Ulf Ehlers from the University of Duisburg-Essen runs the project European Quality Observatory (EQO). Riina Vuorikari from the Monthly Insight to Interoperability asked him a few questions to shed light to the obscurity of quality related terms and approaches.

Riina: First of all, what is European Quality Observatory about?

Ulf: In short, the European Quality Observatory (EQO) deals with all matters of quality in eLearning at the European level. This includes

• collecting and structuring quality approaches in eLearning,
• establishing a European quality community of practitioners,
• as well as co-operating in the development of new standards and norms.

Our first goal, however, is promoting the use of quality approaches to make education a high quality experience!

Riina: Who do you think will benefit from this Quality Observatory?

Ulf: Our goal is to serve your needs in quality development. EQO addresses users of quality approaches i.e. decision makers in policy as well as in industry, headmasters in schools, and, in general, quality developers in all spheres of education who want to develop quality in their area.

EQO acts as a services provider for all of them and wants to facilitate and promote the quality of eLearning throughout Europe. We are aware that this is a huge task – and therefore have gathered high potential partners to face this challenge.

In February 2005, after completing this project, you will find an extensive and useful database at your disposal containing analysed and structured quality approaches for quality management (QM), quality assurance (QA), and quality assessment (QS).

The first prototype is scheduled to be launched at the Online Educa in Berlin in the beginning of December 2003. We invite you to take part! Send a mail to register for our virtual launch event: info@eqo.info.

Now, we've worked on the first conceptual model, and we want to invite you to take part in the discussion at this early stage:

1. Have a look at the bases for our future work: The EQO Conceptual Model is now discussed on an international level in presentations and seminars with both practitioners and policy makers. Your comments are very welcome as well! You will find the explanation of the Conceptual Model on our website.
2. We need your input. After launching our Internet-based quality portal in Berlin we will ask actors in educational community to contribute their quality approaches to our repository. You will then have access to a growing data pool of quality experiences and approaches.
3. If you are a user of quality in education we want to invite you to become an EQO-associated partner:
4. As an associated partner we keep you up-to-date about all developments in European quality development, and you are able to take part in project discussions. We will also support you in quality related development, if needed.

Riina: How do you think "observing quality" will help eLearning area?

Ulf: The quality of eLearning is not a well defined measure: various proprietary approaches on the national, regional and local level are used, but they are limited to a certain domain/user group/context. There is no general framework for quality management, quality assurance, or quality assessment in the field of eLearning. Therefore, even certified products and services cannot be compared.

In order to provide a framework for a common European and global market for educational products and services, a comparable, adaptable quality framework has to be defined by the relevant actors – these actors will be participants of the proposed community – and the repository will be the information and knowledge base to provide referenced information for users and researchers, leading to the development of a common quality framework.

Additionally, we provide recommendation and support functions to facilitate the implementation of quality approaches in organizations and enterprises. (Pawlowski, J.M.: The European Quality Observatory (EQO): Structuring Quality Approaches for E-Learning, ICALT 2003, Athens, Greece, July 2003).

Riina: What will be the continuation of your work with the observatory, do you wish to make one European quality standard in the end?

Ulf: What is needed to promote quality in European education, and especially in eLearning, is a comprehensive overview on quality approaches and initiatives on the one hand, and a possibility to fit the approaches to quality needs of users on the other. Both of those aspects are promoted in the EQO project.

The aim of the standardisation work in quality in education therefore is the development of a framework that is capable of categorising quality approaches and concepts and fitting it to quality needs and educational situations. Standardisation work is therefore the basis for promoting diversity of quality education.

Riina: How can people who are interested in quality issues participate in this project and give in their contribution?

Ulf: If you are interested please write a message to info@eqo.info  or find relevant information at the website http://www.eqo.info. Very soon we will offer an application form for EQO-cooperations on the website.

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Project partners:

• Universität Duisburg-Essen
• European Schoolnet
• MMB Institut für Medien- und Kompetenzforschung
• CERTH - The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas
• Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées