Quality

As an educator, it is important to be able to assess the value and quality of another's educational resources. To guarantee and make quality visible, a quality model was developed in the flagship project (the LOOV quality model). This model gives instructors a handle to optimize the quality of their own learning materials before sharing them. 

The quality model consists of a number of criteria with requirements for each criterion. The requirements are divided into two categories:

  • Must have: the educational resource must meet the requirement in order to receive the "good quality" designation
  • Nice to have: it is not mandatory to meet this requirement in order to obtain the designation "good quality", but it should be strived for

Drawing up the model

The first operational version has been drafted within the flagship project. The following procedure was followed in preparing the first operational version of the model:

  1. A working group prepared a first draft version. This first version started from a generic minimal quality model.
  2. The first draft version was provided with feedback by the project group. The working group processed the feedback into a second concept version.
  3. The second draft version was presented to faculty constituencies within the five institutions for feedback
  4. The feedback was processed into a first operational version of the model (with version number 2.1)

The quality model has topics that test the learning material for:

  • Content
  • Form
  • Metadata
  • Copyright
Based on experiences with the first operational version, a new version of the model was formulated by the project group in the first months of the project Together Nursing. The changes were made after discussions in the core team, with the two inspectors (see hereunder what an inspector is) and partly feedback with the constituency of teachers.

Changes included:

  • Single wording of requirements.
  • Requirement about presence of educational resources extended to presence of learning objectives/lesson objectives/learning outcomes
  • Addition to requirement regarding open licences: where possible, the open licence used must be visible in the learning material
At the end of the project, a new version of the quality model was worked on, initiated by the inspectors.

The most important changes now involved:

  • The quality model is only used for educational resources that covers a lesson or a series of lessons. Many of the content requirements in the model do not apply to other types of learning materials, but the wide variety of educational resources (both in content and form) makes it almost impossible to indicate those nuances in the model without making the model complicated. For the other resources, a culture needs to emerge for users to rate them (via star rating or reviews). 
  • Specifying some concepts
  • Adding the requirement that images must include the origin in addition to a source attribution and the description of whether it may be shared/reused.
Version 4.0 is the latest version available that is used to assess quality.

Quality mark
Within Wikiwijs, it is possible to see which educational resources meet the must-have requirements of the quality model. This is done by placing a seal of approval on such learning materials: the LOOV seal of approval. 

During this project, a job description was drawn up for the person who can inspect the educational resources, an inspector. Based on the quality model, an inspector can assess the quality of shared educational resources and, if they meet all the must-have requirements, award the quality mark.

If the educational resource does not meet all the requirements, the inspector notifies the uploader of the relevant institute of this fact, stating the reason why. It is then up to the author to decide what to do with the educational resource: adapt it, leave it unchanged or delete it. 

Experiences

Initial experiences show that application of the model leads to questions about the importance of some criteria, the difficulty of assessing some criteria, and the status of educational resources that cannot meet all the must-have requirements but are perceived as very useful. The quality model is therefore regularly adjusted and improved. Also because education will change it is predictable that the quality model will need to be revised regularly: it is a dynamic document.


During the project we have noticed that not every instructor has all the expertise needed to assess learning materials on all aspects. For example, it is quite difficult to master all the laws and regulations regarding copyright. Collaboration with experts from the library is therefore a logical choice. All institutions have involved such experts in the review and upload process (see for more details under "process").
Because of their role, the inspectors gained a good understanding of how quality criteria work out in practice. This explains why they took the lead in revisions to the quality model.

Because the quality model now only applies to educational resources that comprise a lesson or a series of lessons, other educational resources cannot receive a quality mark because awarding a quality mark is linked to the quality model. The quality of these other educational resources must be made visible by users via reviews or the awarding of stars. This must be stimulated in the professional community; a point for attention for the follow-up project.

By gaining an insight into the criteria that are not immediately scored well, it was possible to provide instructors with targeted training in this area. Workshops were developed that could be used by the institute. 


Geen opmerkingen:

Een reactie posten

Abonneren op: Posts (Atom)