S5.1.1

=Teaching staff are provided with support resources (including training, guidelines and examples) on the pedagogical aspects of e-learning technologies. =

Evidence
There is an ongoing need to monitor the use of e-learning and ICTs for course delivery because there is as yet no consensus about what constitutes quality e-learning (Usoro & Abid 2008). These authors state that, ‘effective quality strategies, initiatives and tools are very important for convincing lecturers and other stakeholders to adopt e-learning’ (p. 80). Kidney et al. (2007) believe that, ‘a quality online course would be the direct result of a course creation process that included quality assurance strategies’ (p. 18).

To improve e-learning outcomes it is important to learn from past mistakes, according to Ehrmann (2002), who argues that tracking progress is not only necessary to stay on course but also to identify solvable problems that can attract fresh resources (p. 55).

Validation of e-learning processes and resources is a significant stage in the full cycle of organisational learning that describes success in terms of ‘student performance, student satisfaction, staff experience, and cost effectiveness, as judged in relation to the original intentions’ (Salmon, 2000, p. 236). Salmon discusses validating as one of six activities in the iterative process of creating an effective learning organisation infrastructure that enables ‘the system to learn about itself’ (p. 237).

Kidney et al. (2007) believe that, ‘a quality online course would be the direct result of a course creation process that included quality assurance strategies’ (p. 18). This is exactly what is described by Abdous (2009) in a pilot programme.

Resources
Leacock & Nesbit (2007) describe the gStudy tool. This is a piece of learner support software. It enables and develops self-regulated learning skills by prompting students and hinting at what strategies they should be using as they learn from multimedia resources. gStudy is different from LMSs in that it contains a browser that enables students to access any web content. Also, gStudy runs a suite of mark-up and information finding tools to support the study process. One important feature of using gStudy is that teachers can analyze it in order to gather information about the use of gStudy by students and gain insight into how they are learning, and how they are behaving when studying.