1. The challenge of quality in
peer-produced eLearning
content
Ari-Matti Auvinen
HCI Productions Oy

2. Quality work of peer
production
• European QMPP project (Quality
Management of Peer Production of
eLearning)
– also four real-life pilots of peer production
• research work also in related fields
– peer collaboration in health care
– peer production of field-based
maintenance documentation

3. The power of peer
production
• ordinary users are entering the
nucleus of digital content
production
• modern success stories include e.g.
– development work of Linux
– Wikipedia
– Slashdot.org, Amazon and other peer
review actions
– Eureka project (at Xerox)

4. What is peer production?
• digital content created, edited,
enriched by peers (other people on
the ”same hierarchical level”)
– YouTube, Facebook, blogs, flickr,
slashdot.org etc.
• peer production already now
included in eLearning many forms
– eLearning courses produced by peers
and peer groups, teamworks etc.

5. What is user-generated
content?
• peer production has similar features
and qualities as UCG - by the OECD
definition it is
– content is made “publicly available”
over the Internet
– it reflects a “certain amount of creative
effort”
– it is “created outside of professional
routines and practices”

6. What motivates peer
production?
• peer recognition
– ”hacker ethics”
• collective joy of sharing
– ”dancing in the street”
• collaborative joint actions
– ”wisdom of crowds”
• rewarding
– might be secondary in motivation

7. The challenge
• the very nature of peer production is
its free flow of creativity and thus
any formal mechanism (including
the quality approach) could be
seen to be against the creativity
factor
• the quality work methodology in
peer production is at its best
dispersed and fragmented

8. Prosumers – also in learning
• prosumers = producers + consumers
• in services different steps and phases
– growth of self-service (”mcdonaldisation”)
– improving service by participation
(”modern banking”)
– participation in experience creation
(”reality shows”, ”World of Warcraft”)
– creating and sharing personal knowledge
(”wikinomics”)

9. Co-creation of value as a
business trend (I)
• importance of co-creation experiences and
their importance to the value creation
(Prahalad and Ramaswamy)
– the market is becoming a forum for conversation
and interactions, and that the management
and facilitation of this dialogue is the key in
value creation process
– the market is becoming instead of a seller-buyer-
market rather the arena for co-creation of value

10. Co-creation of value as a
business trend (II)
• the key building blocks for the
interaction between users and
providers of
– dialogue
– access to important information and
resources
– risk-benefit assessment by the users
– transparency of work and working
methods

11. New approach to the
eLearning market
eLearning
push
Learners
as target
audience
Market
place for
eLearning
eLearning
providers facilitating
the value
co-creation
Learners
As collaborators in
value co-creation
Market place
as an arena
for value co-
creation
Conventional view
Value co-creation view

12. Examples of co-creation of
value
• Nike, Polar Electro, Nokia tracker
– user community of joggers
• Weight Watchers
– organisation of peer group work
• Web sites of various journals
– user-created advices and tips
• Karaoke restaurants
– customers as performers

13. Scope in developing peer
production
KEYACTORS
UTILIZATION CONTEXT
INDIVIDUALS
OWN USE +
POTENTIAL EXTERNAL USE
user-created
content
ONLY OWN USE
INDIVUALS +
PEER GROUPS
peer
production
peer-to-peer
production
(individual)
learning
portfolios

14. Setting of objectives vs.
provision of structure
STRUCTURE SETTING OF OBJECTIVES
FIRM
LOOSE
LOOSECONTROLLED
peer-produced structured
eLearning courses(based
on analyzed and defined
training needs)
digital content production
based on on-demand
modality
communities of practice
various self-help groups and
autonomus web groups
peer-produced course
works and learning
resources (e.g. team
works, blogs etc.)
I II
III IV

15. When creativity meets its
limits
• peer production requires also
enabling and supporting structures
and their effective management
(quality of learning objects vs.
quality of learning systems)

16. Quality cycle in wikis
Enabling processes
Enabling procedures
Enabling tools
Enabling policies
Benchmarking
Rating
Creating
Enriching
Editing
Updating
Enabling processes
Enabling procedures
Enabling tools
Enabling policies
Benchmarking
Validating
CreatingEnriching
Editing
Updating

17. QMPP QualityScape
• in peer production quality is created
as interplay between peer
production of digital content and
peer validation processes of digital
content
• peers have different roles at
different times – they can
participate in the quality process as
creators, but also as validators

18. QMPP QualityScape
Peer creation Peer validation
Editing
Updating
Enriching
Benchmarking
Peer reviews
Peer reflections
Peer learning
Enabling
processes
Enabling
tools
Enabling
policies
Enabling
policies

19. Peer creation actions (I)
Peer creation (including peer authoring) creating digital learning content by
authoring, editing, enriching and updating
using various media
Authoring (shared) authoring of texts and other digital
resources; creating images, audio
materials, video materials; creating content
for wikis etc.
Editing (shared) editing of digital content (from
proof-reading to translation), creating
alternative navigational routes, creating
collages etc.
Enriching creating additional digital content,
publishing individual works and team
works, sharing or learning (b)logs, adding
library links, social bookmarking etc.
Updating monitoring existing content, updating
existing content, adding specific area
content etc

20. Peer validation actions (II)
Peer validation validating digital content with subject
matter experts, validating content with
peers, rating the validity and usability of
the content etc.
Benchmarking identifying of good cases and practices
for comparative purposes, identifying of
additional digital resources, identifying
areas of lacking content etc.
Peer reviews providing feedback by peers of learning
goals, progress and aims within a
learning community
Peer reflection encouraging the reflection of learning
processes by means of own experiences
and sharing the reflections within the
learning community or between different
learning communities
Peer learning joint learning also by the exchange of
learning experiences and learning
outcomes, such as e-portfolios

21. QMPP web resources
(www.qmpp.net)
• at the web site you can find the
QMPP Handbook in
– English
– Finnish
– French
– German
– Italian
– Spanish

22. Contact information
Ari-Matti Auvinen
HCI Productions Oy
Unioninkatu 22
FIN – 00130 HELSINKI
FINLAND
tel + 358 – 9 – 6124 9954
fax+ 358 – 9 – 6124 9855
ama@hci.fi