Quality of e-learning: Negotiating a strategy, implementing a policy

The concept of quality underlines plural perspectives: there is not a unique vision on quality which can be considered the best one. This implies that quality has a “subjective”, contextual and “objective” components. The latter involves defining a set of common criteria by which the quality of e-learning can be assessed, but it is undoubted that the way that different stakeholders will weight the criteria can be very different.

If the object of the quality is defined as the “learning experience” considered in its three components - sources, processes and internal/ external context - quality means complexity and systemic view.

Every organisation/ institutions/ body which is working at any levels in an elearning system should be aware of the multiplicity and multiperspectives of the visions on quality and be ready to start a process of understanding other view points and negotiate the approach to be adopted.

The key elements for supporting European quality in e-learning are understanding, dialogue action and review of results to date, that is a typical quality assurance loop.

Furthermore, in this perspective it emerges the need to work together among the different stakeholders in order to define common needs and to start a fruitful and valuable peer learning process which represent the new frontier of the collaboration within the European scenarios.