E-learning is failing the quality control test

Online education packages developed by British universities are not up to the standards required by the government's flagship University for Industry initiative, writes Alison Goddard.

Some 1,500 private companies and public institutions in the UK submitted some 5,000 courses, yet only a quarter were accepted by the UfI.

David Hoyle, head of commissioned learning products for the UfI, said: "Not many met our legal requirements and, far more disappointingly, not many met our quality criteria.

"Higher education institutions and further education colleges have a lot of fantastically good content but in traditional media - print or old-fashioned multimedia. There is a very good opportunity to convert material for web use. Generally, (institutions) have not been as adept as might have been hoped.

"Quality is potentially our Achilles' heel. We need to have some control over the selection of items. We need to balance giving learners the freedom to construct a learning programme to fit their needs and ensuring that they come out with a qualification that is coherent. Otherwise it would be like them minting their own money."

To overcome the problem, universities and colleges should develop "learning objects" in which the assessment procedure rather than the content determines the level of qualification, Dr Hoyle suggested.

A student who could demonstrate an understanding of the material would have achieved the most basic level, while a student who could analyse and evaluate the same material would have achieved at the undergraduate level, for example.

"Objects are portable, relatively free of context and can be matched to a wide range of qualifications. Most importantly, they can be culturally localised far more easily than courses," said Dr Hoyle.