To the Question of Evaluation in Open, Distant and e-Learning

Abstract

Nowadays open, distance and e-learning is a growing demand and practice. But at the same time little attention is given to organizing and carrying out the evaluation research of this particular education format by the ODeL educators themselves. The existing evaluation frameworks are being ignored. Moreover, the problems of data collection, assessment and evaluation are rarely put on the agenda in the learning design process. Though still, evaluation remains the equal stage of ODeL design and constitute one of its success factors, if integrated with the implementation stage. The efficiency of implementation of ODeL can be enhanced by continuous assessment and evaluation at each design stage. The stakeholders need to reflect on and be aware of what evaluation means for ODeL, at which stage of innovation they find themselves, why to carry out the evaluation and how, what they would like to know about their ODeL systems, which of the evaluation methods suit best their particular case, what state-of-the-art tools for data mining and statistics analysis are at their disposal. Generally, all these challengers need to be tackled while constructing the evaluation road map that will help to provide the synergy between implementation and evaluation. The paper offers a qualitative analysis of the strategies, principles, methods and tools of the evaluation in ODeL to improve its implementation and performance.