ABOUT US: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The quality of Canadian education and training is being undermined by the improper use of instructional technologies. E-mail, teleconferencing, interactive educational TV, the world wide web, INTERNET newsgroups, and online chat rooms are being used with little evaluation of their effectiveness in learning and training. In some cases, education has become more costly and ineffective because of the improper use of computers in schools, colleges, universities, workplaces, and community organizations. EvNet (Network for the Evaluation of Education and Training Technologies) proposes to remedy this situation by evaluating the effectiveness of computer-mediated communications in the delivery of education and training.

EvNet is a national multi-discipline, multi-sector network of

• 33 academic researchers,
• 35 collaborators or practitioners, and
• 61 public, private and non-profit organizations

which have already committed $3.25 million in cash and in-kind contributions to carry out this research. To match this commitment, it is requesting $1.25 million from the federal government's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under its program, The Strategic Research Networks in Education and Training. Among EvNet's member organizations are

• fourteen universities,
• five community colleges,
• three schools,
• twenty-one private corporations,
• five government agencies, and
• ten non-profit organizations,

specializing in the production and distribution of educational software and learnware, and the teaching and training of Canadians for the job market with the most advanced computer tools available anywhere in the world. EvNet's administrative centre will be located at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

EvNet will produce innovative courseware for INTERNET delivery and more traditional distribution in Canada and globally. EvNet will develop three specialized Multimedia Training Modules for the

1. Workplace,
2. Instructors in Higher Education, and
3. Graduate Research Assistants.

A Dissemination Committee of five publishing corporations, a television host, and INTERNET practitioners will commercialize and distribute the courseware and training modules produced in the network. A Networking Committee will set up a communications structure and common INTERNET server for all five funded education and training networks in Canada. A Training Committee of practitioners will create an Internship Institute and Exchange Program, and RASNET, a Research Assistant's Electronic Network. A Stakeholder Committee of partners will leverage EvNet to raise funds and create new collaborations and ventures to make EvNet self-sustaining.

On the basis of its evaluations, EvNet will attach the following 'worst and best practices' labels to existing and developing courseware and instructional technologies in order to assist educators and trainers in selecting among the technology aids they might use in their courses and programs. In doing so, it will recommend what to eliminate, and what to disseminate.

Worst Practices Labels:

• 'high powered drill and kill' programs
• 'coldware', user unfriendly
• skill destroying
• blocks access, or differentiates access by social characteristics (income, employment status, age, region, ethnicity, gender)
• loss of control
• random, aimless browsing of the INTERNET; time waster
• destruction of community and collaborative learning
• unidirectional (teacher to student sponge lecturing); no interactivity (common in multimedia presentations)
• unidimensional (text or graphics or sound or animation or video)
• 'old wine in new bottles': repackaging old material with new graphics and sound bites on the World Wide Web
• distancing (technology creates barriers between people who prefer distant e-mail to personal contacts)
• speed for speed's sake; pressure to respond NOW to e- mail
• lack of personal support for finding solutions to computer glitches
• expensive and costly
• loss of privacy
• electronic gaming effects (violence; sexism)
• destructive of artistic talent; loss of art forms and culture

Best Practices Labels:

• learner driven
• enhances control by the user
• friendly and intimate; people centered (warmware)
• democratises and deregulates the educational experience
• creates opportunities for meaningful interaction
• knowledge building, creative, artistic, constructive
• eliminates routine tasks, allowing more time for higher order thinking and learning
• inclusivity, equity of access (gender, race, income, region)
• multidimensional (text, sound, graphics, video and animation in a balanced symphony that is not overpowering)
• enabling (use of technology to overcome handicaps)
• extending the senses
• enhances user control over time; self paced, not instructor paced or technology paced (any time, any place learning)
  
  
  

For work done to date on these labels and standards for evaluating online courses, see Module Five of the Instrsuctional Design for the New Media Course which was developed by EvNet in cooperation with LearnOntario and the Notemakers Program of Industry Canada: http://www.rcc.ryerson.ca/learnontario/idnm/mod5/mod5.htm

Copyright © 2000 by EvNet - All rights reserved.
Email us at: evnet@mcmaster.ca

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