Evaluating On-Line Learning Sample Clauses

Evaluating On-Line Learning. There is little understanding of what makes a successful museum website in terms of learning potential (MDA 2001). There are few formally developed measures for evaluating educational websites in general, let alone museum sites: “While it is clear that museum resources can have a distinctive contribution to make in terms of the learning that they can generate, it is not clear whether this distinctiveness is appreciable in classroom use of websites or whether there are different expectations and different criteria involved in judging educational web resources generated by museums.” (MDA 2001) In an attempt to provide evaluation criteria, Tyystjärvi (2007) conducted a study of learners’ preferences for different types of web-based educational activities. From a variety of museums’ websites they identified six distinct types of activity: • creative play • guided/virtual tour • interactive activities • puzzle/mystery • role-play/stories • simulations. She found significant differences in the preferences of adults and children, which they attribute to differences in motivation. Adults, she contends, “know what they want to learn and they want to learn it in the most direct way”. Children, by contrast, “respond positively to the opportunity for interaction and choice within a goal-based environment”. The author assumes these differences to be axiomatic and hardly surprising. Potentially more useful is their analysis of the correspondence of different types of web learning activity with pedagogical approaches: “discovery learning lends itself to puzzles and mysteries, with their single correct solution, while constructivism supports user-created outcomes that allow more personal choice and involvement”. Most valuable is her general conclusion that some combination of reference and play is likely to provide maximum appeal and, therefore, most learning potential.