Content area
The quality of an e-learning product is an important concern for users. Most e-learning providers find it difficult (and expensive) to furnish the customer with products that have quality characteristics that are always identical from unit to unit or module to module. Many producers take the view that quality control costs money and reduces profits. However, these costs are really the costs of doing it wrong first time. A few examples of these costs are: 1. operating costs, 2. prevention costs, 3. appraisal costs, 4. internal failure costs, and 5. external failure costs. There are two clearly defined approaches to quality control -- unstructured and structured. With the unstructured approach, specifications are usually the result of the design process for the product. Taking a structured approach, a guideline that has been widely used to improve the product quality is the capability maturity model. The e-learning product quality control process consists of content review, graphic review and technical review.