Virtual learning in engineering education uses e-learning resources in many different ways. These resources are normally stored in learning object repositories (LOR) where they are catalogued with metadata facilitating retrieval by end users. As ranking e-learning resources according to quality criteria is considered helpful for end users, quality measures play a prominent role. This article presents a study for estimating the quality of learning objects (LO) by using the available data in MERLOT, a large LOR. The main result of this study is the identification, definition, and evaluation of quality metrics applicable to engineering e-learning resources which can be adapted to other types of repositories for facilitating the search of e-resources in general.

Keywords

e-learning · educational technology system · evaluation methodologies · learning objects · repository