Student Voices Speak Quality Assurance: Continual Improvement in Online Social Work Education

As social work education expands instruction through the rise of distance education, educators seek new ways to improve quality in online courses. Quality assurance standards and student feedback offer valuable insights to ensure satisfying and effective online learning experiences. An examination of these two assessment approaches concurrently in the context of a 4-year study of student perspectives in MSW Human Behavior and the Social Environment foundation courses illustrates how systematic feedback from students can complement existing quality assurance standards. Of particular importance is the unmistakable strength of student voices about their learning from diverse perspectives in an online collaborative leaning setting that can and should be incorporated into standardized quality assessment guidelines for social work programs.