网上教学工具的质量评估

Evaluating the Quality of Online Educational Methods

从事网上远程教学的师生越来越依赖于硬件、软件及各种基于互联网的传递服务。在过去的五年中,师生之间可以通过音频/视频会议、白板、网上投票及实时信息这些基于文本的讨论方法进行网上交流,这些方法能够用于同步和异步的网络环境及各种计算机平台之上,可以单独使用,也可以整合使用。对于网上教师来说,要从大量竞争产品中选择成本效益最好的教育软件和服务是非常困难的事情。加拿大阿萨巴斯卡尔大学就这一主题进行了一系列评估研究,以期提供一些产品服务选择建议,促进师生之间高质量的网上交流。本论文陈述了该项目实施头三年中所取得的主要成果。迄今为止,评估小组已经分析了150种软件产品和服务,而其中一些最有效的方法已经运用到了大学教育中。本文讨论了一系列网络软件及评估标准,包括成本、复杂性、控制、使用类别、通用技术架构以及功能。本文也表明了一些较有前景的新的远程教育软件,以及教师和学生们所认为最有用的功能。作者认为,要实现高质量的远程教育,就必须对现行商业软件、免费软件及开放源码软件进行系统评估。

Online distance educators and their students are increasingly reliant on the hardware, software and services of internet-based delivery. During the past five years, text-based conferencing methods of online teacher-student communication have been complemented by audio/video-conferencing methods, whiteboard, polling, and instant messaging techniques. These are used in synchronous and asynchronous online environments, on a variety of computer platforms, and in 'stand-alone' and integrated formats. For the online teacher, the selection of the most cost-effective educational software and services is complicated by the wide range of competing methods that are available. At Canada's Athabasca University, an ongoing series of evaluation studies advises the selection of these products and services, and the development of high-quality online teacher-student communication. The current paper presents the main conclusions of this project during its first three years. Over 150 software products and services have been reviewed by the evaluation team to date, and the most promising ones are being applied in the University's teaching. The range of online software approaches, and the criteria used in evaluating them, are discussed: cost, complexity, control, and clarity of usage, common technical framework, and features. The potential of new distance education software approaches is indicated, as are the features of them that teachers and students find most useful. It is argued that high-quality distance education requires systematic evaluation of the commercial, freeware, and open-source softwares that are currently evolving.