Developing and Utilising Standards in E-Learning: Assessment, Evaluation and Quality Control
in medicMED
Brigitte B.
Strahwald and Marzellus Hofmann, University of Witten/Herdecke, Witten, Germany
ABSTRACT:
medicMED (Multimedia Education Internet Campus Medicine) is a research project at the faculty of medicine at the University of Witten/Herdecke, sponsored by the German ministry for education. It ties in with the long standing experience of self directed learning at Witten/Herdecke. Main focus of medicMED lies on the development and implementation of a internet-based learning and training system for medical students. Within this system students will be supported by PBL-cases that are enriched by multimedia elements. The world-wide-web offers therefore new scenarios and environments for teaching and learning.
At present there are various efforts to define standards within the e-learning realm. These standards are to make both effective quality control become possible, and to ensure the durability of developed contents. Until now no generally accepted, obligatory standards have been agreed on in order to answer questions concerning educational concepts or content. In European new ways of financing e-learning environments are needed, e.g. private-public-partnerships. Therefore, benchmarking based on quality criteria is necessary. Forward-looking producers of e-learning environments must face the problem and invest in the development of an efficient quality management system. In the long term, only those platforms which succeed in implementing technological innovation swiftly and economically and who can respond to the requirements of medical students with the appropriate solutions will be successful.
We report on the development and selection of standards and guidelines for the e-learning environment developed by medicMED at the University of Witten/Herdecke. The compiled catalogue of criteria is presented. The individual steps in the quality management process are illustrated. A further objective is a detailed process and product description following the model of international standardisation (DIN, IEEE). The current state of project development is shown.
BENEFIT TO
PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:
E-learning is a outstanding new method to obtain medical knowledge. However, this potential can only be used if a comprehensive quality management system is concerned. The use of technical and educational standards is obligatory. We report on the solutions found by our project.
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Brigitte B. Strahwald, medicMED Universität Witten/Herdecke Alfred-Herrhausen -Strase 50 58448 Witten, Germany Phone: 49-2302-926785 Fax: 49-2302-926792 Email: mailto:brigitte.strahwald@uni-wh.de Website: http://www.medicmed.de |
CO-AUTHORS: Marzellus Hofmann, medicMED Universität Witten/Herdecke Alfred-Herrhausen -Strasse 50 58448 Witten, Germany Phone: 49-2302-926788 Fax: 49-2302-926792 |