Online Distance Learning (ODL), also called distributed education (DE) has yet to revolutionize education. While the potential of the Internet — a multi-media medium of information that can combine synchronous and asynchronous communications, video, audio, text, and graphics — for learning is profound, but has not been tapped. Like many previous technological advances (microcomputers, television, etc.) the Internet been adapted to play relatively marginal roles within traditional paradigms of the educational process - putting old wine into new bottles. Traditional educational paradigms are under challenge, but no potential replacements have been widely accepted
[...] What are needed in higher education is formative evaluation methodologies that are as innovative as the current educational technologies. These methodologies should include reliable and valid evaluative measures, frequently administered to learners, with meaningful results and interpretation made immediately and conveniently available to the appropriate stakeholders. This form of evaluation would help instructors improve the delivery of learning in "midstream" with a minimal time investment. Students would receive feedback to their feedback ("closing the loop"), thus removing obstacles to learning and demonstrating that students are an important part of the learning process. [...]
[...] Mayer (2004) concluded that the “debate about discovery has been replayed many times in education but each time, the evidence has favored a guided approach to learning” (p. 18) (pp. 81-82) Kirschner et al (2006) point out that the initial construction of essential information happens in a student's working memory which is highly limited. The multi-staged task of problem-discovery, solution means- discovery, etc. all happen within WM, overloading it, and making it difficult to impossible for the information (both "practical information" and the experience of performing operations) to move from WM into long term memory (LTM). [...]
[...] Knowing is a functional stance on interaction—not a truth. (p. 32) The view of learning as "sense making" is not a pedagogical stance on the way we teach people. Nor is it a proposal that this is the way learning occurs sometimes or in some situations. It is a proposal that this is what learning is all about. Regardless of age, whether we are in school or out, whether we are working adults or traditional college students, or whether learning is online or in the classroom, the process of learning is driven by the learner's goal of making sense of the world and of resolving uncertainty. [...]
[...] Comments and explanations can be easily tied to quantitative responses, permitting insight into an individual response or the pattern of responses. In addition, comments delivered through the embedded assessment were automatically sorted by categories and could be searched by key words, generating individual results and patterns of recommendations. Comments written on the paper-based form needed to be retyped to hide recognizable handwriting and provided no means of organizing the information for the benefit of both faculty and students. The breadth and depth of results and the type of analysis can be easily customized in the embedded assessment. [...]
[...] "Direct instruction: An effective approach to educational intervention with the disadvantaged and low performers". In B. B. Lahey & A. E. Kazdin (Eds.), Advances in clinical and child psychology (Vol pp. 429-473). New York: Plenum. Duckworth, E. (1987). "The having of wonderful ideas" and other essays on teaching and learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Dyrud, M. A. (2000). "The third wave: A position paper." Business Communication Quarterly 81-93. Greening, T. (1998). "Scaffolding for success in problem-based learning." Medical Education Online, 3(4). Online: http://www.med-ed- online.org/f0000012.htm#f0000012 Retrieved [...]
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