Online learning and evaluation

There are both advantages of online learning:
 The number of participants, accesses and access time are unlimited theoretically.
 Learner centered and controlled.
 Equal right and effectiveness of access the materials.
 Technology easily learning.
 Newest information provided.
 High effectiveness of studying.
And there also some disadvantages of online learning:
 Not all the people are ready for the inline learning.
 Sometimes, technology is over emphasized.
 Materials and technology skills are limited by persons.
 Not all the students are technology capable.
 Not all the contents can be delivered appropriately.
 Bandwidth limitation cause different access to the materials.
 More self control is needed comparing with the traditional class.
 Displayed feed back from instructors.
 Lack of technical training.
In my opinions, the biggest advantage of online learning is to make learning more convenient to people, especially to the people who can not go to campus and stay in the classrooms. This makes study on campus are optional and also give more people chances to learn. Furthermore, the inline learning is also making life-long learning possible. As we all know, that knowledge is changing and always moving forward nowadays. And the interval of knowledge updating is becoming shorter and shorter. It is impossible for anyone to get a degree from school and then rely on it forever. We have to learn anytime, or be left behind. Under this situation, online learning is the optimal choice: gaining new knowledge while keeping the job. So, convenience is the biggest advantage of the online learning.
Disadvantage of online learning is varies upon different people and situation. For example, although online learning offers students more freedom than traditional learning, it requires students more self-control: you can learn on your own pace, but you have to meet the schedule and reach the requirement. So, at some points, students are required to do more than traditional class. That is the more freedom, the more responsibilities.
Among all these tools, WebCT is the only one that I am familiar with. In fact, I do not have the experience of using it, I only have the experiences of taking courses online through WebCT system. I think WebCT is a great tool and it offers many choices to designers. It also gives students many choices of communication. Learners can communicate on the discussion board which is asynchronous and can also communicate synchronously.
Many people are interested in the technology development when they are designing an online course. This is the reason why technology is almost all the time are over emphasized in designing. I like what Clark said in his book that technology should be always like a truck through which the goods (course materials) are delivered. So we should understand that the most important thing during designing is the construction, contents and instruction, we should choose an appropriate media for online designing. I think an appropriate media means a media can deliver the course content successfully. It does not mean the more advanced, the richer media, the better effectiveness.
There are too many extensions during designing an online course. What is an appropriate media? How to improve the effectiveness of an online learning? How to compare two designs? All these questions are related to the program evaluation. Nowadays, many people are focusing on the designing itself, but not the evaluation. However, I think the evaluation is the most important step during designing. It is a step of designing. The purpose of evaluation is to assess the design itself. There two kinds of evaluation: formative and summative.
Formative evaluation happens during the designing process or using process, through which designers can make change or adjustment to the construction. Meanwhile summary evaluation happens after a publishing cycle. Usually, summative evaluation happens after six month or longer the product is put in use. Changes can be made according to the summative evaluation for next cycle of using.
I have experience of evaluation website online in two courses. It is very useful of the evaluation rubrics. As people usually do, rubrics can help people evaluate all aspects of a website with detailed requirement. Also it can help designers with detailed suggestions.
The feedback from learners about the project tasks and activities are important for redesigning in the future. However, how instructors get real useful feedback and detailed suggestions is very important. Normally, schools or instructors would like to offer a survey online and let learner fill it at the end of the semester which is an operational. However, not all the students can fill it carefully especially they are taking many courses because it is not a good idea to keep filling the same questionnaire at a time. In my opinions, instructors can communicate at anytime and to investigate how the project is working? It does not need to be normal investigate. And also, instructors can find problems during the teaching process when helping students solve problems. Most of the time, solving students’ problems is a chance of improving design.
References:
Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of Distance education, Michael Simoson, 2000.
Web teaching guide, Sarah Horton, 2000.