The emphasis here is on quantitative data and trends analysis. The audience for this model is institutional senior managers. Course Development - using educational and psychological theories and research to produce course material which results in effective learning outcomes. The emphasis here is on teaching and support-related issues and might include questions such as student course choice, student styles of learning, and problem curricula areas. The audience for this model is course designers, contributors to course material and staff involved in student support.
Academic standards are intrinsic to the discipline within which the course is set.
This is not the case for vocational study whose quality is assessed by extrinsic standards such as fitness for the job and acquisition of competencies which enable to learner to undertake the job. They showed that for Open University courses, there was tendency for drop-out rates to increase over successive course presentations. As they point out this is a counter-intuitive result. One would expect students to be more willing to 'buy into' a product once it had become established and stable, but there evidence showed that a courses popularity is highest in its first few years.