Dia 1

1

European Association of Distance Teaching
Universities
Joint Seminar QUALITY ASSURANCE FOR
E-LEARNING UNESCO Paris, 12 March 2009 George
Ubachs Managing director EADTU
2
EADTU

• EADTU is Europes leading representative
  association
• for Lifelong Open and Flexible (LOF) learning in
  distance
• HE.
• Members are
• 12 Open and distance teaching Universities
• 15 Consortia and Associations of conventional
  universities operating with e-learning and DE
• 3 Associate members
• Representing over 200 Universities and
• 2 million students.

3
E-xcellence Roadmap to mainstreaming
E-xcellence Project
E-xcellence Associates label
TF Quality Assurance label
How to shift from a project into a movement ?
4
E-xcellence

• Goal From project to mainstream implementation
  of the
• E-xcellence instrument European wide at the
  local level.
• E-XCELLENCE brings together the expertise and
  experience of universities in lifelong learning
  from 13 countries as well as the expertise of
  quality assurance and accreditation processes
  from several QA agencies as a framework for
  educational improvement and innovation.
• E-XCELLENCE promotes the use of E-xcellence
  European wide and envisages increased performance
  and innovation in e-learning by integration of
  the instrument in the institutional and national
  policy frameworks.
• How to reach out and
• influence current bussiness models?

5
Local introduction

• Steps of local introduction
• 1. Sensibilisation on including QA for e-learning
• 2. Information on the E-xcellence instrument
• 3. Organising cooperation universities and
  QA-agencies
• 4. Finetuning instrument and existing systems
• 5. Integration
• 6. Implementation

6
E-xcellence

• European outreach
• Involving universities and QA-agencies by using
  the network of EADTU and ENQA.
• European seminar for universities and
  QA-agencies.
• 13 local seminars of implementing, testing and
  fine-tuning the benchmarks (October 2008 and
  April 2009). University QA-team and QA-agencies.

7
What to achieve in the local seminars

• Mapping experiences
• Determining the local impact (dialogue, shift of
  attention, roadmaps to improvement, etc)
• Finetuning
• Establishing a sustainable use of the instrument
  (internal external QA)
• Receive feedback on the instrument

8
Local introduction

9
Experience Rome

• Uninettuno University Evaluation Board
• The questionnaire based on E-xcellence emerges
  how e-learning is perceived by the students with
  regard to
• -integration and interaction of multimedia
  technologies
• -flexibility and adaptability
• -instruments of collaborative learning

10
Experience Finland

• The evaluation with the E-xcellence instrument
  created
• a lively discussion inside the university.
• In all, the experience was very useful to most
  people
• participating internally in the evaluation.
• -new ideas were created to the course design
• -new foundations were found to justify decisions
• -experience exchange between the evaluators
• and staff was extremely valuable
• -new working methods were discovered
• (Pekka Kess OULU University)

11

• 2 full Assessments
• -Open Universiteit Nederland
• -Lund university

Universities
External QA agencies
E-learning experts
Rewarding universities
12
E-xcellence Associates Label

• Not a label of proven excellence,
• but a label to reward continuous
• educational improvement.

Essential is integration of benchmarks

• The label is provided based on an
• external review at a distance
• or on-site.

Virtual Benchmarking Community
13
Review

• The label is provided based on an external
  evaluation
• at a distance. The external evaluation is
  executed by
• the E-xcellence review team.
• The review is based on
• current e-learning performance of the applicant
  body
• the thoroughness of the self-assessment report
• completeness of delivered proof
• the chosen path of improvement (adequate and
  realistic)
• integration of (most) of the E-xcellence
  benchmarks in the internal quality assurance
  system. (add, pick and mix, rephrase existing
  criteria to include e-learning)
• The reviewers will verify this and give further
  recommendations.
• By the end of 2009
• 20 European Universities will have the label

14

E-xcellence becoming mainstream in Europe

• Yearly update of the instrument, available as
  open source
• Improving accessibility, interactiveness and
  flexibility for the LLL-student.
• Over a hundred universities in Europe will be
  acquainted with the E-xcellence instrument
  (institutional/QA agency) Mainstreaming by
  integration.
• E-xcellence Associates Label
• Promote continuous educational improvement
  cycles for LLL.
• Reaching out by networking
• ESMU European Benchmarking Initiative
• ENQA-EADTU
• UNESCO