OpenupEd Quality Label
OpenupEd aims to be a distinct quality brand embracing a wide diversity of (institutional) approaches to open up education via the use of MOOCs. As a consequence, OpenupEd partners agreed to develop a quality label for MOOCs tailored to both e-learning and open education. This label was published in January 2014. The associated institutional benchmarking with this label is primarily meant to be applied as an improvement tool, comparing institutional performances with current best practices and leading to measures to raise the quality of its MOOCs and their operation. This process is designed to complement both an institutional course approval process, and ongoing evaluation and monitoring of courses in presentation.
There is considerable diversity in institutional approaches in opening up education through the use of MOOCs which the OpenupEd label fully embraces. As part of this process OpenupEd partners are integrating the OpenupEd label into their own quality processes (see example of UNED under further reading). New partners of OpenupEd are required to obtain the OpenupEd label within three years after entry.
Preliminary results on the OpenupEd quality label stress the importance of research on how MOOCs in different institutional and cultural settings can help with the opening up of education. To this end, OpenupEd partners are collaborating on research and evaluation as well. In terms of quality assurance, the partners felt an urgent need to focus research on the learner perspective. In a funded project termed MOOCKnowledge questionnaires have been developed on the motivation, intentions, social context, lifelong learning profile, and the impact on study success and career development of MOOC participants. As with the highly flexible and open partnerships of OpenupEd, MOOCKnowledge is intended to be open for use by all MOOC providers and will hopefully lead to many cross-provider and large-scale data collections.
Comments on the quality label could be sent to Darco Jansen and Jon Rosewell.
Further reading
Jansen, D., Rosewell, J. Kear, K. (2016). Quality Frameworks for MOOCs. In M. Jemni, Kinshuk & M.K. Khribi (Eds.), Open Education: from OERs to MOOCs. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology (LNET). pp. 261-281 Aug 18, 2016. Berlin: Springer.
Rosewell, J., & Jansen, D. (2014). The OpenupEd quality label: Benchmarks for MOOCs, INNOQUAL, 2 (3), 88-100 (Special Issue on Quality in MOOCs).
Rodrigo, C., Read, T., Santamaria, M., & Sánchez-Elvira, A. (2014). OpenupEdLabel for MOOCs quality assurance: UNED COMA initial self-evaluation. Proceedings of V Congreso Internacional sobre Calidad y Accesibilidad en la Formación Virtual (CAFVIR 2014) L. Bengoechea, R. Hernández, & J. R. Hilera (Eds.), Universidad Galileo (Guatemala), pp. 551 - 555 ISBN: 978-9929-40-497-7
Kear, K., & Rosewell, J. (2016). Quality assessment for e-learning: A benchmarking approach (3rd ed.). Maastricht, The Netherlands: European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU).
