Changing Roles and Processes in Online Tuition for Higher Education

The case study examines a Level 1 undergraduate course delivered totally online to 8,500 students of the UK Open University (OU). Context, philosophy, design and learning outcomes are described. The author compares personal experience of tutoring the course to normal OU distance teaching methods and argues that computer-mediated conferencing (CMC) has a major impact on student learning styles and in changing roles within the teaching team; a learning community develops, triggering co-learning, co-tuition and co-counseling. The CMC also enables efficient academic and administrative information flow, and fast feedback for informal evaluation. The evaluation cycle is completed by reference to student feedback via a Web-site questionnaire and institutional change action. The study shows that technology to support global delivery is adequately robust, and success rates on the programme are similar to other OU courses. Pre-entry and online educational guidance is identified as an area needing further consideration.

Design Cycle Usability Evaluations of an Intercultural Virtual Simulation Game for Collaborative Learning

The present chapter describes the design cycle employed to create a computer-mediated social-process simulation called the DomeCityMOO. Participants created cultural identities that reflected the power imbalances in society and noted how their power and cultural identity were negotiated though their communication with others. Usability evaluation methodologies employed include design ethnography, contextual inquiry, task analyses, prototyping, and quantitative evaluation. The results indicate that the intercultural problem-solving simulation (DomeCityMOO) designed for a multiuser virtual learning environment may make it easier for educators and learners to explore the essence of cultural identity awareness and intercultural relations skills expressed through one’s communication. To date, intercultural real-time simulations are only designed for face-to-face. The DomeCityMOO is the first computer-mediated intercultural, multiuser, real-time simulation designed specifically to address issues of power and identity. The design principles employed in the DomeCityMOO challenge the popular belief that aspects of tacit culture and intercultural awareness can only be taught successfully face-to-face.

Online Learning for the Real World

This chapter examines usability evaluation in the context of the Diploma in Computing via the Internet offered by the University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education and, to some extent, its on-site course partner. This ongoing online course is aimed at adult non-university (the “real world” of the chapter title) students. The chapter follows the usability evaluation process through the life cycle of course development, delivery and maintenance, analysing the requirements and actions of each stage and how they were implemented in the course. It also discusses how pedagogical evaluation must be considered as part of this process, as well as the more obvious software considerations, and how this was achieved within the course. Finally it draws some conclusions concerning the enhancements to course usability of the virtual classroom and how this atypical evaluation material can and should be integrated into an overall usability evaluation picture.

ETHWorld - Implementation of a Virtual Campus Infrastructure and E-Learning at ETH Zurich

ETH World is a strategic initiative for establishing a new virtual campus at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. ETH World will provide services in the areas of research, teaching, learning and infrastructure for the established disciplines in technology and natural science at ETH. The initiative aims to develop the excellence of ETH Zurich, making use of the new facilities and infrastructure instruments and methods that technological development offers. It is an integral part of the university, supporting its academic planning, infrastructure and financing processes. In its first part this paper describes the background of ETH World and an international conceptual competition organized in 2000 to seek ideas for the “infostructure” of this new academic environment. Some results of the competition are presented along with other projects that have been launched as building blocks of ETH World. The second part looks in some detail at e-learning as one of the focal points of ETH World, presenting two cases studies in architecture and control engineering education.

Learning Technologies and Learning Theories

Learning technologies can provide a rich learning environment; this chapter explores the relationship between traditional learning theories and technology-mediated learning. Two examples are presented where technologies are used as tools (a) to evaluate and create Web pages and (b) to create learning technology teaching materials. The range of learning outcomes resulting from these projects are discussed in terms of Gardner’s (1993) theory of multiple intelligences.

Usability Inspection of the ECONOF System's User Interface Visualisation Component

This chapter is a report on the findings of a user interface evaluation process performed on a decision support system named ECONOF. The issue of properly evaluating the visualization component of a system’s user interface is first addressed. Then, the usefulness of the results obtained is shown through the illustration of the improvements made to the ECONOF visualization component. As the user interface evaluation step in most software design and development projects is more often than not neglected, when not totally bypassed, computer professionals need to be more aware of the importance of the user interface design step within any kind of development life cycle.

Heuristic Evaluation of Web-Based ODL Programs

In this chapter we describe the evaluation of Web-based open and distance learning programs in a more technical manner. First of all we discuss some general theoretical issues that are of importance regarding Web-based ODL environments, such as the communication channel between the participating entities, the issue of learnability and the overall evaluation of such an environment. Then we introduce the principles of educational evaluation, of interface evaluation in general and of expert-based approaches in particular, and we compare the empirical and expert-based methodologies. Finally we present the heuristic evaluation, in its initial form as well as in its Web-adapted variation. The main objectives of the chapter are to prove the applicability of the method in the Web in general and in ODL environments in particular and to investigate the appropriate heuristic list, which can assess the usability and the learnability of such an environment.

Improving Usability of an Online Learning System by Means of Multimedia, Collaboration and Adaptation Resources

This paper describes an adaptive and collaborative environment for helping problem solving. The main user of the environment is a teacher, here called teacher-student, who accesses the environment aiming at solving difficulties he/she encounters in the classroom. In order to improve the usability of the system during the problem-solving process, the environment provides the teacher-student with adaptive assistance by identifying what information should be provided and how it should be shown on the screen according to characteristics of the teacher-student, domain and context of use. Moreover, the teacher-student has a collaborative support that allows him/her to interact with other teacher-students.

Collaborative Learning On-Demand on the Internet Mbone

The ubiquity of the Internet potentially allows delivering a variety of electronic learning contents to a wide audience. This work proposes a new online learning paradigm, namely, collaborative learning on-demand (CLoD), and its supporting technology. The CLoD paradigm enables a group of workmates to on-demand request and watch the playback of an archived multimedia session for the purpose of collaborating and cooperatively constructing knowledge. CLoD is featured by cooperative playback systems, which are networked infrastructures providing collaborative media on-demand services. The chapter also details our MBone-based cooperative playback system, ViCROC, and presents an investigation of its usability.

Usability Evaluation of Online Learning Programs

“Usability” addresses the relationship between tools and their users. Such a relationship is generally considered as independent of any contextual, social or cultural aspects: Usability criteria relate to “human factors” taken as universal. But users do not live or act in an abstract world in which they are alone with the tool they are using. Users, as human beings, live and act in a world which is at the same time social and material. This paper provides some clues on how teacher’s or trainer’s epistemological stance, learner’s motivation, organisational learning culture and environmental factors interact to produce conditions determining the use of online learning programs. As a consequence, usability has to take into account the user’s social and material environment. This is why, according to the author, usability has to be “situated.”