Guidance for education

The Quality Guidelines for Digital Learning Resources (the ‘Quality Guidelines’) were developed by NHS Education for Scotland in consultation with NHS Learning and Development managers.

The purpose of the Quality Guidelines is to improve learning by providing an authoritative central reference point for NES and other health and care staff involved in commissioning, managing, designing, developing or reviewing digital learning resources.

Guidelines are to be followed by NES staff in developing digital learning resources. However, we hope they will be a useful source of reference for other health and care staff in Scotland. The Quality Guidelines are also relevant to contractors or partner organisations involved in the creation, review, governance or evaluation of digital learning resources.

Quality Guidelines apply to various types of digital learning resource ranging from e-Learning modules to videos, PowerPoint presentations, documents and other formats. NES colleagues developing digital resources will be expected to follow the Quality Guidelines as far as is practical and relevant. It is expected they will be applied to all new digital learning resources and existing resources as they are reviewed and updated. They will not be applied retrospectively.

The Quality Guidelines address all aspects of digital learning including governance and quality assurance, educational design and pedagogy, usability and navigation, accessibility, corporate identity and branding, technology requirements, copyright and procurement.

The Quality Guidelines will be supported by more detailed guidance materials and provide a foundation for the professional development of colleagues involved in the creation of digital learning resources.

The relevance of each Quality Guideline to different contributors to digital learning resources is illustrated in the table below. Please note that some of the requirements appear in more than one section of the Quality Guidelines.

Contact Rob Coward at NES for support with any Quality Guideline queries. 

We welcome your feedback on the Quality Guidelines for Digital learning site, so we can keep improving this resource. You can feedback on each Quality Guideline and on the Quality Guideline and Guidance for Education site as a whole. Quality Guidelines feedback form

These Turas Learn pages and the links within them to external resources, will be reviewed regularly. If you do notice any broken or missing links please let us know using the Quality Guidelines feedback form. 

Download a pdf copy of the Quality Guidelines.