Work with the Quality tool

Just a few ongoing comments on my work with the quality tool. Please feel free to add your comments and experiences.
I am currently working in the editorial stage, trying to build up a quality profile for teaching culture based on the reference criteria catalog and process model of the PAS 1032-1.

In the moment the profile is created in perspective to the whole course, which will be developed. In a later stage it might be necessary to build specific profiles for single modules and units. The initial profile has the objective to serve as checklist for the development work and serves as a tool for the ongoing evaluation (formative).

Some names of the criteria in the catalog are not understandable, i.e. have to "translated".
When slecting criteria I will make notes and send this to Christoph. He will add it to the tool (in a later version new views can be added for criteria in the same way as for process descriptions).

When selecting criteria I am not 100% sure how to deal with "headline criteria", e.g. 2.2. purpose (objectives) is the headline criteria for 2.2.1 and. 2.2.2 ...
I think it is better so select them as I think it is helpful to put the criteria in context - however those headline criteria might confuse authors in the documentation and evaluation stage (?).

Minutes "Creating a Quality Profile"

Here are the minutes of the meeting with Thomas and Christoph.

TOPICS:
TOP1: Customization of the reference quality criteria for the TeachingCulture! project
TOP2: Architecture for the quality-documentation and –assurance tool

AIM:
The aim of creating a quality profile is to adapt a very general reference framework to the specific processes of our project to ensure that we have taken all relevant aspects into account.

TOP1 Reference quality criteria
We want to give you an overview on the reference framework of quality criteria and the process of developing a quality profile for the TeachingCulture! project.

The reference framework is diveded in two parts:

1. Referece-Model for Process-Description (process modell)
The process model serves for us as a checklist to ensure, that we have thought about all aspects in the context of development and implementation of our "blended learning course". The documentation of the process facilitates the evaluation of the project and its outcomes and it will facilitate later accreditation. It is very labourintensive to do the documentation afterwards - for that reason we should do it in an ongoing manner.
We will receive a structured documentation of our project work, which helps us furthermore to remember our ideas, approaches etc.
Here you can find an overview of the exisiting processes and subprocesses of the reference model. Have a look at it and feel free to ad some comments if you have any questions about the process-model or if you think that there might be something missing, isn't detailed enough etc. LINK

2. Reference Criteria-Catalogue (criteria catalogue)
A Reference Criteria-Catalogue is a list of criteria which can be taken for evaluating the processes and subprocesses of projects. It includes other existing criteria-catalogues e.g. the web-acessibility-guidelines or criteria for software ergonomics.
For creating the quality profile you choose the processes/ subprocesses that are relevant for the project and add the relevant criteria from the catalogue. So you develop step by step a task-specific quality profile.

Here you can find an exmple of creating a quality profile for the TeachingCulture! Project. LINK


TOP2 Architecture of quality-documentation and –assurance tool
technical aspects:
   visualisation: HTML + Flash
   logic: PHP
   data: MySQL or XML


architecture:
We plan to implement different views for the different use-cases, so that everybody can only see the information that are relevant for his tasks:
editorial-view (needed for selecting the relevant criteria and for creating the quality profile)
evaluation-view (needed to confirm the requirements)
documentation-view (needed to complete the quality profile)

TeachingCulture! project description

This project aims at developing a training course for teachers which enables them to deal with the intercultural issues of language and cultural learning in a way appropriate to life in the growing European community. We are going to create and develop innovative didactical and methodological approaches that take into consideration holistic concepts of teaching and learning, learner-centred social settings, autonomy-enhancing access to information, informal learning situations, independent units of online and offline studying and a multi-channel tackling of learning strategies that clearly involve intercultural awareness and competence to professionalize adult education in a multicultural Europe.
Since quality management has become widely accepted, it should become a shared goal in European education that teaching is carried out by professionals who commit themselves to comparable standards, who have equal access to authentic sources and resources, who work on the development of their own intercultural awareness and who share the responsibility of facilitating learning processes that enable adult learners to successfully take part in the intercultural dialogue.