My perspective on e-Content quality is a bit different than that of Johan Thorbiörnson (KTH, Stockholm). My experience is with distant learners, and we are counting our students in tens rather than thousands. The subjects are the same as taught on campus, but adapted for distant learners. The syllabuses and the exams are the same as in the campus courses.

e-Content is not context free

All learning takes place in a context. I therefore state that it is necessary to look at the context in which the e-Content are used. We use a bundle of learning materials and activities designed as a whole:

• Video lessons (See an example)
• Discussion groups / forum in Moodle
• Written assignments with feedback from teacher every week.
• Ordinary textbooks.
• Gatherings at the University campus.

Of this only the videos and the forums qualify as e-Content. To say something fair about the quality, it is necessary to know something about the context in which the e-Content is designed for and used in. But, it is of course not a good idea to make the e-Content more context dependent than necessary. As Mika states, the “e-Content is good which is being used”, and I may add reused.

An example:
When recording our video lessons, the teachers tried not to refer to numbered sections, theorems or pages in the textbook. This has proven to be a good strategy as textbooks come in new editions all the time.

Metadata and quality

Videos and material with a lot of pictures, drawings or mathematical notation, are not a trivial task for search engines. Supplying the e-Content with metadata will make it more reusable, and thus raise the quality in some sense. Metadata may also be used to say something about the context for which the e-Content is designed.

Measuring quality is not easy

We cannot measure the quality of our video lessons by simply comparing the distant learners with the ordinary students on campus. Even if their written final exam is exactly the same, the two groups of students are not comparable. The distant learners are older, they are part time students, and their primary subject of interest is not mathematics. The distant learners have a very low rate of failure, but the dropout rate before the exam is large.

To find out something about the quality of our e-Content, we simply asked the students what they think. The students describe the streamed video recordings very positively. The following quotation is typical:

It is the videos that are the backbone of the teaching. A really nice tool that I have used. In addition the discussion group for the subject is good. I have read questions/answers that have helped me.