E-learning: Psycho-pedagogical utility, usability and accessibility criteria from a learner centred perspective

Since the democratization of personal computers and Internet access formal and informal learning opportunities have multiplied, increasing the technological-supported contexts and contents. Despite the increasing opportunities for education, not all teachers have developed a satisfactory level of eCompetence (Schneckenberg, 2006), not being able to choose and implement a technology-supported learning solution efficiently. On the one hand we need to consider the phenomenon of digital emigrant teachers, which is linked to the avoidance of technologies; but on the other, we have a large number of technological-enthusiastic teachers that try to introduce tools and functionalities without assessing first: the cognitive load, the cost, the utility, the usability, the accessibility and the psycho-pedagogical criteria that must be considered before innovate with technologies. This chapter aims at both groups of teachers or instructional developers, by offering a review of the e-learning possibilities and criteria, based on several analyses carried out by the authors on higher educational settings. Based on the learner cantered perspective, this chapter purposes some criteria for assuring the quality in higher education e-learning contexts, mainly based on three categories: psycho-pedagogical utility, usability and accessibility. One of the principal goals of the chapter is to support -by means of the criteria- the selection of technologies and functionalities (collaborative tools, e-learning 2.0 solutions...), considering, above all, the learning objectives and the specific learning contexts. The chapter will introduce also some of the main technology-supported learning solutions and will provide a decision-framework to choose, implement and evaluate the integration of educational technology for e-learning. © 2011, IGI Global.