Some aspects of what is meant by eLearning quality can be captured in a reasonably objective manner (e.g. are learning objectives stated), but others (e.g. student engagement) can only be captured through more subjective measures. Once subjective measures are used, the results begin to depend on who is doing the measuring, and the results vary depending on the positioning of the reviewers with respect to the courseware.

Thus an eLearning producer may have one view (and within the company, the coders may have different views from the graphic designers), but the learners and teachers who will use the courseware, the employers who will employ those who have used the course, and perhaps the company that has commissioned the courseware for its employees, or national government agencies and other social agencies may all have different perspectives on what is important in judging the quality of the courseware.

Mere popularity is no guarantee of quality. On the other, hand the traditional approach to quality assurance also has its problems. In education, the traditional approach has been to have products assessed by a small team of educational experts. Such quality-assurance systems have been criticized for being overly controlling and dominated by one particular perspective, which can lead to the stifling of initiative.

As a result, these approaches to quality assurance are giving way to quality-enhancement approaches, and at the same time much more emphasis has begun to be put on student involvement in the quality process. However, these general quality schemes - even in their most recent formulations - are not ideally suited to the demands of an educational system subject to rapid change and growth, and in particular those demands that arise from the use of eLearning.

The solution that epprobate is proposing is to carry out reviews from a range of perspectives in terms of a published set of quality criteria. The next step is to involve the courseware producer with a learning community based around this review process.

A typical review panel would consist of representatives of the target group for the course, a pedagogical and quality expert, another eLearning courseware producer, a content expert, and the eLearning courseware producer. This panel would produce a report examining the courseware in terms of the published criteria and would award the epprobate label where the courseware was found to be of high quality.

Rather than simply a process of providing a label, the core of the epprobate process is the promotion of a community of peers working together to improve eLearning quality. We will achieve our goal of supporting the development of high-quality eLearning courseware through a combination of consulting with a range of perspectives and multiple stakeholders, reviewing against a published set of criteria, producing detailed evaluative reports, and involving eLearning producers within our learning community.