Welcome to the Virtual Education Wiki ~ Open Education Wiki
E-xcellence - creating a standard of excellence for e-learning
The E-xcellence - Creating a standard of excellence for e-learning project was selected in 2004, and funded from 1 January 2005 until 31 December 2006 by the European Commission - DG Education & Culture under the eLearning programme.
The E-xcellence web site is at http://www.eadtu.nl/e-xcellence/
Summary
European universities are in a process of creating a European Area of Higher Education through better access, quality, competitiveness and attractiveness. Improving e-learning will ultimately support the Bologna objectives (“e-Bologna”), since it will become a core approach in most courses and curricula: create better access to European higher education at all levels and in all domains both in mainstream continuing education, ensure co-operation between universities and raise the competitiveness of European universities.
The main objective of the E-xcellence project was to contribute to this process by creating standards of excellence as:
- assessment tool (programme and institutional level)
- improvement tool (internal quality care system)
- a tool for accreditation for excellence
A quality benchmarking assessment instrument was developed that covers the pedagogical, organisational and technical frameworks with special attention on accessibility, flexibility and interactiveness.
It was not the intention of E-xcellence to interfere with existing systems of quality assurance, but supplement them on e-learning specific issues. E-xcellence offers thus a supplementary instrument which may be used with quality assurance processes to allow the consideration of e-learning developments as a specific feature. An important aspect of E-xcellence is that it offers a European-wide set of benchmarks, independent of particular institutional or national systemsn, and with guidance to educational improvement.
Outcomes
The main product of the E-xcellence project is the Quality Manual Assurance for E-learning in Higher Education. The primary purpose of the manual is to provide a set of benchmarks, quality criteria and notes for guidance against which e-learning programmes and their support systems may be judged. The manual should therefore be seen primarily as a reference tool for the assessment or review of e-learning programmes and the systems which support them. However, the manual should also prove to be useful to staff in institutions concerned with the design, development, teaching, assessment and support of e-learning programmes. In providing a set of benchmarks, quality criteria and notes of guidance it is hoped that course developers, teachers and other stakeholders will see the manual as a useful development and/or improvement tool for incorporation in their own institutional systems of monitoring, evaluation and enhancement.
In September 2012, an updated version of the E-xcellence Manual was launched. It is available at http://www.eadtu.nl/e-xcellencelabel/files/full_manual.pdf
Partners
- European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU)
- Open University (UK)
- Open Universiteit Nederland (The Netherlands)
- University of Oulu (OULU) (Finland)
- Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance (France)
- Universitat Oberta de Catalunya(UOC)(Spain)
- Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) (Spain)
- Estonian Information Technology Foundation (Estonia)
- National Council for Distance Education
- Network per l'Universita Ovunque (NETTUNO)
- European University Association (EUA)
- The eLearning Industry Group (eLIG)
- Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatie Organisatie (The Netherlands)
Status
The E-xcellence project was the first of a series of projects and initiatives on quality assurance in e-learning by EADTU:
- E-xcellence+ (2007-2009), aiming to valorise the instrument (developed during E-xcellence) at the local, national and European level for the higher education and adult education sectors and to broaden the implementation and receive feedback for enhancing the instrument.
- E-xcellence Associates in Quality (launch 2010), the building of an e-learning benchmarking community of Associates in Quality. The E-xcellence Associates are focusing on the improvement of four priority elements of progressive higher education: Accessibility, Flexibility, Interactiveness and Personalization.
- E-xcellence Next (2011-2012), taking the third step in mainstreaming by integrating the instrument into the regular channels for QA (further European introduction, updating and extending the E-xcellence instrument and broadening the partnership on European and global level).
All information on the different tools and the E-xcellence Associates Label that grew out of these projects can be found on following website: http://www.eadtu.nl/e-xcellencelabel