Abstract:

Since the global Covid-19 pandemic, online programs have boomed, especially postgraduate programs. However, the foundations of educational quality that support these programs are not sufficiently documented. Ensuring a quality educational experience in online postgraduate programs has become one of the biggest challenges for some institutions. The objective of this research was to evaluate academic quality of online Master in Finance and online Master in Business Administration courses at the EGADE Business School of Tecnológico de Monterrey, through the development of an accompaniment program headed by an Academic Quality Advisor (AQA) with Tenured Professors (TP) guided by the Academic Quality Logbook (AQL) instrument.

The accompaniment of the AQA with the TP takes place throughout the following process that has been called "The Key of Success for Academic Quality for Online Postgraduate Courses": Kick Off, In-session accompaniment, Feedback and Session Planning and Final Results with AI support.

The core part of this process is the In-session accompaniment, where the AQL will be deployed, containing 9 dimensions, dichotomous, with two criteria, of meet and fail, based on the Gagné’s Instructional Event Model process.

In this study, a quantitative approach was used with longitudinal panel data in which the academic quality of 214 live sessions, corresponding to 35 courses between 2022 and 2025, was evaluated. Cronbach's alpha obtained when analyzing the BCA was 0.76, which demonstrates the internal consistency of the instrument and makes it acceptable for the study. The descriptive statistics show an improvement in the academic quality of the final session compared to the initial session of the postgraduate course. A Wilcoxon sign rank test was performed, which confirmed improvement in academic quality compliance of the final session with respect to the initial session is statistically significant (P=0.02, unilateral). The findings of this study suggest that the accompaniment program led by an AQA and the use of the AQL contribute to improve academic quality of online graduate courses, among other factors, due to the feedback process that this follow-up implies.

Is recommended to implement the figures of the AQA using the AQL instrument for the improvement of quality of live sessions of online postgraduate courses in this context.

Keywords:

Academic Quality, Online Postgraduate, Academic Quality Advisor, Artificial Intelligence, Feedback Online Model.