EJEL Volume 6 Issue 2
April 2008

Measuring Success in e-Learning – a Multi-Dimensional Approach

Malcolm Bell and Stephen Farrier
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, U K

Between 2001 and the current date, Northumbria University has seen a massive take-up of its e-learning platform. With the publication of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) e-learning strategy in 2005, it was timely to reflect upon how effective that take-up has been and how well the university matched onto the ten-year aspirations of that document and its measures of success. Consequently an exploration was embarked upon to try to measure where we were and what we should prioritise in order to embed e-learning, as envisaged within the HEFCE strategy. This involved a number of key approaches:

• A series of interviews with key staff was set up in which they were asked to rank where they felt the university stood against each measure and what evidence would support their views.
• An on-line academic staff survey was developed based around the HEFCE criteria, followed up by a range of face-to-face interviews.
• An online student survey was developed and Student responses were followed up with an independent student focus group exploring issues in greater depth.

The outcomes of the three approaches were then combined and an interim report prepared which identified strengths and areas for further development. Subsequently, the university joined Phase 2 of a national benchmarking e-learning in Higher Education exercise, running from May to December 2007, supported by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). During this exercise we engaged in a deeper exploration against a wider set of criteria, based upon the “Pick & Mix” methodology. Pick&Mix comprises 20 core criteria and the option of a number of supplementary criteria. This paper shares methodologies used, identifies key outcomes and reflects upon those outcomes from both an institutional and sectoral perspective.

Keywords: measuring, benchmarking, methodology

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