One critical issue arising in the educational use of collaborative learning concerns the teacher's difficulty in evaluating the contribution and participation of each student in group-work. This article aims to illustrate and discuss a methodology that enables evaluation of the collaborative learning process based on co-writing in a wiki environment. After considering the effectiveness of co-writing as a strategy of collaborative learning, the article will highlight issues regarding methods for evaluating each student's contribution to the collaborative process and to the group's overall action. A solution will be proposed to address the problem. It is based upon the elaboration of information traced automatically by wiki, employing survey grids and formulae developed ad hoc to calculate participation and contribution indexes. These tools will be illustrated together with their application in two university courses. Results demonstrate the added value given by the proposed approach to the evaluation process of co-writing. However, these findings also highlight critical issues and some possible remedies for the lack of specific wiki functions to automatically extract information required for quantitative analysis of the actions taken by members of the learning group.
Given the special characteristics of online courses, their quantitative/qualitative evaluation calls for the adoption of specific procedures to assess both the learning process and the participant performance. This paper seeks to shed light on the aspects and issues involved in the evaluation of online courses, focusing on the peculiarities that distinguish such evaluation from that of traditional distance education. Subsequently, a methodological approach will be proposed that was developed and tested during evaluation of online courses for in‐service teacher training and for training of staff in small and medium‐sized enterprises.
The link between distance learning and telematics is becoming ever stronger, yielding new solutions to old problems, innovative educational resources and new teaching/learning models. One of the most innovative and promising fruits of this relationship is on‐line education, notably a process whereby all the participants (teachers, tutors and students) are linked up in a computer network; the effect of this is the creation of a fully‐fledged learning community in which all individuals take an active part and make a valuable contribution to the group. The aim of the paper is firstly to outline the distinctive characteristics of on‐line education methodology and secondly to examine the POLARIS project, which proposes an experimental approach for in‐service teacher training based on intensive use of computer mediated communication according to the principles of on‐line education.
As a result of the general improvement in living conditions in industrialised Western countries, people aged over 60 years usually reach the 'third age' in good mental and physical condition. Contemporary society has thus had to endeavour to offer the 'new old' not only social services but also pastimes, leisure, social, cultural and educational activities. Among the range of opportunities being made available is that of acquiring skills in the use of information and communication technology (ICT), an area of ever-increasing prominence. This can be seen not only as an opportunity for individual cultural growth but also the basic condition for conceiving a range of practical network-based services and applications of great social significance for the elderly population. This article refers to one of these initiatives, developed in Liguria (one of the Italian regions with the oldest population), whose purpose was to train about 600 over-60s in the use of ICT. What we will analyse here in particular are the results of e-learning activities offered to a sample of participants and with reference to a segment of the entire training process envisaged by the regional initiative. The specific objectives of the activity were to verify the real possibility of proposing short, online learning modules on the use of Internet for older users; to survey users' attitudes/reactions to e-learning; and to analyse the follow-up of distance training activities.
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