This section is a survey/study on quality certification for eLearning content in mathematics. JEM will base its review process and guidelines on the results of this study. As a side effect, this will provide quality competence for JEM authors who will become familiar with the quality criteria used to assess the resources they produce.

We will base our study on current approaches, mainly collected by the European Quality Observatory, that generically discuss quality issues for online materials and try to derive appropriate criteria for the specific area of mathematics. Special attention will be devoted to the ongoing activities at the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning, including their suggested roadmap for the development of a quality process. Their recent survey on Quality in e-learning concludes that there is a need for quality competence for e-Learning in Europe and more information is needed for those wishing to implement quality strategies. Quality standards requirements, as shown by survey mentioned above:

• participation: all stakeholders must be involved in definition of standard
• transparency: transparent development so that all those involved can influence process, publication of guidelines and of the certification process.
• familiarity and acceptance: crucial for large adoption
• openness: different perspective must be taken into account, expandable
• suitability and scalability:
• harmonisation and integration: use existing approaches if successful
• integrated methodology:
• quality awareness: must lead to increase in aware quality action
• measurability: provide products and tools to be used for measurements (validators)

The WALTER metadata profile, based on LOM, can be considered a first step and should be tested by the JEM authors and evaluated - if it is agreed that this metadata description of a resource is a viable basis for the JEM review process then the network will proceed with registration of the JEM profile at the CEN Registry Of Application Profiles in eLearning.

Quality is perceived as relating to obtaining the best learning achievements. The JEM review process, while it will try to evaluate the quality of resources, it cannot assure the quality of the learning outcome or of the teaching based on such resources. Such a review process is intended to highlight resources that have been created by following sound pedagogical criteria and show proper use of technology.

Peer Review Processes

A peer review process, along the lines of what is adopted by the Co-Operative Learning Object Exchange (CLOE) or by the MERLOT repositories, seems to be a natural choice since in spirit it is very close to the aims of the JEM repository.

• CLOE Guidelines for Authors inform the authors of the CLOE Peer Review Process used to assess the learning object before inclusion in the repository. In particular, the Peer Review Evaluation Form is available for everyone to download so that the entire process is transparent to the authors. The evaluation criteria are very similar to those listed in Becta's quality principles (see below).
• MERLOT evaluation criteria
• eLera is a distributed group that researches and evaluates e-learning using the Learning Object Review Instrument (LORI) tool. This is a collaborative approach and aims at including all e-content stakeholders in the review process.

Bibliographic References

1. INSIGHT devotes a Thematic Dossier on Quality Criteria with articles on quality of resources, quality aspects of the usage of the resources in online settings and reports on European projects on quality of eLearning.
2. Becta's Quality principles for digital learning resources outlines the key quality principles relating to the design and use of digital learning resources to support effective learning and teaching. A whole section of the web site is devoted to the topic of Quality principles that can be distinguished in Core pedagogic principles, underpinning effective learning and teaching, and Core design principles, incorporating principles that are general and that are specific to the electronic media.