E-Learning Quality

Abstract

Although e-Learning activities have quickly increased, such a rise has not been parallel in e-Learning quality. While reinforcing some aspects can be very positive, certain deficiencies can lower the quality in e-Learning. Crucial factors such as the institutional policy, the quality of contents, the quality of processes, the results and possible improvements may remain hardly noticeable or may be pushed into the background. Sometimes the effort invested does not amount to any educational result. Perhaps in the future some kind of universally accepted rules to measure e-Learning quality may be reached, but in the history of educational technology there have been few global regulations and much more of flexible guidance. In the last few years several promising e-Learning quality recommendations have appeared. Some relations among the variables of e-Learning quality have been detected. This paper focuses upon this ongoing research which is represented by means of five conceptual maps that ease the visualization of these relations. Additionally a survey about e-Learning quality has been carried out with university students with a view to revealing those variables that are most important for them.