. Before constructing the final model, two drafts of the same were prepared and submitted to the validation process by international experts in virtual education, pilot application in the self-evaluation of four virtual programs offered by the Open and Distance University of Mexico and two discussion groups, one among professionals from the Virtual University System of the University of Guadalajara ( Mexico) and the other between five users (students) of virtual university education. The pilot application of the model designed in the self-evaluation of four virtual university education programs allowed us to verify its great potential when evaluating the quality of said programs by detecting their strengths and weaknesses and obtaining relevant data that serve as a basis. to develop an action plan for improvement. It allowed, in turn, to propose different proposals to facilitate the implementation of the model in the university reality. Among these proposals are strategies to implement and follow the model, strategies to overcome resistance to the implementation of the model, an online protocol for self-assessment of virtual university education programs, a student opinion questionnaire about the virtual program in the phase of its development and the proposal for the master conference on the proposed Self-Evaluation Model for Virtual University Education Programs.