Managing the quality of e-learning resources in repositories

ABSTRACT 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. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 23:477–488, 2015; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21619