More often than not, the issue of E-learning quality is approached in terms of the content or the resource itself, whereas, there are serious arguments in favour of extending considerations of quality to embrace pedagogic quality, that is to say, the quality of learning and teaching activity using technology-based resources and tools. The quality of the tools and the resources underpins the quality of the learning experience, but will afford rather than determine the quality of learning. Quality, it is argued, is ultimately dependent on the decisions and behaviours of learning and teaching practitioners and participants themselves. The quality of resources needs to be framed within and guided by an understanding of the broader quality of learning activity.

This second theme deals with the issue of quality criteria for e-learning following on from presentations and discussions at the Policy and Innovation Committee (PIC) meeting in Birmingham (October 16th – 17th) that took place in conjunction with the first Xchange conference. This issue contains contributions about BECTA’s e-learning quality criteria framework as well as similar work being done in Finland. This is completed by articles about the European Schoolnet Framework for Quality of Learning Resources and about the concept of LearnRank. Featured is also the English Common evaluation framework and work being done by the European Foundation for Quality in e-learning. All the articles available here are also available in print (more information in the library)