Quality Handbook for Online Courses

Who is it for?

This material is intended as a tool for developing the production of online courses and quality assurance. The viewpoint of an online teacher and/or content provider is taken for the planning, production and development and improvement of online courses.

The Phases of Quality Assurance

The quality assurance of online courses can be eased by answering questions which occur from phase to phase. It is best to begin quality assurance with describing the present state of online learning/teaching. After that you can move on to Building up quality-phase. The building up quality-phase can last from a few weeks to months or even years depending on the need and size of improvement. In the third phase of quality assurance (Maintaining and Developing) the organisation acts according to the improved operations, and assesses the steps of  improvement. Thus, the improvement cycle for quality assurance has been created, and it can continue further (figure 1).

Using the Quality Handbook

Start with Present state of e-learning phase. You can access the other phases - Building up quality and Mainining and developing - from the links on top of the page.

By answering the questions in the Quality Handbook you can create your own quality framework or Quality Manual. The material and questions are meant as a guideline only, and they should be adapted to your own work and should be fitted in with your organsation's quality measures.

The aspects of quality are: management, skills, resources, processes and evaluation. The quality matrix combines the questions of all the aspects and phases of quality assurance for online courses. The questions for three phases and five aspects are pulled together in the Quality Matrice.

The model of quality assurance of online courses and the development cycle of quality management

This page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 1.0 Finland License (by Vopla Project Team).