BENCHMARKING PEER PRODUCTION MECHANISMS, PROCESSES AND PRACTICES OF (E-)LEARNING CONTENT

In times of scarce economic resources, content produced by users looks like an attractive alternative to commercial products. Especially content produced by ‘peers’ - persons of equal social standing, rank, age, etc. or persons belonging to the same social group - is highly welcome, due to several assumptions:
a) the same background of user and producer becomes manifest in the product and leads to a higher acceptance by the user;
b) the same background of user and producer becomes manifest in the product and facilitates comprehension on the user side;
c) the same background of user and producer ensure - at least some - similar interests and relevance of the product for the user;
d) a short production cycle guarantees that the product is ‘up-to-date’.

At the moment, one of the weak points of peer production of content consists of the rather poor implementation of quality management approaches in the production process. In order to overcome this obstacle, the EU-funded project QMPP has developed a model for the effective management of quality in peer production. It includes two important elements - the “peer production cycle” and the “supporting activities”.

Within the production cycle (benchmarking / creating / validating / editing / enriching / updating of content), it was important to identify key approaches of quality management in peer production of e-Learning content by benchmarking peer production practices and processes in other areas (such as the creation of technical documentation, joint editing efforts etc). Thus, the key activities included structured benchmarking of other areas of peer production of digital content and the organisation of four expert panels (Finland, Italy, Spain, Austria/Germany), in which the experts discussed the following questions:

a) What is the object of the quality assessment in peer production and learning 2.0 approaches?
b) What are the dimensions of the quality assessment in peer production and learning 2.0 approaches?
c) What are methods and instruments to assess/develop quality in peer production and learning 2.0 approaches?
d) What are the stakeholders of the quality assessment in peer production and learning 2.0 approaches?
e) How is the perception of the QMPP Process approach and QMPP Quality Matrix in regards to usefulness / usability / user-friendliness / comprehensiveness / comprehensibility / appropriateness for different target groups / recommendations for necessary improvements / additional comments.

The results of these panels and the effects on the QMPP model will be presented.