Dear all,

Utrecht was agreed upon to be the leader for model 2. On the basis of the literature on evaluation in higher eudcation and on the results of our small scale study, I think we plan to develop a benchmark instrument. In this instrument, various categories of benchmarks can be identified. For an example of this kind of instrument, see http://www.ihep.com/Pubs/PDF/Quality.pdf.

We would like to work on the following questions within this framework:
- what are relevant categories which are necesarry for the evaluation of eLearning and exclude each other?
- we would like to stress the categories related to the educational process itself (pedagogy) in stead of infrastructure, learner needs, etc.
- if we agree on the categories, we can decide on the various benchmarks in each category.
- we would like to have priorities in these benchmarks: some are the same for all programmes, others are more specific, and others are less important
- in this way we could develop a kind of item bank for the evaluation of eLearning in higher education
- then we prefer a questionnaire with (a part of) the items of the items bank
- this questionnaire is preferably online
- the items of the questionnaire are on a 5-point Likert type scale, together with 2 'open space questions'
- we would like to develop a procedure to have panel discussion in order to add some qualitative data to the quantitive data of the questionnaire.
- this panel discussion can be online as well as face-to-face
- we would like to include more participants than just the students or learners. So, teachers, designers, co-ordinators, managers, policy people, reserachers, theorists can have an interesting input as well, both in completing the questionnaire (with most of time different items than in the student questionnaire) and panel discussions.

So, this is the start of our discussion!!

We can position our ideas in the Pragmatism or Ecletical perspective of Guba and Lincoln.

bye for now, Wilfried