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Observation Interpretation - Evaluation

A good part of this research will include measuring effectiveness of the distance teaching/learning process in a Computer-Mediated environment, to investigate the WWW/Internet in a distance learning context. We will experiment with such environment, and as any experiment, this will involve observing a phenomenon and interpreting its outcome. We will have to define exactly what type of outcome we want to investigate, so we can have comparable measures and consequently, sound results.

As we previously said, the main motivation to this proposal is that we could not find any serious and thorough evaluation of Distance Computer-Mediated Learning/Teaching and the WWW. We did see several implementations that did claim to be successful based on the fact that a course was delivered and nothing else, which, of course, might be true, but, shouldn't we be trying to reach a common ground on what is considered successful, as far as Distance Computer-Mediated Learning/Teaching is concerned, before embarking on such enterprise.

Some of our questions are:

  1. What can we do in order to operationalise success measurement in Distance Computer-Mediated Learning/Teaching on the Web ?
  2. What factors will decide if it is or not a success ?
  3. What will this success be measured against ?
  4. What is our desired outcome and its assumptions ?

This are some of the questions we will have to answer before proceeding any further.



Ana Goldenberg
Mon Oct 30 17:41:18 GMT 1995