The workshop on Quality of Digital Learning Resources highlighted first the EUN framework for Quality presented by Frans Van Assche, the EUN Strategy Manager. Then, a national work on quality of digital learning resources that is carried out in the UK by Becta, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, was presented by John Anderson. Lastly, LearnRank, a rather modern approach visioned by Erik Duval, a professor at KUL, was presented by Martin Wolpers.


Outlines of presentations

The EUN framework for Quality Frans Van Assche, EUN, Belgium

Frans Van Assche from European Schoolnet proposed a Total Quality Management view on Learning Objects suggesting that there is the need to relate quality to the shared objectives, requirements and needs of the different roles involved in the processes during the life of a learning resource. Thus, to better understand the complex question of quality of digital learning resources, it is important to look at the whole lifecylce of learning resources from its creation to its existence in a learning resources' repository and finally the usage by teachers and learners. A related article is available in the special Insight Thematic Dossier on quality.

Slides in .pdf


National work on quality of digital learning resources John Anderson,
BECTA, UK

John Anderson presented the work on the pedagogic quality that is part of an overarching common framework for e-learning quality that BECTA is currently carrying out. The prime audiences of this work are two-fold: the developers and publishers (practitioner or professional commercial, non-commercial and teachers), as well as the educational users such as the practitioners, teachers and learners.

Prof. Anderson introduced the term pedagogical affordance explaining how the quality of ‘content’ itself underpins quality, but only affords (rather than determines) pedagogic quality, which itself depends on the decisions and behaviour of teachers and learners. A recent article discusses the ten core principles of pedagogic quality.

Slides in .pdf


A futuristic vision Erik Duval/ Martin Wolpers, LearnRank, Belgium

The idea of LearnRank is similar to the approach that we know from Google; the most relevant pages are the ones with most number of websites linking to them. Thus, “quality” is not so much a characteristic of a learning object, but rather a characteristic of how such an object is used in a particular context. Many facets influence the quality of a learning object in a particular context: target audience, learning objective, time and location, and so on. A short article LearnRank: the Real Quality Measure for Learning Materials is available on Insight Thematic Dossier.

Slides in .pdf


The workshop wishes to contribute to the work of the EFQUEL Special Interest Group on Framework for Quality of Learning Resources. The final decision of the SIG and its work will be taken by mid February 2006. Until then, some information should be made available at the EFQUEL workspaces by the end of 2005.

More information about EFQUEL at: http://www.qualityfoundation.org/
Insight Thematic Dossier on quality: http://insight.eun.org/dossiers