eQNet - Quality Network for a European Learning Resource Exchange Guest

The Quality Network for a European Learning Resource Exchange (eQNet) has been developing and testing quality criteria that will enable repository owners and content developers/publishers in both the public and private sector to identify learning resources that have the potential for cross-border re-use, and thus can be said to 'travel well'. The final version of the Travel Well Criteria v. 3 (consisting of seven criteria, including three mandatory criteria), is now available on the eQNet wiki.  The final criteria have been shown to be suitable for practical evaluation of learning resources for use by European policy-makers, publishers, practitioners (e.g. teachers and learners) and expert evaluators. The efficacy of the Travel Well Criteria v. 3 was repeatedly tested in a real-life setting, as the criteria were successfully applied to improve the quality of open learning content in the Learning Resource Exchange for schools (LRE) in 2011 and 2012. This work resulted in a showcase of more than 5,000 ‘travel well’ resources.  The application of the Travel Well Criteria v. 3 to improve the quality of Learning Resource Exchange’s content continues as new collections are evaluated and those with 'travel well' potential are added to the LRE.

eQNet is co-sponsoring the 8th Educational Repositories (EdReNe) Seminar, taking place on 7-8 May in Lisbon, Portugal. EdReNe is a thematic network, bringing together web-based repositories of learning resources with content owners and other educational stakeholder, in order to share, develop, and document procedures, experiences, and strategies, on the organisation and functionality of online repositories.

eQNet partners will present on the travel well criteria of online resources, describing experiences of applying travel well criteria to improve the content quality of the Learning Resources Exchange for Schools. The event is organised by the DGIDC – the Portuguese Ministry of Education. For more information on the seminar, see edrene.org.