Self-Evaluation

Projects

Self-Evaluation of Quality in Technology-enhanced Learning

12 February 2010

SEVAQ+ aims to engage in wide-reaching dissemination and exploitation of the results of a Leonardo da Vinci pilot project: the SEVAQ tool and concept for the Self-Evaluation of Quality in eLearning.

Technology-enhanced learning is developing in diverse forms in Higher Education (HE) and Vocational Educational Training (VET) across Europe, reflecting the complex interrelation between cultures and education. As Ehlers states in the SEVAQ handbook: “…overarching approaches and strategies are needed in order to develop quality in a holistic way, taking into account organisational contexts and stakeholders in a participatory way.”

The original SEVAQ project merged two widely recognised evaluation and quality approaches – the Kirkpatrick and European Foundation for Quality Management models - to produce a dynamic, multilingual tool for the generation of learner-centred self-evaluation questionnaires.SEVAQ has great potential to support quality assurance in technology-enhanced learning, pinpointing areas for improvement, tracking evolution and enabling benchmarking. Yet market research clearly shows the need for a 360° evaluation, identifying widespread recognition and certification as critical success factors for the extensive take-up of SEVAQ.

To achieve this, 3 of the original members have joined forces with 2 new partners and 2 solidly implanted European networks, EDEN and EFQUEL. The tool and concept will be extended to new stakeholder groups and localised in 3 additional languages (DE, IT and PL) with a focus on interculturality.SEVAQ+ aims to reach a critical mass of 5000 users in HE and VET, mobilising partner and associate networks to disseminate results through a judicious mix of events, publications and social networking, involving stakeholders and experts in the dual evaluation cycle of extensive user feedback and online Delphi consensus to carry SEVAQ+ through to certification, and contributing to policy via a widely-circulated white paper.

Launch of SEVAQ+ v2.0

Feedback gathered between June 2010 and January 2011, from nearly 2000 users around Europe, has resulted in key improvements to ensure SEVAQ+ best meets the needs of managers, teachers, trainers and learners in both HE and VET. The result is SEVAQ+ v2.0, launched in April 2011.

New features and improvements include:

  • A brand new, user-friendly interface;
  • The streamlined ‘designer’ area for quicker and simpler questionnaire administration;
  • More options for questionnaire designers, including:
    • distributing a single questionnaire in several languages,
    • defining comments as obligatory or optional,
    • automated functions for communicating with questionnaire respondents

See for yourself http://www.sevaq-plus.preau.ccip.fr/

Forthcoming SEVAQ+ events

In the coming months, SEVAQ+ will be running a series of public webinars, finalising the validation process with a group of international eLearning and quality experts and holding an expert workshop at the EDEN 2011 Annual Conference in Dublin, Ireland. For details of these events and more, please visit the SEVAQ+ website http://www.sevaq.eu

Extracted from SEVAQ+

Self-Evaluation, quality

SEVAQ+ at the EDEN annual conference 2010 in Valencia

29 April 2011
Articles

Formative Interfaces for Scaffolding Self-Regulated Learning in PLEs

04 July 2008
A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a software application (desktop or web-based) which allows students to organise learning resources and publish individual outcomes. Although PLEs are built for bottom-up personal use, they involve communication and increasingly social tools, promoting networked learning scenarios. Knowledge management, syndicating resources, trustworthiness and assessment on the assemblage of resources are actual research issues related to the improvement of PLEs.
Without a pedagogical value-add, PLEs cannot be viewed as educational tools, but perhaps advanced, user-friendly file management tools. Therefore, how can such a user-centric tool influence the study process so that meaningful and constructive activities are committed more often than rudimentary informal learning? In other words, how can self-regulation be scaffolded by a PLE? Based on research that points out the role of scaffolding in activating higher order learning competencies it is theorised in this paper that these competencies can be performed even by young users.

iClass is an integrated project which is partially funded by the 6th Framework Programme for Research and Technology Development of the European Commission. Although it started off to develop a user-centric intelligent tutoring platform, the educational vision of the project was updated during the third year and bringing support for self-regulated personalisation on mainstream virtual learning environments became the objective.

In this paper, formative features of the visual interface of the iClass Web-based RIA will be explained as signifiers of typical regulatory structures. Semiotic principles underlying each signification will be described and the role of visualisation in operant conditioning and empowerment will be discussed.
PLE, learning theories, Self-Evaluation, Visual Interfaces, connectivism, Informal learning, , design, scaffolding, iClass, RIA, Platform