Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

9 – Quality Assurance by Design
Learning outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
• Apply contemporary approaches to quality assurance
and quality standards.
• Tailor quality assurance standards to the organization’s
needs.
• Identify quality by design, and apply best practices in
an online setting.
Introduction
E-learning is characterized by the evolution of educational
tools in a transitional period, that is, the use of
computers for learning. The turn of the 21st century also
suggests a turn from the Industrial Age to the Information
and Collaboration Age, evident in the changes of
people’s life and work. E-learning has yet to be proved as
an important form of learning, but this is a problem of
e-learning quality.
To deal with this problem, organizations produce
checklists and guidelines to ensure quality from the early
stages of design. By applying predefined quality factors
to educational systems engineering, quality can be ensured.
This is what we mean by quality assurance by
design: ensuring that mechanisms allow human capabilities
to further expand. The mechanisms of e-learning
engineering are:
• focus on pedagogical values such as individualistic or
collaborative learning;
• identification, control, and elimination of inherent
problems; and
• dynamic real-time evaluation.
Thus, the organization can protect the learner as a customer
able to acquire the maximum benefit of
e-learning. This chapter is intended to raise awareness
of the importance of ensuring quality in the early stages
of design and planning by:
• identifying the stakeholders’ common goals;
• providing best practices and frameworks to every e-
learner;
• identifying the effectiveness of quality improvement
activities; and
• proposing frameworks to ensure quality by design.
Organizations in many countries now support open
and distance education, starting with higher educational
institutions and descending to secondary and primary
education. E-learning has become increasingly importance
because the Internet has facilitated the gradual
elimination of time, space, and cultural boundaries.
However, despite investments in technology and
e-infrastructure, the high levels of interest among educators,
and administrators, and policy makers worldwide,
e-learning remains an unproven experiment
(Cuban, 2003; Zaharias, 2004; Oliver, 2005).
In a survey on quality in e-learning, Cedefop, the
European agency for vocational training, found that 61
percent of the 433 respondents rated the overall e-
learning quality negatively as fair or poor. One percent
rated it excellent, and five percent rated it very good
(Massy, 2002). They gave several reasons for questioning
e-learning quality. One of the common problems identified
was the absence of performance signposts and
measurements. Thus, learners are unmotivated and
frustrated (O’Regan, 2003, Piccoli et al., 2003). Another
problem was increasing plagiarism and a corresponding
lack of original ideas (Culwin & Naylor, 1995; Lancaster
& Culwin, 2004; Culwin, 2006). These results may be
related to the absence of collaboration among
stakeholders on a pedagogical level, and the operational
level of systems engineering, both resulting in technocentric
design.
In addition, the e-learning interface frustrates learners
because of poor usability (Diaz, 2002; Notess, 2001).
Since the focus so far has been more on the technological
than on the pedagogical aspects of e-learning, there is
need for useful and usable educational design in the e-
learning environment (CHI SIG, 2001). One reason for
this technocentric bias is that technology evolves much
faster than its associated pedagogical approaches. In
2003, Laurillard identified a need for pedagogical perspectives,
such as the focus on user interface, learning
activities design, performance assessment, and an
evaluation of whether the learning objectives have been
met (Neal, 2003). Measurements for pre-, post-, and trans
comparison of best practices are therefore essential.
Researchers are working on a design that can solve
such quality problems (Muir et al., 2002; Zaharias,
2005). Nancy Parker (2003), acting executive director
for external relations at Athabasca University, 13 refers to
a lack of broad acceptance of online education in higher
education as the new paradigm shift, as well as the lack
13
Athabasca University has become the first Canadian university
to be awarded accreditation by Middle States Commission
on Higher Education (MSCHE), one of the six higher education
regional boards in the US (http://www.athabascau.ca
/media/releases.php?id=82).
112 Education for a Digital World