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Sultan Qaboos UniversityCollege of EducationLearning & Instructional Technology DepartmentTECH4102: Evaluation in Educational TechnologySpring 2009

Evaluating an E-learning Tutorial

"Workplace English"

Done by:Amal AL-Balushi (66755)Khadeejah AL-Shidhani (61344)Course instructor:Dr Alaa Sadik,alaasadik@squ.edu.om

Overview:

This project is about e-learning tutorial that is provided by Athabasca University.The tutorial contains lessons and interactive exercises for practicing English grammar. Ithelps to improve communication in the workplace which is divided into the followingsections:

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Health and Wellness.

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Utilities-Oil/Gas/Mining.

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Retail and Sales.

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Food Services and Restaurant.

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Trades and Labour.

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Administration and Clerical.

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Banking and Personal Finance.

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Hospitality and Tourism.It includes 86 units contained in the following grammar sections:

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The Basic Sentence.

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Questions.

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Verbs.

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The Passive.

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The Noun Phrase.

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Types of sentences.

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Adjectives & Adverbs.

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Comparison.

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When?

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Where?

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How & Why?

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Connecting IdeasIt uses a variety of media such as text, audio and video.This is the link for the tutorials: http://www.wpeau.ca /

Purpose:

Evaluating the learning environment of Workplace English in terms of:

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Tutorial and assessment component.

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Interaction component.

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Management component.

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Support component.

Instruments:

The researchers used some items from the survey provided by the Centre forResearch in Distance & Adult Learning in The Open University of Hong Kong. It isprovided in this sitehttp://www.ouhk.edu.hk/doviles/index.html. They used Survey Console to create their survey in. Their survey includes 4sections:

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Tutorial & Assessment (13 items).

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Interaction (13 items).

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Management (5 items).

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Support (14 items).It is provided in this link http://www.surveyconsole.com/console/TakeSurvey?id=570298

Participants:

The sample of the study was 20 university students. The link of the survey was sentto them via the e-mail.

Results:

The survey results show that the tutorial environment is effective. Most participantsscores range between strongly agree and agree for most of the survey items (see theappendix).For the assessment and tutorial component, more than 50% of the participantshave chosen one of the two options (strongly agree, agree) for all the items.However, in the interaction component all items have been agreed on by more than50% participants except the following items, which are mostly related to the collaborationbetween students:

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I cooperate with fellow students online

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I have made friends with other students on this course.

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I get my tutor's feedback on my assignments via the Internet.

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I communicate with other students on this course online.

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The course promotes collaboration among fellow studentsFor the management component, more than 60% of the participants have agreedon most of the items.Finally for the support component, all items have been agreed on by more than50% of the participants except one which is:

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The technician is available for fixing computer hardware problems.

Conclusion:

From the previous shown results it's obvious that the environment of the onlinetutorial is effective in all aspects except in the collaboration facilities. The designers of thetutorial should put more concern on providing collaboration facilities for students to shareand help each other, especially when it comes to the issue of isolation among onlinelearners.