E-QUALITY IN INFRASTRUCTURES FOR LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The research reported in this paper re-visits the question of "what is perceived as central qualities in a digital infrastructure for higher education?" The data was collected at a Swedish university in conjunction with a potential switch from an old and well-established learning management system (LMS) to a new cloud based platform service that was considered by several Swedish universities. A pilot-project was defined with the purpose of exploring whether a switch from the old LMS to a new one could be defended by arguments of added pedagogical qualities. The authors of this paper participated in a series of workshops and focus group interviews with students, teachers, researchers and managers from all departments of the university where they were encouraged to put words on what were the pivotal qualities that must be preserved and/or qualities that was currently lacking and thereby hampering pedagogical progress and innovation. The results points at six themes that together is proposed as a set of tentative design principles for E-quality in higher education. The principles are divided into conservative principles with broad support among respondents (i) ease-of-use and usability, and (ii) time savings, and four principles that are oriented towards expansion and innovation of the role and functionality of an LMS-platform: (iii) open participation, (iv) collaborative creation, (v) data-driven development, and (vi) work-integrated learning. Further research is needed in order to develop and validate the design principles.