Aspects and phases of e-learning quality

The organisation can start building their e-learning quality system by either choosing to consider all aspects and phases of e-learning quality or they can pick out only the most suitable ones for their needs. For example, a director can look at all the aspects as a  basis for building the organisation's quality management system, a teacher can look at the relevant aspects from the quality matrices from the point of view of improving his/her own teaching or as a checklist for quality assurance of online courses. Whereas, e-learning support staff can look at the best ways of creating and developing e-learning infrastructure and support system in the organisation.

Aspects of e-learning quality

There are five aspects of e-learning quality management (cf. Fig. 1) in the Quality Manual:

1. Management

Including

• strategic planning for learning and e-learning in the educational organisation
• departmentsresponsibilities in e-learning as part of the functions of the educational organisation 
• organisation of e-learning in faculties and

2. Skills

Consisting of

• required e-learning skills of teachers, students, support staff and managers

3. Resources

Combining

• training, support, infrastructure, time, money allocated for e-learning, as well as teachers' and students' motivation to e-learning,

4. Processes

Describing, for example,

• the actions related to e-learning
• the target quality for processes
• responsibilities of various activities 

5. Evaluation

Including, for example, 

• choosing and testing the evaluation criteria and measuring tools
• analysing the results of evaluation
• putting the analysed results into practise and further development of e-learning

The phases of e-learning quality

Building up a quality system is a step-by-step process (cf. Fig. 1), in which quality improvement begins by describing the present state of organisation's e-learning. In the Quality Manual this is supported by various questions in all aspects of e-learning quality. When the present state is described, the organisation can move on to the building-up phase by e.g. choosing the operations, evaluation methods and evaluation criteria, etc. to be improved. All tasks in this phase are based on the description of the present state. The following stage is the maintaining and developing phase, in which the developed operations, methods and criteria are tested analysed. It must be noted that the organisation can be in phases two and three simultaneously - some operations are still in the quality building phase, yet some already in the maintaining and developing phase. In this phase, the results of developed activities are evaluated and analysed, and operations are revised according to the data of analysis. The phases overlap, forming a cyclical approach to e-learning quality.The Quality Manual includes some questions that can help focus the organisation's quality needs and targets, as well as other background materials relating to e-learning quality.

Figure 1: VOPLA project's Quality Development Cycle.

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