Sunday, March 29, 2009

Week 4 musings: "We can't evaluate e-learning if we don't know what we mean by evaluating e-learning".

Since we were not really required to post some thing for our Week 4 readings (and yes, I am a week behind- but have started with the week 5 tasks, honestly), I'd thought I'd share a paper with you all that I found this morning. Early Sunday morning, and there I was reading about Educational Paridigms (groan) and I suddenly thought- I can't cope so early on in the day with these combinations of words such as Analytic-empirical-positivist-quantitative and Constructivist-hermeneutic-interpretivist-qualitative ......so I did some searching on GOOGLE and came up with the following article- from a Rob Phillips (Murdoch University, 2005)- a publication from the University of Bristol Called Interact- sorry, not sure which one but the link to the document is here. The title said it all for me, and may help those of you who are struggling with getting started on the paradigms and models. As an overveiw, I didn't think it was too bad, and made the mornings readings a bit easier.
"We can't evaluate e-learning if we don't know what we mean by evaluating e-learning". He makes reference to an earlier paper by Reeves and Hedberg (2002), and talks about the first three paradigms that Reeves discusses in what seemed to me this morning, slightly more simpler terms than the review paper (first attempt anyway).

Thanks
Debra

5.4.09 I have just noted that this paper is referenced in the WikiEdProfessional eLearning Guidebook. I still thought it was worth a read! :-)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You've blown me away with the paper. Makes up for no posting :) Cheers

Rachel said...

Thanks Debra, that has just confirmed for me some of explanations from other articles that I was getting a little stuck with.

Bronwyn hegarty said...

Debra I am so glad you came across this paper. I had put it in the Resources/Articles area on WikiEducator (http://wikieducator.org/Evaluation_of_eLearning_for_Best_Practice/Resources#Articles)as I was impressed by it as well.

But perhaps it also needs to be listed as one of the items to read for "paradigm' week. what do people think?

Adrienne Moyle said...

Hi Deb, I found this article really useful. Thanks for posting it. I also found the recording of the elluminate meeting the other night useful. I am not worried about paradigms anymore. (They exist, but they don't scare me ;).)

Bronwyn it would be great to put it in the resources to read for ... da da da ... gulp ... paradigm week (joke, it's not that bad).