Benchmarking: la llave para desbloquear el potencial de la educación virtual universitaria

The present work seeks to examine the use of benchmarking as a strategic tool to raise quality standards in educational services in distance education universities. The research adopted a quantitative approach to data collection and analysis, conducting a comparative study between two universities in Chile. The study is descriptive with a nonexperimental, cross-sectional design, allowing the collection and analysis of numerical data to describe the current characteristics and trends of university virtual education in the country. The analysis compared national best practices considering criteria such as retention and graduation rates in virtual programs, student and graduate satisfaction with virtual education, and the quality of virtual teaching resources and materials. This study demonstrates the value of benchmarking as an effective tool to promote significant improvements in educational processes and highlights the importance of adapting best practices to the particular needs of each institution.