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3. Issue
Third Issue - July 2007
Editorial
Articles / Beiträge
  1. eLearning in the USA: The Standard? The Benchmark?

    More than 3 million enrolments in online courses in the USA are reported by American sources. The essay investigates the role of online studies within the American educational system and tries to find out more about the exact meaning of these extremely high figures. The research discovers astonishing facts and relations: Public schools offer more online courses (82%) than private schools, and 52% of all online courses are offered by 2-year colleges for the associate degrees (and only 8% for the bachelor). A majority of online courses fulfill the role as "remedial courses" that serve for "credit recovery" (U.S. department of Education). The quality of these courses is not very high. This applies to the use of media as well as to the didactic concept. The teaching staff mainly consists of hired part-time lecturers who are still at the very entrance level to an academic career. The essay wants to initiate a discussion about the question if the European study system is in danger to imitate the shortcomings and consequences of the American educational system, because the European system is approximating the American due to recent political decisions. Can we still pursue the aims that we proclaimed when starting with eLearning, if in future eLearning will have to be used to repair the consequences of the bachelor?

  2. Kostenorientiertes Controlling von E-Learning-Plattformen mit dem TCO-Konzept

    Zur administrativen Unterstützung von Lehr- und Lernprozessen werden E-Learning-Plattformen eingesetzt, die auf der Grundlage des Internet Funktionen zur Distribution von Lehr- und Lernmaterialien und zur Kommunikation zwischen Lehrenden und Lernenden anbieten. Zahlreiche wissenschaftliche Beiträge und Marktstudien beschäftigen sich mit der multikriteriellen Evaluation dieser Softwareprodukte zur informatorischen Fundierung strategischer Investitionsentscheidungen. Demgegenüber werden Instrumente zum kostenorientierten Controlling von E-Learning-Plattformen allenfalls marginal thematisiert. Dieser Beitrag greift daher das Konzept der Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) auf, das einen methodischen Ansatzpunkt zur Schaffung von Kostentransparenz von E-Learning-Plattformen bildet. Aufbauend auf den konzeptionellen Grundlagen werden Problembereiche und Anwendungspotenziale für das kostenorientierte Controlling von LMS identifiziert. Zur softwaregestützten Konstruktion und Analyse von TCO-Modellen wird das Open Source-Werkzeug TCO-Tool eingeführt und seine Anwendung anhand eines synthetischen Fallbeispiels erörtert. Abschließend erfolgt die Identifikation weiterführender Entwicklungsperspektiven des TCO-Konzepts im Kontext des E-Learning. Die dargestellte Thematik ist nicht nur von theoretischem Interesse, sondern adressiert auch den steigenden Bedarf von Akteuren aus der Bildungspraxis nach Instrumenten zur informatorischen Fundierung von Investitions- und Desinvestitionsentscheidungen im Umfeld des E-Learning.

  3. Changing the Face of Traditional Education

    At large, research universities, a common approach for teaching hundreds of undergraduate students at one time is the traditional, large, lecture-based course. Trends indicate that over the next decade there will be an increase in the number of large, campus courses being offered as well as larger enrollments in courses currently offered. As universities investigate alternative means to accommodate more students and their learning needs, Web-based instruction provides an attractive delivery mode for teaching large, on-campus courses. This article explores a theoretical approach regarding how Web-based instruction can be designed and developed to provide quality education for traditional, on-campus, undergraduate students. The academic debate over the merit of Web-based instruction for traditional, on-campus students has not been resolved. This study identifies and discusses instructional design theory for adapting a large, lecture-based course to the Web.

Project reports / Projektberichte
  1. Total Cost of Services (TCS) von Learning Management-Systemen

    Mit dem zunehmenden Einsatz von E-Learning-Plattformen rücken verstärkt Wirtschaftlichkeitsaspekte in den Betrachtungsmittelpunkt, die Methoden zur Ermittlung systembedingter Kosten voraussetzen. Durch die zunehmende Serviceorientierung und Integration von LMS mit bestehenden Komponenten der Anwendungsarchitektur sind hierfür jedoch neue Methoden notwendig, welche die Defizite traditioneller Total Cost of Ownership-Modelle abbauen. Einen Ansatzpunkt hierfür bietet das ITIL-Referenzmodell, das einen Rahmen für taktische und operative IT-Services vorgibt und somit die Grundlage für eine serviceorientierte Gesamtkostenermittlung in Form der Total Cost of Services (TCS) liefert.

  2. 2.000 Kilometer am Tag

    Australien bietet geographisch beste Voraussetzungen für die internetbasierte (Fern-)Lehre – die Entfernung zwischen westlicher und östlicher Metropole entspricht derjenigen von Madrid nach Moskau und selbst zwischen Melbourne und Sydney liegen knapp zwei Flugstunden

  3. Stud.IP and ILIAS in an EU-Funded Project for the Middle East

    In autumn 2005 InWEnt (Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung/Capacity Building International gGmbH) on behalf of the EU invited to tender for three web based trainings (WBT). The precondition: either the open-source-platform Stud.IP or ILIAS should be used. The company data-quest decided not to offer the use of either Stud.IP or ILIAS, but both in combination - and won the contract. Several month later, the new learning environment with the combined powers of Stud.IP and ILIAS was ready to serve WBT-participants from all over the world. The following text describes the EU-Project "Efficient Management of Wastewater, its Treatment and Reuse in the Mediterranean Countries" (EMWater), the WBT concept and the experiences with the new Stud.IP-ILIAS-interface.

