ACES - the Automated Corporate Evaluation Service - was designed to provide corporate customers with a fully automated system to help them assess the impact of courses at the UK Open University. It is a web-based system, and provides a secure server where questionnaires can be placed for access through the Internet. 360 degree questionnaires are used to evaluate how students put their learning into practice in the workplace. ACES then combines and analyses this data, embedding results into word-processed and graphical reports for use by corporate clients.

URL:

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/copl/2003/00000018/00000002/art00002

Keywords:

psychology, distance learning, research methods, evaluation

Abstract:

The internet offers considerable potential for open and distance learning in psychology. Research reveals an abundance of psychology demonstrations and experiments available online, directed both at students and potential research participants. Although expertise is being developed to overcome the technical problems associated with this medium, there has been little or no evaluation into the impact of participating in such studies on the learning experience of distance education students. This paper describes an attempt to remedy the situation. An experiment including two computer tasks and questionnaires was offered online to a group of distance education students. A follow up study was used to assess the implications of internet experiments on the learning experience of distance education students.

URL:

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/caeh/2002/00000027/00000004/art00003

Keywords:

elsa, web-based surveying, evaluation

Abstract:

This paper discusses an electronic course survey system designed to support evaluation of a modular programme in management taught through distance education. The scale and communication issues raised by distance education, when compounded by a complex rolling modular programme, make conventional evaluation complicated, slow, and expensive. To overcome these problems, we introduced an automated evaluation process, partly based on web-based surveying, but significantly emphasising the reporting process, and allowing performance indicators and complex analyses to be embedded in high quality word-processed reports, that can be quickly and easily generated after each presentation of a module. The paper discusses the system, and the impact that it has had on the evaluation process, before looking to future opportunities for developments in this field, and discussing some of the implications ? both expected and unanticipated ? that have come out of using automation in the evaluation process.

Keywords:

aces, elsa, web-based surveying, evaluation