Christian M. Stracke

Process-oriented quality management

Quality management is a concept that has permanently grown up and been improved, and it integrates customer orientation, process orientation and quality orientation. Total Quality Management covers all the requirements of an Integrative Management concept. The revision and further development of the standard family ISO 9000:2000ff. have led to internationally accepted quality standards for the development and implementation of a quality management system and for its certification. Process-oriented quality management can look back on a long-term development that, in the sense of a continuous improvement process cannot be finished, but has always to be evaluated and further developed. For that reason quality will be remaining the complex crucial success factor for the entire management in the future.

The Benefits and Future of Standards: Metadata and Beyond

This article discusses the benefits and future of standards and presents the generic multi-dimensional Reference Model. First the importance and the tasks of interoperability as well as quality development and their relationship are analyzed. Especially in e-Learning their connection and interdependence is evident: Interoperability is one basic requirement for quality development. In this paper, it is shown how standards and specifications are supporting these crucial issues. The upcoming ISO metadata standard MLR (Metadata for Learning Resource) will be introduced and used as example for identifying the requirements and needs for future standardization. In conclusion a vision of the challenges and potentials for e-Learning standardization is outlined.

The Quality of MOOCs: How to Improve the Design of Open Education and Online Courses for Learners?

This paper presents the current status of Open Education and MOOCs and discusses their quality following the main question: How can we introduce new design and evaluation methods and personalization strategies to improve the learning quality of Open Education? First, the dimensions of Open Education are differentiated. Then the dimensions of holistic quality development are transferred to Open Education and discussed for the design of MOOCs leading to recommendations for personalization. A new quality indicator for evaluating the quality of MOOCs is introduced: It is proposed not to measure the traditional drop-out rates but the completion of individual goals and intentions by the MOOC learner. It is concluded that Open Education and MOOCs have got the potential for the next revolution in learning experiences.

Support Systeme für Qualitätsmanagement im E-Learning

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Komplexitat und Multidimensionalitat von Qualitatsmanagement (QM) in der Aus- und Weiterbildung unter besonderer Berucksichtigung von E-Learning. Dazu werden relevante Forschungsergebnisse und eine europaweite aktuelle Erhebung zu Praxis und Bedarf beim Qualitatsmanagement von E-Learning-Anbietern und -Anwendern vorgestellt. Deren Auswertungen belegen insbesondere die Notwendigkeit, die Qualitatskompetenz in Organisationen und bei den Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern zu steigern. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, dass ein Quality Management Support System (QSS) dafur ein probates Instrument darstellt: Die Anforderungen an ein solches QSS und an seine Ontologien und Systemarchitektur werden hergeleitet und begrundet.

Qualitätsmanagement in der E-Learning gestützten Aus- und Weiterbildung — Anforderungen an ein Tool auf Basis einer Expertenbefragung

Der Artikel analysiert die Anforderungen aus der Praxis an Qualitatsmanagement in der Aus- und Weiterbildung, insbesondere im E-Learning, und an unterstutzende Tools dafur. Nach einer Einfuhrung in die zugrunde liegende Thematik und in das methodische Vorgehen zur Konzeption und Durchfuhrung von Experteninterviews werden die aus der qualitativen Datenanalyse gewonnenen Studienergebnisse beschrieben. Zentraler und explizit dargelegter Gegenstand der hier vorgenommenen Analyse ist es, die praxisrelevanten Anforderungen an ein Support System im Bereich des Qualitatsmanagements fur E-Learning abzuleiten. Wir folgern, welche Anforderungen an unterstutzende Tools bestehen und geben Gestaltungsempfehlungen, um die Qualitatsentwicklung in Aus- und Weiterbildungsorganisationen zu verbessern.

Identifying Game Elements Suitable for MOOCs

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have increasingly become objects of research interest and studies in recent years. While MOOCs could be a means to address massive audiences, they suffer from high drop-out rates and low user engagement. Gamification is known as the application of game design elements in non-gaming scenarios to solve problems or to influence a user’s behaviour change. By applying gamification to MOOCs, we aim to enhance users’ engagement and goal achievement within a MOOC environment. To define our gamification strategy, we asked 42 experts in the fields of game design, learning science and technology-enhanced learning to rate 21 selected game design patterns according to their suitability within a MOOC environment application. The data collected allowed us to identify a set of nine game design patterns as promising candidates to be tested in MOOC environments.

Open education and learning quality: The need for changing strategies and learning experiences

Open Education is movement with a long-term tradition and broad approach. In this paper we compare Open Education with smart education first. We can conclude that Open Education as a holistic concept can embed smart education with its mainly technological focus and covers all three quality dimensions to improve the learning quality: potential, processes and results. Furthermore Open Education embraces all three levels: macro, meso and micro level. Such a holistic concept can change strategies and learning experiences of future education to address the needed societal challenges. It requires future research and surveys that are started now based on a first pre-survey on MOOCs revealing the differences between MOOC designers and learners. We believe that Open Education can improve future learning and education to facilitate learner-centered education addressing the requirements from learners as well as educational providers, public authorities and societies.

Towards Implementing Gamification in MOOCs

Gamification is well known as a design strategy used to generate a change in users’ behaviour, such as motivation. However, while in recent years interest in it has been growing, empirical evidence on the effects that the application of game elements can generate on users’ behaviour is still lacking. We present the results of a study as a step towards designing gamification with better understanding of the possible effects that each game element could generate on end users. By involving three groups of experts: game designers, learning scientists and specialists in technology-enhanced learning (TEL), we assessed a selected number of 21 game design patterns in relation to the effects these could generate on learning performance, goal achievement and engagement of learners if implemented in a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC). Based on quantitative and qualitative data collected, 9 game elements have been selected to be further investigated.

gMOOCs – Flow and Persuasion to Gamify MOOCs

Gamification has gained great interest recently in several fields. However, while the literature reports that a gamification design relying on external motivation only can lead users to cognitive dissonance, most gamification approaches use points, badges and leaderboards as dominant game elements. We present our developed testable predictions with the aim of investigating additional motivational theories (flow and persuasion) to argue for a deeper integration of gamification and the learning content at hand. Relying on expert selected game elements, we consequently derive design considerations to create gMOOCs, gamified massive online open courses, designed according to the principles of flow and persuasion. Our findings are the basis of our experiment and a contribution to the development of a new theoretical design for gamification.