The idea is that learner-orientated quality development is a necessity rather than an option if quality development is aimed at having an impact on the learning process. Quality development always has to be a connection of processes and procedures with values and normative decisions. Every facilitator, guiding a group of learners, needs a normative decision concept, such as a didactical theory, to have a sound basis for his or her activities. Quality development, which is relevant for educational processes, can therefore be described as the sum of all activities and efforts carried out in order to improve the learning process.

The emphasis of the educational process indicates at this point already that it is not possible to certify such a learning process orientated quality. It can be perceived only when the actual educational process takes place and is always a co-production between the learner and the learning environment. In recent quality debates, it is an oft-made mistake to assess educational environments isolated from the educational processes and not to take into account the target groups and other stakeholders within the environment. Since quality is not a given, stable characteristic of an educational environment but evolves only from the relation between the learner and the learning environment, quality can be perceived and assessed only in the actual context. Also, there is no means of defining quality criteria, which define quality apart from a concrete educational context.

As a consequence, quality development has to be seen as a process of negotiation in which all stakeholders need to participate. The aim of such a participative model for quality development is to define the values and objectives of the learning process together among the stakeholders. Such an active participation of learners will play an important role in future quality development systems. The learners have an active role in these concepts and need to be aware of their personal proposals and demands. In a form of self-management of their own educational biographies, they have to identify necessary characteristics that learning scenarios have to meet in order to enter into a successful educational process. Such participation processes require better information, transparency and counselling on the part of eLearning providers.

At the same time, learners have to be aware that their own responsibility for quality development rises, as they themselves are viewed as quality experts in the learning process.