Well it has been a mission getting the course material ready. The picture of Kaihaihai beach from the zigzag track near the Heaphy track is a reminder I was on holiday this year.I decided to transfer everything to WikiEducator for ease of updating and currency. Also it is a great opportunity to put some of the facilitation ideas and tools we used in Facilitating eLearning Communities course into practice.
How did I get interested in evaluation?
My interest in evaluation comes from spending a number of years teaching and learning online and designing and developing online courses. I have also used a number of multimedia resources, and the quality of them has been rather variable. I studied evaluation for interactive learning systems with Professor John Hedberg when he was lecturing at the University of Wollongong. Yes I was a distance student, and that is the best place to sit if you want to critique best practice.
Thomas Reeves and John Hedberg felt so strongly about the need for better evaluation practices that they wrote a textbook about the subject. The reference is - Reeves, T. & Hedberg, J. (2003). Interactive learning systems evaluation . Educational Technology Publications: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
I was able to put evaluation into practice when I was part of a two year collaborative project (eLearning Collaobrative Development Fund - eCDF) to develop online information literacy modules. My experience as Chair of the Analysis and Evaluation committee was invaluable - I led several evaluation projects as part of the development and learned a heap about evaluation in action
