Welcome to DEAC’s Approved Quality Curriculum (AQC) homepage. The AQC is a quality assessment process designed explicitly for providers of online courses delivered directly to learners. “Providers” are relatively new entrants to higher education; they operate outside the domain of traditional higher education institutions and provide distance education opportunities at low cost to learners. Their approach to offering distance education courses continues to emerge and expand their offerings of online learning, whether MOOCs, noncredit certificates, badges, or courses with credit recommendations. The DEAC is committed to advancing such innovations by contributing its expertise and experience in evaluating distance education and by experimenting with ways to expand the availability of high quality online learning. Launched in April 2015 through DEAC’s Innovation Lab, the AQC process is an important step forward for quality assessment of new models of distance learning that are transforming higher education.
