Background & Objectives
European universities are in a process of creating a European Area of Higher Education through better access, quality, competitiveness and attractiveness. Improving e-learning will ultimately support the Bologna objectives (“e-Bologna”), since it will becomes a core approach in most courses and curricula: create better access to European higher education at all levels and in all domains both in mainstream continuing education, ensure co-operation between universities and raise the competitiveness of European universities.
The main objective of this proposal is to contribute to this process by creating standards of excellence as:
• Assessment tool (programme and institutional level)
• Improvement tool (internal quality care system)
• Tool for accreditation for excellence
The criteria should envisage institutional , curriculum and course aspects, hence focus on the micro- and meso-level of education.
Expertise will be brought together on a European wide scale with involvement of expert institutions like the dtu's, research and development institutes and other organizations in the field of QA and Accreditation.
The target group for quality assurance is in first line the educational institution. Teachers and d evelopers of e-learning programmes can benefit from the foreseen manual on good practices to improve their programmes, based on the quality factors identified. Next, by including businesses and users in this project we will also emphasize the businesses and user related quality factors. Education will consequently be more in correspondence with the expectations of the students and business-life.
The result of accreditation on e-learning is an indication of the degree of excellence in ODL at the institutional or curriculum level, and not a Yes-No judgment. The latter refers more to public accountability, our approach is benchmarking in terms of excellence to enable institutions to profile their best practice. As this is an innovative area, the criteria must evolve along with new developments, to keep them relevant. The development of a loose-leaf manual of good-practices and guide on the web will offer the necessary flexibility to update the standards in anticipation on innovative developments. The assessment will be combined with a label of excellence for institutions, as far as the “E-“ in e-learning is concerned. It will be a specific scope, next to content, within the overall assessment process.
The project starts with criteria development on e-learning excellence. Next step is to consult stakeholders like students, businesses and educational staff on the draft list of criteria and the proposed approach of external validation. Based on this feedback a final list of criteria and guidelines of validation methods will be presented. For being able to test the standard set we have to translate first the criteria into parameters/indicators and define a testing procedure and approach. In correspondence to our second goal of using the criteria of excellence as a tool for improvement, we will also develop an internal improvement system (Quality care system) as an institutional assessment. In a pilot, the criteria of excellence and validation methods will be tested in conventional, blended and distance teaching, both for quality assurance and accreditation purposes. The pilot includes training of evaluators and visitations. The pilot must prove that our standards, indicators and approach are correct and suitable or lead to recommendations on alternatives as far as quality assurance is considered, and in clear , unambiguous judgments about excellence when it is about accreditation.
The developments and proceedings of the project will be promoted constantly by the publishing means of the partners covering a European wide publication and dissemination of results.
• List of criteria for e-learning Setting standards of excellence and indicators for validation
• Manual on Good-Practices / Web-based guide of good practices
• Quality care system (internal validation based on the standard of excellence)
• Pilot: testing the validation approach ; establishment and training of a visitation committee both for quality assurance and accreditation (to be seen as distinct procedures)
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