Streamline Training & Documentation: Evaluating an Institution's e-Learning Capability

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Evaluating an Institution's e-Learning Capability

The University Teaching Development Centre of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, has done excellent work on what they call the E-Learning Maturity Model (eMM). The goal of eMM is to change "organisational conditions so that e-learning is delivered in a sustainable and high quality fashion to as many students as possible."

eMM — now in a second version that builds on learning from version one — gauges the ability of an institution, such as a university, to

ensure that e-learning design, development and deployment is meeting the needs of the students, staff and institution. Capability includes the ability of an institution to sustain e-learning support of teaching as demand grows and staff change.

Evaluation of e-learning capability looks at five process areas:

Learning — Processes that directly impact on pedagogical aspects of e-learning (e.g., "Research and information literacy skills development by students is explicitly supported" and "Assessement of students is designed to progressively build their competence").

Development — Processes surrounding the creation and maintenance of e-learning resources (e.g., "Teaching staff are provided with design and development support when engaging in e-learning" and "Resources created are designed and managed to maximize reuse").

Support — Processes surrounding the oversight and management of e-learning (e.g., "Students have access to a range of library resources and services when engaging in e-learning" and "Teaching staff are provided with technical support in the handling of electronic materials created by students").

Evaluation — Processes surrounding the evaluation and quality control of e-learning through its entire life cycle (e.g., both students and teaching staff "are able to provide regular formal and informal feedback on the quality and effectiveness of their e-learning experience" and "Regular formal independent reviews of e-learning aspects of courses are conducted").

Organization — Processes associated with institutional planning and management (e.g., "A documented specification and plan ensures the reliability, integrity and validity of information collection, storage and retrieval" and "Pedagogical rationale for e-learning approaches and technologies communicated to students prior to starting courses").

A process assessment workbook is provided here (pdf). A fully worked hypothetical example of an assessment is here.

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Labels: eLearning, Evaluation of training

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