Title: Quality criteria for online education - Functional criteria
Course: Digivisio - DEMO course template > Section: Designing learner-centred education

This page contains summaries of various quality criteria teachers should be aware of when they are designing and teaching e-learning courses. This page focuses on functional criteria. The basis for the list is the Auditing criteria of Lauraea AMK Master’s level online courses. The list has been modified to be applicable in other situations as well, and it is has been compared with other commonly used criteria and guidelines, e.g. eAMK quality criteria (Quality criteria for online implementations.)

The aim of the functional criteria is to ensure the efficiency of the learning environment and to minimise any technical problems, which may frustrate the learners. The learning environment must be well-designed and implemented, so the learners can easily use it. Functionality may also be connected to elements decided on the organisational level, such as shared course templates.

Criteria | Description/example
Organisation’s common choices used in the learning environment.
- A common template used for the course (front page, structure, naming of elements etc.). Learners always find things from the same place, and courses function more or less uniformly.
- A uniform look and structure lessen the learners' cognitive load, and free up more time and energy for learning new things.
Learning environment functions technically.
- Links work, material opens, images, graphics, sounds, animations, and videos load.
- No too large images, which take a long time to load if a learner has a slow connection. A normal network connection should be enough for studying.
Accessibility demands are considered.
- Accessibility criteria is met: use the styles of the learning environment (Moodle, Canvas etc.), clear headings, alt texts for images, descriptive link texts, text editor’s own tables are used, tables have title cells, videos have subtitles, materials are in an accessible format.
- Accessibility is connected to legislation and educational organisations must follow it.
Instructions for using external applications are easily found.
- If you use external apps, the instructions to using them are easily found from the course (e.g. Padlet, MIRO).
- Any external applications are safe to use.
Course materials are first and foremost available in a digital format.
- Course materials are marked using clear referencing. If there are both a book and a digital version available, offer a link.
- Digital materials support e.g. accessibility, unified learning experience, and flexibility in studies.
Materials and structure support the use of mobile devices.
- The learners can use their mobile devices while studying the materials.
- If the use of mobile device is not tested, it should not be recommended (e.g. for creating text or other material), and learners should be informed.
Course contains information directed to the teacher, which enables reusing the course as a template, evaluating tasks, and giving feedback
- Materials for the teachers, which explains how the course can be used, what the goals of tasks are, evaluation, and ready-made examples of the feedback given to the learners.
- This is especially important if there are several teachers in the course – some of them may not have been involved in the original construction.

Sources and resources:

- HAMK - eAMK laatukriteerit, PDF - eAMK-verkkototeutusten laatukriteerit: suunnittelu
- eAMK - Library of Open Educational Resources (aoe.fi) - Quality Criteria for Online Implementations