Privacy Policies and Their Negotiation in Distance Education

This chapter begins by introducing the reader to privacy policies, e-services, and privacy management. It then derives the contents of a privacy policy and explains “policy matching”. It next presents an approach for the negotiation of privacy policies for an e-learning service. Both negotiating under certainty and uncertainty are treated. The type of uncertainty discussed is uncertainty of what offers and counter-offers to make during the negotiation. The approach makes use of common interest and reputation to arrive at a list of candidates who have negotiated the same issues in the past, from whom the negotiator can learn the possible offers and counter-offers that could be made. Negotiation in this work is done through human-mediated computer-assisted interaction rather than through autonomous agents. The chapter concludes with a discussion of issues and future research in this area.

Building Quality from Satisfaction in Online Learning Using Total Quality Management

Full degree programs have been offered via virtual classroom environments for some time now, and the pace of online program development is not abating. Even though many of these programs are beginning to mature there is still skepticism in terms of the quality of the programs utilizing the new paradigm. While some of this may be unfounded, there is always a justification phase with the introduction of a new paradigm, and it is important to demonstrate “equivalent quality”. The issue of quality education is not an online learning issue only, and often student satisfaction surveys are what we use to point to quality programs. There is often some doubt as to whether such surveys are capable of addressing the issue of quality, but in many cases these are all we have in terms of feedback.

Online Multimedia Educational Application for Teaching Multimedia Contents

This chapter describes an experiment undertaken with higher education level students, which consists of utilizing an online multimedia educational application as an aid in teaching organizational multimedia. This course is taught to fourth year students at the Escola Superior de Ciências Empresariais (Higher School of Management Sciences, Setúbal, Portugal), where the first author teaches. This chapter also describes the educational software model used for the planning, development and evaluation of the above-mentioned application. This model is the result of the integration of the model presented in the first author’s Master’s thesis with methods, methodologies and guidelines proposed by others. As for the resulting application, the manner in which it was applied and its evaluation are also presented in this document. The results obtained are then interpreted and future developments proposed.

E-Learners at Risk

In a continuous improvement research project aimed at identifying the students who are best suited for Web-delivered programming courses, the authors gathered data from five online and five classroom sections of Visual Basic programming at Metropolitan State College of Denver and compared them. All sections of the course used the same syllabus and assignments, and were taught from a centralized, standardized process by the same instructor. Internet students in the midrange of achievement level were affected more by delivery method than those at either the high end or the low end of their achievement level, as measured by GPA. The research culminates a three-year study on delivering higher level CIS curriculum via Web courses. The authors conclude that more study is needed, but are convinced that the mid-level B or C student is most affected by Web delivery, and design and delivery of programming courses via the Web need careful attention.

Developing Distance Learning Programs

This chapter examines the processes associated with developing new distance learning programs at post-secondary academic institutions that have not previously ventured into the world of online learning. Although the majority of the topics discussed are readily applicable across a wide range of academic subjects, a new distance learning program in business technology serves to illustrate the relevant concepts. Through an exploration of students’ thoughts about the opportunities and concerns involved with online learning, plus a brief overview of distance learning efforts starting with one-way, non-interactive communications and moving toward today’s fast-paced interactive courserooms and multimedia capabilities, organizational challenges and potential trouble spots for new online academic programs are identified and discussed. The knowledge gained from this first-hand experience, combined with an ongoing dialog with online student learners and other university stakeholders, provides a strong foundation on which to build and successfully implement new distance learning programs for undergraduates at the university level.

Assessing the Effectiveness of E-Learning

This chapter presents the author’s experience with the assessment of e-learning’s effectiveness. It begins by defining e-learning, then identifies its strengths and weaknesses, and poses suggestions for enhancing e-learning’s effectiveness. The main thrust of the chapter centers upon the author’s experience as an e-learning developer and the pilot study he conducted to assess the effectiveness of an e-learning course he developed and deployed. The results of this pilot study are presented, and the author’s comments regarding the results of the pilot study are also presented. This chapter concludes with a look at the future of e-learning. The author hopes that a better understanding of e-learning’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential will enable others to develop and deploy more effective e-learning and more effective e-learning initiatives.

UML-based Modeling of Educational Components for Cooperative Problem-based Learning Situation Design

As common learning situations, Problem-Based Learning Situations (PBLS) require accurate template models in which the roles of tutor and learner participate in varied codified cooperative activities. This chapter discusses the use of the UML formalism to first build such customizable models, and next to derive Educational Components (EC) from models. The chapter contributes to reduce the lack of flexibility in “open” learning tools where distribution of components applies with some difficulty. It purposefully introduced the designer role for problem-based learning situations. This designer aims to assemble educational components in order to offer computer-aided learning supports. Model examples and techniques for the implementation of components are also briefly evoked.

Semi-Adaptive Testing Strategies in a Web-based Generic Tutoring System

Adaptive testing is an important component of most tutoring systems. This component normally interacts with the student model to determine students’ abilities and students’ knowledge. For this, fully adaptive testing strategies are used. However, this kind of strategy needs training for estimating specific values before they can be applied. Furthermore, the human tutor does not have any influence on the testing process. In this chapter, semi-adaptive testing strategies are introduced to deal with these problems. It is shown how a generic tutoring system can be designed to apply semi-adaptive testing strategies. The meta-language XML is used as approach for implementing these results in a Web-based application.

The Determinants of Web-based Instructional Systems' Outcome and Satisfaction

Post-secondary distance education via the Internet is now commonplace. Tremendous advances in information technology have allowed colleges and universities to offer Web-based courses as a way to meet the growing demand for educational experiences from those who, because of distance from campus or scheduling conflicts, would otherwise not be able to take courses. This chapter develops a model explaining the relationship between two dependent variables (the perceived student satisfaction and learning outcomes) and six independent variables based on two statistical tools: correlations and structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that student self-motivation toward Web-based courses has a strong impact on the level of interaction; the perceived student satisfaction has a direct link to the learning outcome in Web-based courses; and higher levels of student self-motivation toward Web-based courses can lead to greater learning outcomes.