Berlin/ Germany. The weeks before were all intense work on assessing and reviewing courses and pro-grams. As some of the pioneer organisations in the field of e-learning in capacity development, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, the Training Center of the International Labor Organisation, the World Bank Institute and InWEnt – Capacity Building International have proven their excellence in delivering e-learning supported capacity development.

(From left to right: Ulf Ehlers (EFQUEL), Monika Soddemann (Inwent), Tom Wambeke (ITC-ILO), Christina Petracchi (FAO), Sueli Giorgetta (UNITAR))

Although all organisations are using ICT in their capacity development activities since a long time and with big success, an international agreement on quality was missing up to now. For the first time the international quality standard Open ECBCheck is now providing orientation and guidance for e-learning quality (www.ecb-check.org). After extensive self-assessment and peer-review phases the initiative has now awarded its first series of five certifications. The international quality initiative is now open for organisations to test their programs and courses against the elaborate framework.

Global Consensus on Quality

InWEnt, in cooperation with the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning had initiated the three year process in which experts collaborated on what first was meant to be a collection on good practices and recommendations. The experts from internationally renowned organisations formed an international advisory committee established the internationally recognized quality framework in an intense work and consultation process as an open standard. The Open ECBCheck quality framework is today endorsed by more than 45 organisations worldwide that are providing their support, experiences and are committed to improving quality through the Open ECBCheck methodology.

Open Quality Community

By handing out the first certifications, the final step has now been completed and a clear certification processes to check if e-learning programs and courses are compliant to the quality framework is established, tested and ready to be used. All organisations willing to improve the quality of their e-learning provision in capacity development are now welcome to join the open quality community and certify their courses and programs. “Open ECBCheck is in so far unique, as it involves organisations not only into self-evaluation process, but also into the review processes of other organizations’ programs and courses. It functions as an international review community in which the involved experts learn from each other. If they meet all quality criteria they receive the Open ECBCheck certification”, explains Ulf-Daniel Ehlers, the scientific director of the initiative and Vicepresident of the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning. Sheila Jagannathan from the World Bank Institute in Washington, and her colleagues from the FAO in Rome, UNITAR, ITC-ILO and InWEnt describe the participation of their organizations in the initiative as a fruitful learning process and as timely because “e-learning plays a more and more important role in capacity development but no international quality standards had been available. In some regards it is sometimes like flying by night – you manage to keep the machine up but you don’t know in which quality standards to base your work”, Günther Podlacha from InWEnt, the initiating organization says. This gap is now filled. 

Open ECBCheck provides international standards for e-learning programmes and courses. The crucial success factor for the quality concept is its widespread acceptance of a global community because it was developed through an open consultation process from the community of capacity development organizations itself, inviting their partners for regular validation and feedback. Organizations can join the Open ECBCheck Quality Charter, freely use the quality tool which is available online and offline (www.ecb-check.org), and join the open community to ask for a peer-review in a light and low cost certification process.

Organizations like FAO, ITC-ILO, UNEP, UNITAR, and the United Nations University, the Latin American EDUCAL Network, the African Virtual University, Open University of the Philippines and many other organizations joint efforts and brought their experiences with e-learning to an international round table in order to build consensus of how to use e-learning effectively for capacity devel-opment. The quality concept supports capacity devel-opment organizations to measure how successful their e-learning programmes are and allows for continuous improvement though peer-collaboration and bench-learning. In addition participating organizations join the open peer-review community in which they share tools and guidelines and in which they are able to obtain a peer-review from partners of the community.

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Free Online Quick Check & Full Self-Assessment

Further contact information
Ulf-Daniel Ehlers
European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning
University Duisburg-Essen, Germany

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Monika Soddemann
InWEnt
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