  4. E-Learning 2.0 in hydraulic engineering education

    In this contribution the experiences with e-Learning 2.0 applications by using a Wiki for the education in hydraulic engineering are shown. Up to now important information for the students has been prepared by the instructor. For this project the students were asked to collaborate and search on their own for the information they needed. Therefore a Wiki-system was used. For the engineering practice a self dependent realisation of tasks is an important requirement which students should be prepared for. With the help of online communication there should be shown the possibilities for students for working together in an interdisciplinary team. The positive experiences as well as the results of the evaluation of this project plead for a continuation of the application of e-Learning 2.0 for education. The comparison of results of tests without using Wiki and with using Wiki shows a qualitative tendency of better marks. In this contribution we present the application of Wiki in hydraulic engineering but the results can also be used for other engineering disciplines.

Editorial

Well, it has been a long time since the last issue. We are way beyond of having a regularly issue at least twice a year. We even got emails like “does eleed still exists?”—Yes, we are still alive! And we are happy to present an interesting third issue to our beloved readers. As you are now aware, we now make accepted articles visible in the “preview” area of the journal prior to "binding" the next issue. Moreover, we tried to reduce the amount of time that passes between when an author submits an article until the final decision. However, the bottleneck towards improved time-to-market is still our review process. As highly qualified experts, our reviewers are overly busy and just need enough time to prepare a well founded review. And yes, they are doing a great job and it is time to say a big THANK YOU to our large group of reviewers. They are the insurance for the high quality we want to achieve. If the acceptance rate is an indicator for quality, then we achieved this goal: From 60 submissions to the refereed section, we have only accepted 12 for publications—that is a 20% acceptance rate.

As you may have noticed, we had published a questionnaire for our readers last year. Meanwhile, we have evaluated the answers and we do no longer want to withhold the results from our readers. The evaluation of the feedback confirms that we achieved our goal concerning the concept, the design, and the content of our open access journal. This is important in instable times where new open access journals emerge every month, while other open access journals in our area cease to exist, for example IMEJ, the Interactive Multimedia Electronic Journal of Computer-Enhanced Learning is no longer published.

In the scientific section, we have three interesting contributions in this issue: In “eLearning in the USA: The Standard? The Benchmark?“, Rolf Schulmeister presents some critical remarks on e-learning in the US as a contribution to the current discussion in Europe. In particular, he wants to initiate a discussion about the question whether the European study system is in danger to imitate the shortcomings and consequences of the American educational system. Although our publishing platform currently does not support discussions or blogs related to articles, we are very much interested in your comments if you feel inspired by Rolf Schulmeister’s thoughts. Please send any feedback to eleed@campussource.de—of course, we are interested in any feedback, not only to this particular article.

Complementing Rolf Schulmeister’s article, we have an article from Maureen Ellis presenting some practical experiences on e-learning in the US: In “Changing the Face of Traditional Education: A Framework for Adapting a Large, Residential Course to the Web”, she identifies and discusses instructional design theory for making a large, lecture-based course ready for Web-based learning.

For the German speaking readership, Bensberg, Grob, and vom Brocke present the Total Cost of Ownership-method (TCO-method) to cast light on the cost-effects of e-learning platforms. Their article will probably make it possible to measure if the use of e-learning at universities can really reduce the costs of educating increasing numbers of students.

In the project report section, we have four contributions: Andreas Bethmann and Marco Bohnsack present results of a project called “Efficient Management of Wastewater, its Treatment and Reuse in the Mediterranean Countries (EMWater)” within the article “Stud.IP and ILIAS in an EU-Funded Project for the Middle East”. Web Based Training (WBT) is used with the aim for refreshing the knowledge of wastewater experts in the Mediterranean Countries and promoting cross border knowledge transfer. In “E-Learning 2.0 in hydraulic engineering education”, Stefan Walder and Wolfgang Hagleiter report about the results of an online collaboration with the usage of Wikis.

In the German speaking section, Frank Bensberg complements his article about the Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) with a report on the Total Cost of Services (TCS) of Learning Management Systems. He refers to the ITIL Reference Model to point out methods determining cost factors of the usage of e-learning platforms. Olaf A. Schulte reports of his experiences with distance education in Australia: His report “2000 kilometers each day” (“2000 Kilometer am Tag”) focuses on video conferencing and describes how e-learning reaches the far-flung regions of the country.

This time, we have five reviews of interesting books in our book review. Their content can be divided into three subjects: First, we have two books about security for e-learning, online-courses, and online platforms. The first book on this subject is “Security in E-Learning”, written by Edgar Weippl, and addresses researchers as well as IT professionals. The second one, “Impacts and Risk Assessment of Technology for Internet Security Enabled Information Small-Medium Enterprises (TEISMES)” written by Charles A. Shoniregun, is not only interesting for researchers and practitioners in the area of e-learning, but also more generally for online platforms and online shops.

The second subject addresses people in education and how to build successful courses in a didactic way. “Lessons in learning, e-learning, and training – perspectives and guidance for the enlightened trainer” by Roger C. Schank shows this in a very personally way. “Efficiency in learning – evidence-based guidelines to manage cognitive load” by Ruth Colvin Clark, Frank Nguyen, and John Sweller contains some theoretical aspects in education and teaching.

The last subject shows the implementation of e-learning in a very special field. “E-Learning in Process and Chemical Engineering – A Practical Overview” by Günter Wozny complements the subjects above in a practical implementation.

We hope that you find this issue of eleed as interesting as we do. Have fun reading it and don't hesitate to give us your feedback!

Jens Krinke
Bernd Krämer
Manfred Postel
Martin Roos