WikiEducator:Quality Assurance and Review

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Quality Assurance Framework Portal



Icon objectives.jpg
Objectives
The purpose of this page is to initiate open and transparent dialogue with WikiEducators to:
  • discuss and develop WE processes that will assist in promoting the quality of our teaching materials;
  • develop a draft policy for quality assurance for consultation and adoption by the community;



Assumptions and guiding principles

The development of WE mechanisms for quality assurance are directed and founded on our community values of: social inclusion; freedom; the unique and specialised nature of education; and our forward looking disposition in building the future. Consequently our perspective on quality is framed within the context of a number of assumptions and guiding principles.


Quality is:
  • a commitment to improve education around the world and not a mechanism to exclude new members from our community;
  • the collective responsibility of WikiEducators who develop and use our teaching materials;
  • enhanced by the design and development processes WE adopt and not the technologies we use;
  • an illusive and complex concept -- it means different things to different people and will always be context-dependent;
  • a process and not a state, recognising that materials start as a draft and mature through reiterative contributions from the originating authors and the community;
  • grown out of a healthy community, where all members are recognized and rewarded for their contributions;

What are the questions we need to answer?

We invite the WE community to list the questions we need to answer collectively as a community in developing a quality assurance and review policy for WikiEducator.

  • Do we need to use inspirational symbols, templates, slogans, which are content related and culture-inclusive to heighten the value awareness and quality conviction?
  • Add your questions here ...

Suggestions and considerations

Suggestion Considerations
  • Optional template system. By adding the template the author agrees to:
    • Requesting a QA review
    • That the page is ready for QA review
    • That they agree to review at least three other pages in a timely manner - submitted by Declan
  • Three categories of pages implied:
    • Draft
    • Ready for review
    • Reviewed
  • How do we cater for the identification of relevant expertise among reviewers? --Wayne Mackintosh 02:17, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
    • If you write and request peer-review in a category then one assumes you are expert in that category?Dmccabe 02:25, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  1. Reviews should be criterion based. ----Missan 05:04, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Need to develop a scheme that reviewers will use.
  • Implement a WE featured content resource and
  • Featured reuse resource
  • Develop a WE equivalent of Featured article criteria
  • Develop supporting resources in helping educators to achieve "featured resource status" as well as support resources on how the system will be implemented

Existing tools and projects which could support QA in WE

Tool Description Status
ContentInfobox Template A template which describes key characteristics of a resource.
  • Could be used to communicate the status of a resource, eg planing, development and ready for QA
  • Template completed, but not yet implemented throughout the WE project
  • May need refinements after QA policy developed
Learning Design Project A project to support and promote best practice in learning design associated with the development of asynchronous learning materials within a wiki environment. WE are developing a set of tools to help with the learning design of projects.
  • Prototype Design Guide tool - a dynamic wiki page intended to document the learning design plan for a content development project
  • Learning Design Templates - templates which can be inserted on a page to signify the status of a project development in conjunction with the design plan above.
  • Work in progress and needs refinement, review and testing.
  • Perhaps to advanced for Newbies?
  • Should we consider the integration of the Learning Design Templates into the ContentInfobox template?
  • WE need to develop support materials and tutorials on how to use these tools.
Tutorial: Developing a teaching resource This is intended as a beginner's resource. It was developed to help graduates from Learning4Content to integrate basic design principles and processes when developing their first teaching resource in WE.
  • Nearing completion
  • Untested in the WE community
Flagged Revisions A Mediawiki extension which enables Reviewers to rate articles and set those revisions as the default revision to show upon normal page view.
  • Not implemented in WE
  • Shows considerable potential for adopting a "peer review" system in WE.
  • Would need refinement in the categories WE use for quality judgements
  • Would require funding for software development.
WOERMM Wiki based Open Educational Resources Maturity Model (WOERMM). This idea was born out of the research and writing done for the paper, "Assessing the quality of open education resource based wikis". The WOERMM would be a follow-on to this paper. Maturity models encourage continuous improvement rather than a more "static" review process.
  • Work in progress and needs resources to deepen the application of Maturity Models to Wiki based OER
  • Yes, a fairly advanced approach, though its strength would come from its use of a Maturity Model
  • Would require the development of a Maturity Model which could be implemented in a rubric style

Tasks and work in progress

Featured Works

These five featured items are designed to set the "quality goal" for the works being developed within WikiEducator.

  1. Featured learning resource
  2. Featured collaboration
  3. Featured reuse materials
  4. Featured institution
  5. Featured project

Framework

The quality assurance framework provides the set of best practices and quality assessment items and approaches which the featured works are based upon. The framework will be based upon much of the work found in the references section of this page.

List of volunteers to assist with drafting the QA and review policy

WE needs a minimum of four contributor volunteers to assist with initial drafting of the QA and review policy based on discussions and comments from the community. The draft policy will be developed on the wiki and available for comment and review by the community. We also need as many reviewer volunteers as we can find and at least three approver volunteers. If you're interested in helping, please list your name below:

Contributors

Reviewers

Approvers

  • The community using a consensus model

References

Atkins, D., Seely Brown, J. & Hammond, A. (2007). A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities. Retrieved on 19 May 2008 from http://www.hewlett.org/NR/rdonlyres/5D2E3386-3974-4314-8F67-5C2F22EC4F9B/0/AReviewoftheOpenEducationalResourcesOERMovement_BlogLink.pdf

Commonwealth of Learning. (n.d.). Quality Assurance Micro-site. Retrieved on 19 May 2008 from http://www.col.org/colweb/site/pid/4225

Jongedijk, L. (2008). Assessing the Quality of K-12 Online Content: A sample assessment rubric. Retrieved on 19 May 2008 from http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSessions/

Marshall, S. (2005). E-Learning Maturity Model. Retrieved on 19 May 2008 from http://www.utdc.vuw.ac.nz/research/emm/index.shtml

Zhao, L. & Elbaum, S. (2003). Quality assurance under the open source development model. Retrieved on 19 May 2008 from https://xpertwriters.com/

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