Finland
The Finnish National Board of Education has established a Working Group composed of major stakeholders in the online education area for defining quality criteria for online learning materials in primary and secondary education. A report of the working group from December 2005 is available at INSIGHT: Defining the Quality of Online Learning Materials in Finland.
A national project called VOPLA started in 2004 gathers Finnish universities and aims to make the quality of online learning materials better. This is achieved by supporting the quality assurance and quality management of online learning and teaching and disseminating quality improving methods and process models to teachers and other staff at universities. In particular criteria and models for quality management are being developed.
A major achievement of the VOPLA project is the development of "Quality Manual" (in Finnish, available online at http://www.vopla.fi/laatukasikirja/) which consists of handbooks supporting and enhancing eLearning quality. Directed towards teachers, directors and eLearning support staff it contains:
- steps into building eLearning quality management systems
- some quality criteria
- examples of process descriptions for eLearning
- evaluation measures and indicators for eLearning
- links to other quality materials
The Quality Manual consists of four handbooks for different areas of eLearning:
- for online courses
- for online learning materials
- for supporting services
- for organizations
The methods and models of the Quality Manual have been tested in several pilot projects in Finnish universities. Results of the pilot studies are used to further define quality criteria and processes of the handbooks.
